"Pa. abortion doctor’s case near trial" Associated Press, March 05, 2013
PHILADELPHIA — Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of a Philadelphia abortion provider, a potentially sensitive task since the case involves both abortion and the death penalty.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is charged with eight counts of murder. He is charged with third-degree murder in a woman’s 2009 death during a botched abortion, and first-degree murder for allegedly killing seven viable babies. Gosnell faces the death penalty if convicted on the latter counts.
He has pleaded not guilty and insists he helped many vulnerable women and teens get medical care, including second-term abortions not offered at many clinics.
Three women were picked as jurors Monday, and selection will continue Tuesday.
Pennsylvania laws ban abortions after 24 weeks. Authorities believe at least some of the abortions performed at Gosnell’s clinic involved third-trimester pregnancies. The 2011 grand jury report details one case in which Gosnell allegedly joked the aborted fetus was so big it could walk to the bus stop.
The report described the clinic as filthy, blood-stained, and macabre, with a collection of fetal body parts in jars.
What was really going on there? Was the tissue being $old for some sick reason?
Former clinic employee Eileen O’Neill is also on trial, charged with practicing medicine without a license. Eight others have pleaded guilty to murder or lesser charges. Some are expected to testify against their former boss.
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"Lawyer calls abortion case ‘lynching’" Associated Press, March 19, 2013
PHILADELPHIA — A lawyer defending a Philadelphia abortion provider on murder charges accused officials of ‘‘an elitist, racist prosecution,’’ as the death-penalty trial opened Monday.
Lawyer Jack McMahon also accused city officials of ‘‘a prosecutorial lynching’’ of his client, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who is black.
Gosnell, 72, is accused of running a rogue clinic that ignored the state ban on third-term abortions and 24-hour waiting periods. Prosecutors say he also maimed desperate, often poor women and teens by letting his untrained staff perform abortions and give anesthesia.
And they say he got rich doing it, by performing a high volume of substandard abortions.
Police found $250,000 in cash during a 2010 search of his home, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore told jurors. Gosnell used outmoded drugs and improper methodology, forcing women to deliver live babies that were then killed by staff with scissors, she said.
The Omen.
‘‘The standard practice here was to slay babies. That’s what they did,’’ said Pescatore, who echoed a 2011 grand jury report in calling the clinic ‘‘a house of horrors.’’
Staff went along with the routine because they were nearly as desperate as the women, she said. The two other ‘‘doctors’’ on staff did not have licenses, authorities said. The woman giving anesthesia was a sixth-grade dropout who could hardly read or write, Pescatore said. And one of the employees who advanced from the reception area to the operating room was a 15-year-old high school student.
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Related:
Aborting Pennsylvania Post
Witness criticizes Pa. abortion clinic policy
Receptionist: Unlicensed doc fled Pa. clinic raid
Relatives describe women's death after PA abortion
Three murder charges against Pa. abortion doctor tossed
Yeah, don't let him do the procedure.
"Pa. abortion trial stirs debate on life’s end" by Maryclaire Dale | Associated Press, April 30, 2013
PHILADELPHIA — The high-profile murder trial of a Philadelphia abortion provider sparked courtroom debate Monday over when life ends, a tweak of the politically charged question of when life begins.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, faces capital murder charges in the deaths of four aborted babies, described by prosecutors as viable, born alive, and then killed at his busy West Philadelphia clinic.
In closing arguments, Assistant District Attorney Ed Cameron called Gosnell’s operation an assembly line where a stream of poor, mostly minority women and teens endured hours of painful labor and delivery because Gosnell did not successfully abort babies in utero. He instead killed them with scissors after they were born, authorities said.
‘‘Are you human?’’ Cameron asked Gosnell, ‘‘to med these women up and stick knives in the backs of babies?’’
The doctor sat calmly at the defense table, as he has throughout the often graphic six-week trial.
Didn't get a whole lot of coverage from the pro-women, pro-abortion media, did it?
Eight former workers have pleaded guilty to murder or other charges and have testified to seeing babies move, breathe, or whine. Yet some said they did not consider the babies fully alive until they were charged after a 2011 grand jury investigation.
Defense lawyer Jack McMahon has seized on that point and argued again Monday that the occasional spasms the workers saw were not the wriggling movements of a newborn baby. And he said prosecutors preyed on workers’ emotions and fears to manipulate them into taking pleas that were not always warranted by the facts.
That's very possible. Happens all the time in AmeriKan justice.
‘‘They should be ashamed of themselves for that,’’ McMahon said.
He acknowledged that jurors have seen graphic, even grisly, photographs of aborted babies and bloody medical equipment.
‘‘Abortion — as is any surgical procedure — isn’t pretty,’’ McMahon said. ‘‘It’s bloody. It’s real. But you have to transcend that.’’
And he refused to back down from aggressive opening remarks in which he called prosecutors ‘‘elitist’’ and ‘‘racist’’ for pursuing his client, who is black and served mostly poor, minority women.
Also see: Abortion and the echo of eugenics
Sadly, it was seen more as a way of controlling "inferior" black pregnancies rather than a women's rights issue.
‘‘We know why he was targeted,’’ McMahon said.
He's not Jewish.
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