Why convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell still matters – and what the media still won’t say
Infamous Pennsylvania abortionist and convicted murder Kermit Gosnell died this month, 16 years after the shocking trial that almost didn’t make national news. He was 85, serving life in prison.
Who was Kermit Gosnell?
On the Senate floor in 2024, pro-abortion Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ironically, suggested people Google Kermit Gosnell. Take his advice – but steel your stomach.
Gosnell’s abortion technique frequently entailed delivering babies alive – “still moving, whimpering or breathing” – and “snipping” their spinal cords with scissors. He was convicted on three counts of murder (though the true number is hundreds or thousands) and multiple charges of violating Pennsylvania’s late-term abortion law.
See Actual Photo of “Baby Boy A” [Warning – Graphic]
For 30 years Gosnell got away with murder – it was suspicion of drug trafficking that finally brought him down.
Even investigators weren’t prepared for Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society.” The nearly 300-page grand jury report describes a true house of horrors: Unsanitary instruments. Cat feces. Baby feet in jars. Intact babies in the freezer, remains in milk cartons…“The only thing Gosnell seemed to care about was the cash he raked in from his illegal operation,” around $10-15,000 daily.
Not only babies
The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd notes:
In May 1973, the Philadelphia doctor placed razor-rigged coils in the wombs of 15 poverty-stricken pregnant women with the intent to slice up their unborn babies. The mass procedure, later dubbed the “Mother’s Day Massacre,” caused nine of the women serious complications including “a punctured uterus, hemorrhage, infections and retained fetal remains.” Gosnell escaped punishment for his cruelty by fleeing the state.
When Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old refugee, overdosed on cheap painkillers given by Gosnell’s unlicensed staff, Gosnell wasn’t even present. His defibrillator was broken. By the time paramedics arrived, Mongar was gone.
All-systems failure
The grand jury savaged the National Abortion Federation, which rejected Gosnell’s membership application after seeing his facility – but never informed authorities. Not only that: Under “pro-choice” Republican Gov. Tom Ridge, annual inspections of abortion facilities ended, favoring “access” to abortion instead. Even after Karnamaya Mongar died, the state health department didn’t bother – their chief counsel stating flatly at the trial, “People die.”
A “soldier” against poverty?
Gosnell’s attorney spoke of “prosecutorial lynching”: “This is a targeted, elitist and racist prosecution of a doctor who’s done nothing but give (back) to the poor and the people of West Philadelphia.” Contemporary reports indicate Gosnell saw himself as a pillar of the community:
Philadelphia magazine reporter Steve Volk, who spoke with Gosnell in exclusive interviews from prison where he is serving three life sentences, told ABCNews.com that Gosnell is an “intelligent” and “charismatic” man who insists that he is not a “monster.”
“He believes himself to be innocent … in this larger spiritual sense. He believes he was performing a service for people that asked him […] He believes he was a soldier at war with poverty. He has a sense of righteousness, that whatever rule he broke, it was worth it.”
We shudder – but similar views still have high-profile sympathizers today, like Janet Yellen to Sen. Tim Scott shortly after the Dobbs leak:
Media blackout
At first, the case only drew attention from area reporters and small blogs. That began to change when Bucks County Courier Times reporter JD Mullane posted a photo of the empty courtroom press gallery:
National columnist Kirsten Powers blasted the media:
A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.
The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.
When Mollie Hemingway called out The Washington Post, the now-famous reply was that this story was merely “local crime.” (The reporter has since moved on to The New York Times.)
An old saying in journalism goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” So why the silence?
Here, too, the grand jury’s conclusion is revealing: “We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”
When it was covered – such as years later when independent filmmakers wanted to run ads – outlets like then-taxpayer-funded NPR continued to censor the facts, refusing to call Gosnell (accurately) an abortionist.
Not an outlier
Corporate media still won’t acknowledge the truth: Gosnell is hardly alone in the abortion industry. He’s just one of the few who went to jail.
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, attempted damage control following the trial. But only two years later, undercover videos exposed their callous harvest and sale of baby body parts. And in 2019, the hoarded remains of more than 2,200 aborted children were discovered on abortionist Ulrich “George” Klopfer’s Indiana property only after his death.
Today, politicians still ignore, cover up, or try to explain away abortion industry horrors – like Tim Walz, Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro, Ralph Northam or D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Contrast Gosnell’s crimes with the case of the D.C. Five, whose brutalized but well-developed bodies – bearing injuries consistent with illegal partial-birth abortions, a federal crime – were discovered along with 100+ more aborted children in a medical waste box four years ago this week.
Though congressional legislation has been introduced, to date, D.C. has conducted:
- No investigation
- No autopsies
- No arrests
- No trial
Late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo, who was caught admitting he’d do nothing to save a baby that was born alive, remains free – even showing up for “work” in an arm cast – while pro-life activists who peacefully protest late-term abortion were imprisoned under President Biden until President Trump pardoned them.
Break the silence
Today, most people still won’t hear about America’s biggest serial killer on the news. Gosnell’s Associated Press obituary isn’t even 250 words long. Once again, citizens of good conscience must speak up and demand that the awful truth about Kermit Gosnell – and most importantly, the humanity of all abortion victims – not get buried with him.
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