When I was a child growing up on the Westside of Los Angeles, I remember a school field trip to the Simon Weisenthal Center, learning about the horrors of the Holocaust, and even hearing that day from two actual survivors from concentration camps. To this day, I remember feeling so sick to my stomach — reeling at the idea that there are some people who truly are capable of evil, despicable acts. Stunned by the fact that so many were willing to turn a blind eye – and look away while unspeakable horrors were committed against not only the Jewish people, my people, but against our entire civilization.
I bring up this unpleasant memory because last weekend I watched in muted horror a Fox News Channel special report, “See No Evil: The Kermit Gosnell Case.”
This Fox News investigation of the Philadelphia abortion doctor charged with murdering babies in his “House of Horrors” clinic reveals a macabre, revolting, and nauseating story that immediate brought emotions and bad feelings to every part of me — that I associate with that day at the Weisenthal Center those many years ago. It was a reminder that evil exists in even the most “civilized” of nations, and that good people must rise up to battle it wherever it should expose itself.
I have embedded the Fox News special below, for you to watch if you are interested. Obviously heed my warning — it is not for the feint of heart, or for those who would prefer to be vaguely aware of the fact that little infant children are the victims of cruel homicide in our “great nation” — but not actually see an example of it play out in front of your eyes.
Dr. William Gosnell
As I pen this column, a jury of twelve people are locked away, deliberating the fate of Kermit Gosnell, who is facing hundreds of charges, but among them four for first degree murder, and a third degree murder charge. This is a man who has spent his entire medical career performing abortion procedures, apparently “specializing” (if you can call it that) on late-term abortions. Gosnell had mastered the art of driving a scissors into the back the the neck of these unborn children (often after he had already removed them from their mother’s womb) and slicing their spinal chords, causing them an immediate, and painful death.
Here is an excerpt from a Washington Post blog post on the Gosnell case:
The grand jury report is full of horrific and gruesome details about the clinic that Gosnell ran for more than three decades. Patients were neglected; providers were not certified; and cats were allowed to roam and defecate in the clinic.
“The walls appeared to be urine-splattered,” the Philadelphia district attorney’s office found when it inspected the clinic in August 2010, months after it had closed that February. “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.”
Pennsylvania law bars abortions after 24 weeks’ gestation, at which point a fetus is considered to be likely viable outside the womb. Gosnell performed multiple abortions at 24.5 weeks, and the grand jury report found that many of those procedures underestimated the period of gestation. One Gosnell employee estimated that about 40 percent of the clinic’s abortions occurred after 24 weeks. Gosnell, the grand jury found, killed the babies born alive in his clinic.
“Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them,” the report said. “He didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord.”
Is there a pit in your stomach yet?
Here’s another factoid for you — among the charges facing Gosnell is corrupting a minor. You see, he hired a 15-year-old high school student, who worked 50 hours a week and, according to the Grand Jury report, was “exposed to the full horrors of Gosnell’s practice.”
I could go on with more and more detail, but it would make me sick to write it, and make you ill to read it.
There is now amount of prayer that can save the soul of Kermit Gosnell — a truly evil person.
I note that the Gosnell trial has not received nearly the national focus that it should be receiving from the media. Given the seemingly endless, voracious appetite in the media for covering sensational crimes — especially violent crime resulting in the deaths of many people — most of the media has been conspicuously absent.
It is a terrible statement about America that we are a country that has decriminalized abortion. Life is precious, and the primary function of government is the protection of innocent, human life. One can only hope that the spectacularly gruesome trial of Dr. Gosnell will have an impact on public opinion on the abortion issue. And I pray that as a result of it, fewer expectant mothers — especially those late in their pregnancy — will seek to end the life of their unborn child.