My letter to Kermit Gosnell's attorney

Dear Mr. McMahon:

As an abortion researcher, I am nearly as astonished as Kermit Gosnell is himself that he is being so vigorously prosecuted for what he was doing. Anybody who has paid close attention to abortion practice in America knows that Gosnell’s crimes were far from unique, and that he would have had absolutely no reason to believe that he would be on trial for his life.

Yes, to the average layman, it’s glaringly obvious that the things that went on in that clinic were appalling and inexcusable. But Kermit Gosnell was not an ordinary layman. He was part of the inner workings of abortion in America, and they operate in a different world.

Perhaps the best way to explain this to a jury would be to recall the Millgram Experiment, in which ordinary volunteers administered what they were made to believe were fatal electric shocks to other volunteers. The presence of an authority figure reassuring the participants that their actions were acceptable overrode ordinary compassion and common sense.

The moral authorities to whom Kermit Gosnell would look were doing nothing but reassuring him of the justice of his practices:

The National Abortion Federation, a highly respected professional organization, was providing patients to him for illegal third trimester abortions. They treated him as if he was a poor woman’s George Tiller – who himself blatantly performed illegal third-trimester abortions and was able to do so with impunity because of an abortion-rights political atmosphere. If George Tiller, caught dead to rights performing elective third-trimester abortions, was “a national treasure”, performing “vital reproductive health care services”, how could Gosnell believe himself to be anything else? Our current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, was Governor of Kansas when her own Attorney General was trying to prosecute Tiller; her appointees rallied around and protected him, just as they are currently protecting a Planned Parenthood facility that brazenly performs illegal third-trimester abortions.

The President of the United States himself, when he was a State Senator in Illinois, went on record as believing that babies born alive during abortions are not to be afforded the same care and treatment as other babies, because to do so would unduly “burden” the woman and her doctor.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, when looking into the harvesting of fetal tissues and organs for sale at an abortion clinic in Overland Park, Kansas, pressed no charges, in spite of credible witness testimony – substantiated with records – that viable infants were being aborted and their body parts sold. The witness reported, very credibly, that the doctor would often present him with a live baby – up to 30 weeks of gestation – and that when the witness protested that the baby was alive, the doctor would drown it in saline or snap its neck. (Note that even abortion opponent Mark Crutcher had become so calloused by extended exposure to the abortion mentality that he instructed Dean Alberty to return to the clinic and keep gathering evidence, rater than instructing him that the next time he was presented wit a live baby he should call 911 and save the child's life -- a decision Crutcher's staff also evidently went along with.)

Law enforcement around the country have treated infants born alive during abortions as not worthy of protection, and have hesitated to press charges even with multiple witnesses and a child’s corpse as evidence. Even when such cases are prosecuted, as in the William Waddill case in California, prosecutors are often unable to get a conviction because just one strong abortion rights advocate on the jury can result in a hung jury.

Planned Parenthood has been caught on tape admitting that they sometimes have live births – but that the mothers need not fear being saddled with a live baby to take home. And, as I mentioned before, they have been caught doing illegal third trimester abortions, counting on Sebelius cronies to go on the offensive for them.

Every authority figure in Kermit Gosnell’s moral universe held that the right to abortion was absolute, and that to so much as question the woman’s commitment to going through with the procedure was “condescending” and evil. And this holding of the right to abortion as absolute extended past the birth of the child, as long as the effort to end the child’s life began while he or she was still in the uterus.

I can provide you with an abundance of examples of filthy abortion mills, unqualified staff administering general anesthesia, live babies being killed or left to die, and patients killed by carelessness, which didn’t even shut down a clinic temporarily or result in the loss of a medical license. That Kermit Gosnell is to be tried for his life for doing what our society has relegated to being entirely at his own discretion is inexcusable.

If you would like more examples of why Kermit Gosnell should not be singled out for punishment, feel free to contact me at xxxxxxxx.

Sincerely,

Christina Dunigan

UPDATE:

I got tis comment from a reporter I forwarded the letter to:

I think your own website (and other pro-life sites) show that Gosnell’s crimes are unique and beyond the pale

.

She's not been looking closely at abortion for very long.

I'll grant that Lawson Akpolonu wasn't stabbing live-born babies in the neck, but he was raping his patients in his filthy mill, where instruments were "sterilized" by sloshing them around in dishwater. Gosnell limited his sexual abuse to just photographing the patients' genitals -- deplorable but far from unique.

Raymond Showery drowned or suffocated babies rather than "snipping" them, and his abortion hospital evidently wasn't as filthy as Gosnell's, but I'd say he didn't lag too far behind.

Benjamin P. Thamrong was another Gosnell-esque abortionist, operating under the auspices of -- you guessed it -- the National Abortion Federation. His fridge put him in a league of his own: It contained: expired medications, three syringes, a dirty carving knife, a specimen envelope containing a tube of blood collected 22 days earlier, one mostly-eaten salad, one partially-empty bottle each of Coca Cola and Sunkist soda, a bottle of Yoo Hoo, a half-full bottle of Riuniti peach wine, and a quarter-full bottle of Asti Spumanti with a paper towel stuffed in the top.

Dr. Joe Bills Reynolds was a jack of all trades, doing a variety of elective surgeries, including abortions, in his filthy clinic. Reynolds' anesthetist, age 60, had originally been hired as a janitor, and an untrained orderly was acting as his nurse. The operating room was littered with dirty cups and papers. Reynolds tried to collect $500,000 on his wife's life insurance after she bled to death after he opened 25-inch incision, ostensibly for liposuction, on September 7, 1989. Reynolds performed a fatal abortion on Gaylene Golden.

Ladies First Medical Center was temporarily closed by the board of health in 1989 "after finding dead cockroaches in a sterilizing room, unsanitary surgical gloves, expired drugs and bloody equipment." Inspectors also noted bloody equipment, supposedly sterile gauze pads that were stained yellow, "hundreds of medicines and medical supplies that had expired years ago and other medications with no expiration date." The Health Secretary described Ladies First as "just filthy, the worst I've seen." One of the inspectors told a reporter, "I spent years inspecting clinics in prisons all through Florida. And we wouldn't have waited a minute to close a prison clinic long before it ever looked this bad. I couldn't believe how bad this place was." Ladies First was re-opened under stipulations. (Miami Herald 10-2-89, 1-4-90)

National Abortion Federation member Midtown Hospital was closed after a lengthy legal battle. The Department of Human Resources said the facility was "overcrowded, understaffed and dirty" and showed "a complete disregard for, or the inability to care for, the health and safety of its patients." Illegal third trimester abortions were being done, with patients expelling the babies onto the floor and into toilets. Maintenance and housekeeping failures included an opened window within feet of an operating room table, a hole in an operating room wall, dirty floors, stained ceiling tiles and peeling paint. Live born babies left to die. Patients left lying on the floor. One inspector testified, "There was enough dirt and debris to scoop up with my hands in various places in the facility." Another inspector noted, "I went into the ladies bathroom in the main waiting room area and I observed brown covered stains splattered on the wall behind the commode. There was no soap in the bathroom and there was not a faucet handle on the hot water tap."

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. The media act as if Gosnell was a turd in a swimming pool. He wasn't. He was a turd in a cesspool. Which comes as no surprise to anybody who has really been paying attention to abortion practice in America.