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The monster is dead. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist whose “house of horrors” shocked even a nation grown numb to the abortion industry’s excesses, died this month at age 85 while serving life sentences for murdering newborn babies. But the evil he perpetrated, the systems that enabled him, and the uncomfortable truths his case revealed about America’s abortion regime remain very much alive.
Gosnell was convicted in 2013 of first-degree murder for killing three babies born alive during failed abortions. The method was as barbaric as it sounds: he would “snip” their spinal cords with scissors. But the grand jury investigating his crimes believed he had killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of babies this way over the decades. They wanted to charge him with 200 murders, but political pressure from senior law enforcement officials reduced the charges to just seven. According to sources close to the investigation, authorities didn’t want their homicide numbers to spike in an era of falling crime statistics. Let that sink in. Babies were murdered, and the body count was massaged to protect political narratives.
The details from the grand jury report read like something from a horror film. One baby, “Baby Boy A,” was nearly six pounds and almost 30 weeks along. He was breathing and moving when Gosnell killed him and stuffed his body in a shoebox. The child was so large his arms and feet hung over the sides. Investigators found baby remains in milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and cat food containers. Gosnell’s handyman complained that the toilets were constantly clogged with “arms and feet” of aborted babies. The clinic itself was a nightmare: cats roamed freely and defecated everywhere, furniture was stained with blood, instruments weren’t sterilized, and the emergency exit was padlocked shut.
Two women died under Gosnell’s care, casualties of a system that looked the other way for decades. One woman was left bleeding and incoherent for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon. Another fell into shock from blood loss after Gosnell punctured her uterus, ultimately requiring a hysterectomy at nineteen years old. The Pennsylvania Department of Health hadn’t inspected the facility since 1993, despite complaints and a woman’s death in 2009. The grand jury concluded that political considerations, specifically fear of being seen as targeting abortion providers, kept regulators at bay.
Gosnell escaped the death penalty by waiving his right to appeal, receiving instead multiple life sentences plus 30 years for running a pill mill out of the same facility. But the uncomfortable question his case forces us to confront is this: what made Gosnell different from any other abortionist? He operated in the open for decades. He was a respected member of the community, even serving on the board of a local children’s hospital. The line between what he did and what happens in “respectable” abortion clinics is thinner than the pro-choice movement wants to admit.
If Gosnell’s victims had been killed minutes earlier, still inside the womb, it would have been legal. If he had used different methods, if he had kept better files, if he had sterilized his instruments, would his clinic have been any different from the thousands operating across America today? The answer should trouble us. The same industry that claims abortion is healthcare produced Kermit Gosnell, enabled him for decades, and only stopped him when the stench of death became impossible to ignore. His death closes a chapter, but the story of what we tolerate in the name of “choice” continues.
Providence watches over the bold.
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