Kermit Gosnell’s defense attorney laid out his case for acquittal on five counts of murder but the specifics were telegraphed as far back as the trial’s opening statements six weeks ago.
According to Jack McMahon, even the District Attorney (who is an African-American) was part of an “elitist, racist prosecution” of a man so kindly that he puts Marcus Welby, MD, to shame.
Proof? “Dr. Gosnell is not the only one doing abortions in Philadelphia,” McMahon said, “but he was an African American singled out for prosecution.”
“We know why he was targeted,” he said, according to CNSNews.com. “If you can’t see that reality, you’re living in some sort of la-la land.”
And that was just part of McMahon’s two-hour closing. The four first-degree murder charges for babies the prosecution said were aborted alive and then murdered when their necks were slit were “four isolated incidents” at a clinic that performed “thousands and thousands of abortions,” and “20 to 30 a day,” reported CNS News’ Elizabeth Harrington. On top of that Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion clinic wasn’t the pigsty the prosecution alleged.
And, to tie a bow on his rebuttal of prosecution charges, McMahon announced (again) that none of the babies were born alive; all were killed in utero by an injection of digoxin.
Of course, there are a few inconvenient facts that point in the opposite direction. Here are five of 400,000.
#1. Gosnell could not be charged with more murders because—and only because–the Grand Jury said records had disappeared. The Grand Jury believed that Gosnell had killed hundreds of viable unborn babies past 24 weeks—the limit in Pennsylvania.
#2. The pictures McMahon showed the jury disproved the allegation that Gosnell’s abortion clinic was a “House of Horrors.” But it was not just his former employees who testified to the horrific conditions or the conclusion of the Grand Jury. It was verified by officials who came to the abortion clinic after a raid on what authorities thought was an illegal “pill mill” found a “wretched, filthy place.” By the time the Grand Jury visited the abortion clinic, the facility had been substantially cleaned up. Even so “The walls appeared to be urine-splattered,” the Grand Jury concluded, backed up by witnesses. “The procedure tables were old and one had a ripped plastic cover. Suction tubing, which was used for abortion procedures – and doubled as the only available suction source for resuscitation – was corroded. A large, dirty fish tank stood in the waiting room, filled with turtles and fish. The dirt-floored basement was stuffed with patient files, plants, junk, and boxes of un-disposed-of medical waste. The entire facility smelled foul.”
#3. Gosnell’s own former staff testified that he was so wretchedly incompetent he stopped using digoxin. Specifically, “because Gosnell was not skillful enough to successfully administer digoxin, late-term babies continued to be born alive, and he continued to kill them by slitting their necks.” Kareema Cross testified to the Grand Jury, “So he tried to do the needle in the stomach and that’s what was supposed to have killed the baby before the baby came out, but if it didn’t, he’ll say, oh, well, the law says that I can do it. I can still slit the baby’s neck because it didn’t work. The needle didn’t work.” To which the Grand Jury added in its report, “And according to his staff, the needle never worked. So Gosnell stopped trying and reverted to his old system of killing babies after they were born.”
And, of course, ignore all that testimony about babies who were born alive; who even screamed and were dispatched in a manner that Gosnell’s right-hand man likened to a “beheading.”
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#4. You would think from McMahon’s remarks that Gosnell practically accepted vegetables from the gardens of “desperate young girls” in payment. In fact, as the prosecution and the Grand Jury made clear, Gosnell made millions.
#5. And never, ever forget that the entire medical bureaucracy in Pennsylvania—and the Abortion Establishment, as represented by (among others) the National Abortion Federation—consciously turned a blind eye, in spite of overwhelming evidence of Gosnell’s illegal and incompetent behavior. The only reason he is on trial is because the feds were convinced Gosnell was illegally selling prescription drugs, particularly OxyContin, and raided his abortion clinic in West Philadelphia.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He writes NRL News Today — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.
