Gosnell’s ‘House of Horrors’ Not Aberration

Abortion proponents are saying that Dr. Kermit Gosnell is an aberration and that his “house of horrors” is not common among abortion clinics.

A Philadelphia jury began deliberating on Tuesday without reaching a verdict in the murder trial of the 72-year-old Gosnell. The jury is set to keep weighing murder charges in the deaths of five people—a patient and four so-called viable babies who were allegedly born alive and then murdered by the good doctor.

Gosnell is also accused of performing abortions after Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit and other charges. The jury as of Wednesday had only asked questions related to the theft charges against Gosnell’s co-defendant.

At first, the abortion lobby was all too content to keep Gosnell’s story out of the media. But now, as more news agencies are beginning to report on the case, the strategy appears to have turned to one of displaying pseudo concern for the real victims—the mothers and babies, who were allegedly butchered under the guise of a safe medical procedure.

In a recent article, Eric Ferrero, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, insisted that “Gosnell ran a criminal enterprise, not a healthcare facility, and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

What Ferrero failed to mention is that the local Planned Parenthood chapter of Southwest Pennsylvania surely knew about the problems at the Gosnell clinic—or should have known—since women complained to the chapter after coming from Gosnell’s clinic, according to LifeNews.

Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said, “This is a peek into the back-alley days, the pre-Roe v. Wade days. It’s what too many women experienced when we didn’t provide access to safe and clean abortion services.” Hogue was referring to the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that struck down state laws restricting abortion.

The only problem with Hogue’s logic is that it is happing now, in 2013, 40 years after Roe vs. Wade and abortions are now supposed to be safe and rare, neither of which is true.

Abortions are not safe, nor are they rare, and the fact that Gosnell took action to make sure the babies did die if they survived the procedure is also not rare. The only thing that is rare is that Dr. Gosnell is standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom by a jury of his peers.

Many in the abortion industry maintain that if the baby was supposed to die during the abortion procedure then it’s perfectly okay for the same baby to be killed or allowed to die should he or she be born alive. 

Gosnell is certainly not the only one. He’s not an outlier. He’s not unusual in the abortion industry.

He’s just the only one with high visibility who’s been caught and prosecuted thus far. There is documentation of so many others. What will happen to them remains to be seen. 

Will government agencies continue to ignore the warning signs? Will they continue to ignore laws that are already in place in many states? Will they refuse to enforce inspection requirements.

The abortion industry also insists that women wouln’t turn to providers like Gosnell if  only we had fewer restrictions on abortion. 

The situation with Gosnell occurred because laws were not enforced, and Gosnell was left to self-regulate himself.

Women went to Gosnell because he was known to do late-term abortions. Women were referred to him by other abortion providers because they knew this. 

What Planned Parenthood and others would have us believe is that if they lifted the gestation limit on abortion to say 35 weeks, 6 days everything would be fine.

Alveda C. King grew up in the civil rights movement led by her uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She is a pastoral associate and director of African-American outreach for Priests for Life and Gospel of Life Ministries. Her family home in Birmingham, Ala., was bombed, as was her father’s church office in Louisville, Ky. Alveda herself was jailed during the open housing movement.