The Jury in the landmark case against late term abortionist
Kermit Gosnell yesterday delivered their verdicts following 10 days of
deliberation. The Jury found Gosnell guilty on 3 counts of 1st degree murder
and one count of 3rd degree murder. Gosnell was also convicted on many of the
lesser remaining charges including racketeering, performing illegal abortions
after 24 weeks, failing to observe Pennsylvania's 24-hour waiting period before
an abortion can be performed and endangering a child's welfare for employing a
15-year old in the procedure area.
The court heard during the trial how Gosnell and his
unqualified staff persuaded vulnerable women seeking abortions to give birth to
live babies, whom they killed by "snipping" their spinal cords with
scissors.
"It was literally a beheading," Stephen Massof, an
unlicensed medical school graduate who worked at the clinic, testified.
"It is separating the brain from the body."
The case generated widespread revulsion in America and throughout the
world despite the fact that the US media failed to adequately report it.
Gosnell now awaits sentencing and it has been reported that
the prosecutor may seek the death penalty.
The convictions were based upon the horrendous and extensive
evidence presented by the prosecution through 54 witnesses during more than a
month-long trial that concluded with Gosnell's defense attorney offering no
witnesses or other evidence in his defense, except to argue contrary to the
evidence, that the babies killed by Gosnell or his associates were already dead
when they were born. The prosecution's case was that the case was, "the most extraordinary
hype and exaggeration in the history of the criminal justice system"
and was solely based upon the "political climate of racism and elitism." The defense made a critical misstep in arguing that the neck
snipping was to alleviate any pain that the brain might detect, indicating that
there may have been brain function together with the sensation of pain in these babies
before their spinal cords were cut. Pennsylvania law says brain wave activity
after birth is evidence of being "alive."
This is a timely reminder if ever it was needed, of the ugly
reality of abortion, at a time when the Irish Government is determined to
introduce legislation permitting it in Ireland. We can no longer keep our heads
in the sand and refuse to look at what really happens in abortion clinics.
Butchering babies in the womb is just as horrific and cruel as it is babies who
are alive. The only difference is you can see and touch the babies aborted
alive while they are being killed.
