Part 2 Justice

 

Part Two: Gosnell Found Guilty of three-counts of first-degree murder, one count of involuntary Manslaughter; sentencing phase begins next week

 

By Dave Andrusko

Megyn Kelly, of Fox News

Could the coincidence have been any more ironic? NRL News Today has provided blanket coverage of abortionist Kermit Gosnell for years and no sooner had we heard the jury might be close to delivering a verdict than our Internet went down.
But in the short time the Internet demons wreaked their havoc, it gave me a chance to watch Fox News “America Live” host Megyn Kelly, who is pregnant with her third child, as she courageously struggled to be objective when discussing the charges against Gosnell. NRL News Today has written about them so many times you might think the horror would diminish. It didn’t, and it surely hadn’t for Kelly.

The most important consideration, of course, is that Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first-degree murder for babies who were aborted alive and then murdered when Gosnell plunged surgical scissors into their necks and severed their spinal cords; and one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Karnamaya Mongar who died in 2009 from a massive overdose of Demerol administered by Gosnell’s unlicensed, untrained staff.

But the jury was not done. It found Gosnell guilty of 21 counts of performing abortion past the legal limit in Pennsylvania (24 weeks) and 221 out of 227 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s informed consent requirement–the state’s 24-hour waiting period before an abortion can be performed.
Faced with a 261-page Grand Jury report and the testimony of a bevy of former Gosnell employees, defense attorney Jack McMahon had only one option. Argue that the babies were already dead because of an injection of a drug—Digoxin—and that slitting the babies’ necks was just to ensure “fetal demise.” Since I was not in attendance at the trial, I never got a satisfactory explanation why, if Gosnell was so sure the babies were already dead, he also slit their spinal cords.
But McMahon no doubt counted on the inability of the medical examiner to say definitively that any of the infants were alive following the abortion (in no small part because their bodies had long stored in a clinic freezer). But Assistant District Attorney Ed Cameron dismantled that canard.
He told the jury that Gosnell not always use the drug and sometimes it did not work. According to O’Sullivan

“Staffers testified that Gosnell struggled to properly administer the drug and that ultrasounds showed some babies’ hearts still were beating at the time of the abortion.

“It did not matter if the babies that were delivered were ‘viable’ or would have survived long, Cameron said. If they were born alive — and if even one had breathing, motion or a heart beat indicating life — it was Gosnell’s duty to care for them or at least comfort them.

“He did neither, Cameron said.”

In addition, one of the babies Gosnell is accused of murdering by slitting their neck had no traces of Digoxin in its system, Cameron said.
In his story on the verdict, Sean O’Sullivan of the (Wilmington, Delaware) News Journal brought out an underreported fact:

“Witnesses described an institution where employees, many with personal or financial problems that left them few options, were paid meager wages off the books to perform tasks for which they were unlicensed and untrained, such as taking ultrasounds, administering anesthetics and other prescription drugs orally or intravenously, and assisting in abortions.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joseph A. Slobodzian provided some of the best and most consistent reporting. In his story on the verdict, Slobodzian offered background about how this all came about rarely found in the “mainstream media.” It is an amazingly revealing insight into Gosnell. He wrote

“For Gosnell, the journey leading to the verdict began about 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2010. After working the day at an abortion clinic in Wilmington, Del., Gosnell returned to West Philadelphia to begin a series of abortions that typically took him and his staff into the early morning hours of the following day.

“Both arms full with bags containing his dinner and fresh clams for his pet turtles, Gosnell was cradling a cellphone on his shoulder, talking to his third wife Pearl, when he was accosted by agents from a federal-state task force with a search warrant for the clinic.

“The agents were investigating the sale of prescriptions for oxycodone and other addictive narcotic medicines and they suspected the scripts were coming from Women’s Medical Society.

“Agents testified at trial that they picked the evening for their raid because they wanted to avoid patients during their search. Instead, as Gosnell calmly led them into the rambling three-story brick building, the agents encountered Gosnell’s staff and a half-dozen women sedated and in advanced labor waiting for Gosnell to perform abortions.

“But as they searched for evidence in the drug investigation, agents found other more-shocking evidence: unsanitary conditions including blood and body fluids on the floor and furniture, the odor of a pet store permeating the building from Gosnell’s cat, fish and turtles, and the remains of aborted fetuses and fetal body parts stored around the clinic.

“Within a week, state health officials had suspended Gosnell’s medical license and three months later moved to permanently close the 30-year-old clinic. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office launched its own grand jury investigation of whether babies born alive were killed in the clinic and whether Gosnell violated the state’s Abortion Control Act.”

As reported in Part One, the sentencing phase for Gosnell begins a week from tomorrow. Whether the prosecution follows through on its promise to seek the death penalty or agrees to something lesser in exchange for Gosnell agreeing not to appeal the verdict was (and will remain) a topic of considerable speculation.
In Part Three, NRL News Today will look at how the Abortion Establishment responded to the verdict. Hint: shamelessly.

Source: NRLC News