Gosnell Did Three-Day-Long Abortions at 30 Weeks of Pregnancy

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 21, 2013   |   5:07PM   |   Philadelphia, PA

A former worker for abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell has told a court evaluating eight charges of murder for the embattled abortion practitioner that he did three-day-long abortion procedures at 30 weeks of pregnancy.

Gosnell, whose squalid “house of horrors” abortion clinic and callous, has had almost flippant attitude toward his macabre abortion practices shocked the nation. In all, Gosnell faces 43 criminal counts, including eight counts of murder in the death of one patient, Karnamaya Monger, and seven newborn infants. Additional charges include conspiracy, drug delivery resulting in death, infanticide, corruption of minors, evidence tampering, theft by deception, abuse of corpse, and corruption.

Gosnell could face the death penalty if convicted and he faces a mandatory minimum 20 years.

The jury heard information about how Gosnell did gruesome late-term abortions that killed children and put women at risk.

A young woman who was 17 when she aborted “Baby A” spent several hours testifying in Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial.

The prosecution says she was nearly 30 weeks in her pregnancy. And one of Gosnell’s medical assistants, who had testified that late-term babies were routinely cut with scissors after delivery, said she was disturbed by the baby’s size and pinkish color.

Prosecutors believe she was well beyond the 24-week limit in Pennsylvania. Gosnell started a three-day outpatient procedure on the teen in 2008 in Delaware, where the limit is 20 weeks. The baby was delivered at his clinic in West Philadelphia.

The medical assistant, Andrienne Moton, has said she was so concerned by the baby’s appearance that she took a cellphone picture of it. Moton testified this week that late-term babies were routinely cut with scissors after delivery, and she acknowledged that she performed the technique at least 10 times.

McMahon asked the prosecution’s medical expert if gestational age isn’t an imprecise estimate, with a second-trimester range of about two weeks on either side.

“This isn’t an exact science where two plus two equals four?” he asked Dr. Daniel Conway, a Philadelphia neonatologist with St. Christopher’s Hospital.

Conway agreed that gestational age is an estimate, but said the estimate is based on a scientific calculation of a long list of variables that includes head size, femur length, skin development and the mother’s last menstrual period.

Delaware officials say abortion practitioner Albert Dworkin helped Gosnell avoid state law and enabled him to run the shoddy abortion business in neighboring Philadelphia.

Gosnell not only operated in southeast Pennsylvania, but he was employed at the Delaware abortion facility known as Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, with offices in Wilmington and Dover, Delaware, where he would work one day per week to do abortions. That abortion center has already come under investigation from Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden and reportedly falsified abortion reports to state officials.
“The Gosnell case is a watershed moment for the issue of abortion,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue and Pro-Life Nation. “The discovery of his horrific practices helped shed light on an abortion industry that has run amok without oversight or accountability for decades, and has prompted significant changes in abortion laws and attitudes toward enforcement in several states.”

Previously, Gosnell’s wife Pearl pleaded guilty to assisting her husband at his Philadelphia abortion center where he killed a woman in a botched abortion and kills hundreds of babies in abortion-infanticides.

Pearl Gosnell was considering a plea deal similar to the one several of Gosnell’s former abortion center employees have made where they have pleaded guilty to receive a lesser sentence in exchange for testifying against Gosnell. Pearl also worked at the abortion center Gosnell ran that had him kill and injure women in failed abortions and kill perhaps hundreds of babies in grisly infanticides by birthing them and “snipping” their spinal cords.

She worked at the Women’s Medical Society abortion business her husband ran as a full-time medical assistant from 1982 until she married Kermit Gosnell in 1990, when she switched to only working on Sundays. At that time, the abortion business was officially closed but would do its latest-term abortions possible.

The grand jury report indicates Pearl Gosnell testified that she alone helped Kermit do abortions on Sundays when she would “help do the instruments” in the operating room despite no medical training.

Previously, Judge Lerner ruled two other former employees, Eileen O’Neill and Madeline Joe, are not allowed to have their cases separated from that of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Neither O’Neill nor Joe are charged with killing babies in infanticides and, although their attorneys argued the horrifying allegations against Gosnell could unfairly taint their cases, they were not allowed to plead guilty in deals as was the case with six other former employees.

The murder charges also came in connection with the botched abortion death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, who died at Gosnell’s abortion clinic after a failed abortion. Mongar died November 20, 2009, after overdosing on anesthetics prescribed by the doctor. Mongar’s family filed a lawsuit against Gosnell’s abortion business seeking damages.

Gosnell and several staffers at his abortion center, including Pearl, were arrested in January after a grand jury indicted them on multiple charges after officials raided his abortion business following a woman’s death and discovered a “shop of horrors” filled with bags of bodies and body parts of deceased unborn children and babies killed in infanticides. Pearl Gosnell, Kermit’s 49-year-old wife who has no medical license, faces a charge of providing an abortion at 24 or more weeks and conspiracy and other charges.

Gosnell has been denied bail while the case against him moves forward. Women have spoken out about their treatment and one woman says she was drugged and tied up and forced to have an abortion.

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Authorities searching the facility last year found bags and bottles holding aborted babies scattered around the building, jars containing babies’ severed feet lining a shelf, as well as filthy, unsanitary furniture and equipment.

The grand jury investigation also shows state officials did nothing when reports came in about problems at Gosnell’s abortion center, which has upset incoming pro-life Governor Tom Corbett.

Gosnell’s abortion center was inspected only after a federal drug raid in 2010.  It was the first time the facility had been inspected in 17 years because state officials ignored complaints and failed to visit Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society for years.

The abortion industry has been forced to suspend two abortion businesses that employed embattled abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, who has been the subject of national controversy over his abortion business in Philadelphia.

Following revelations that Gosnell is associatedwith two other abortion centers in Louisiana and Delaware, the National Abortion Federation made the decision to suspend the memberships of both. Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, the Delaware abortion business that employed Gosnell one day a week to do abortions, and the Delta Clinic abortion center of Baton Rouge, have both had their memberships suspended. Leroy Brinkley owns both abortion businesses. Atlantic operates abortion centers in Wilmington and Dover.