Kermit Gosnell
A Philadelphia jury has found abortionist Kermit Gosnell guilty of first degree murder for severing the spinal cords of 3 babies born alive during illegal, late-term abortions–a practice believed to have occurred hundreds of times, according to a Feb. 7, 2011 grand jury report. The 261-page report dubbed Gosnell’s abortion business a “House of Horrors” due to its gross filth, pest-infestation and the storage of fetal remains, scattered throughout in cabinets and freezers.
Eight other former staffers of Gosnell have pleaded guilty to a variety of charges and await sentencing. Gosnell was also convicted of hundreds of charges ranging from infanticide to running a corrupt organization, including:
- manslaughter for the drug-overdose death of a 6-months-pregnant woman;
- 21 felony counts of illegal abortions beyond the 24 week limit;
- 211 misdemeanor counts of violating the 24-hour informed consent law.
Gosnell’s premises had not been inspected for 17 years, beginning under the pro-abortion administration of Gov. Tom Ridge, motivated by a desire not to be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. Notably, the grand jury report revealed that complaints about infection, injuries and illegalities at the Gosnell clinic to state authorities were not pursued–including this incident:
“Almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street. The department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell. The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records. Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed.”
One significant result of the Gosnell trial is that Congress has sent a formal inquiry to all 50 state health departments concerning abortion clinic regulation and enforcement. KFL executive director, Mary Kay Culp, commented on this development, “When Kansas responds, they will have to answer that we indeed have an abortion clinic licensing law passed in 2011, but that because of a lawsuit by the abortion industry, that law remains enjoined and at the mercy of Kansas courts, despite it having been designed to be fully constitutional. Our hope is that one result of the Gosnell verdict would be to help lift the unfair injunction on the Kansas abortion clinic licensing law.”
Kansas had long attempted to pass an abortion clinic licensing law, particularly when several Kansas abortionists had accrued scores of malpractice filings that were settled without media attention–but then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ vetoed abortion clinic licensure laws in 2003 and 2005. Notably during this time period, Kansas City, Kansas abortionist, Krishna Rajanna, echoed Gosnell’s business model: a filthy, blood-stained, trash-filled clinic using underage and non-trained employees and storing fetal remains in the staff freezer.
The Kansas Board of Healing Arts allowed Rajanna to stay open, even with evidence of improper drug protocols and substandard conditions. The Board did eventually take Rajanna’s license in 2005, as Sebelius geared up for re-election. This ostensibly gave Sebelius some veneer of “clinic safety accountability,” with her vetoing of clinic bills and her involvement in covering up a 2005 late-term abortion death in Wichita.
The Board, now under new leadership, is no longer a pawn of the abortion industry. They have revoked the Kansas license of abortionist Kris Neuhaus for failing to meet the standard of care in evaluating abortion-seeking teens. The Board is taking seriously a complaint filed by Kansans for Life against Kansas-licensee, LeRoy Carhart, for the Feb. 7 death of Jennifer Morbelli, a late-term abortion client from his Maryland office.
Although the Maryland county police closed their investigation Monday without filing criminal charges, the Chief Medical Examiner has declined to release the final autopsy results and no results of an inquiry have been released by the Maryland Mental Hygiene’s Office of Health Care Quality. The Kansas Healing Arts Board can conduct its own investigation into the Morbelli death, and now has stronger legal grounds to pursue disciplinary action–even if Carhart cancels his Kansas license– because the death occurred while Carhart was licensed in Kansas.
Despite limited media coverage of the Gosnell case, the nation may be awakening, not only to the full horrors of killing the innocent, but the corruption of medicine and lack of human decency inside abortion clinics. It is a situation that Kansans have been trying mightily to battle for decades, and are now seeing some improvement.
