Dropped Gosnell Charge Includes 28-Week Old “Baby Boy B” Found in Freezer

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 23, 2013   |   1:56PM   |   Philadelphia, PA

The judge in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial dropped three charges against the abortion practitioner for killing babies in a gruesome abortion method that involved snipping their necks in infanticides.

One of the three charges the judge dropped includes a 28-week unborn baby who was killed in an abortion-infanticide and eventually discovered in a freezer at Gosnell’s clinic.

Last week, LifeNews featured a report on this aborted baby, who was the subject of testimony during the trial. Because the medical examiner could not confirm the baby was born alive and subsequently killed, the judge dropped the charge

He is known only as “Baby Boy B,” a fetus estimated to be 28 weeks old, found frozen in an altered one-gallon plastic water jug in Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s West Philadelphia abortion clinic.

His passing went unnoticed and undocumented, but on Monday, prosecution and defense lawyers struggled to get Philadelphia’s chief medical examiner to say whether he was stillborn or killed by Gosnell after being born alive during an abortion.

“Based on the totality of the evidence . . . you cannot testify to anyone that this fetus was born alive?” Gosnell lawyer Jack McMahon asked Medical Examiner Sam Gulino.

“No I cannot,” replied Gulino.

Then Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron flipped around McMahon’s question: “Can you think of any reason why the neck was severed if that baby was not born alive?”

Again, Gulino agreed. McMahon tried to salvage his first answer, only to be interrupted by Cameron.

McMahon exploded in anger, but was topped by Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart.

“Mr. McMahon, behave yourself!” yelled Minehart. “Act like a lawyer.”

McMahon, who once worked with Minehart and Cameron in the District Attorney’s Office, sat down, seething, and said nothing more.

Gulino testified about the difficult task of examining the remains of 47 frozen fetuses discovered in Gosnell’s clinic during a Feb. 18, 2010, raid by a federal-state prescription drug-abuse task force.

Gulino called it “unprecedented.”

“This was something that in 15 to 16 years . . . I had never been asked to do,” Gulino testified.

“There was no guidance on how to proceed,” Gulino testified, adding that he asked fellow coroners, medical examiners, and forensic pathologists, who were as stumped as he.

Gulino said he finally opened the red and blue plastic bags from Gosnell’s freezer, tagged the remains, and slowly let them thaw, to minimize decomposition.

The 47 aborted fetuses ranged in age from 12 weeks – the end of the first trimester – to late second trimester, and included two that looked beyond the 24-week limit for legal abortions in Pennsylvania.

LifeNews Note: Baby picture courtesy Billy Valentine.