Editor’s note. The following comes from the grand jury report that investigated what Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams called Gosnell’s “House of Horrors.” The full report can be read at www.phila.gov/districtattorney/PDFs/GrandJuryWomensMedical.pdf
Killing really had to be part of Gosnell’s plan. His method for performing late-term abortions was to induce labor and delivery of intact fetuses, and he specialized in patients who were well beyond 24 weeks. Thus, the birth of live, viable babies was a natural and predictable consequence. The subsequent slitting of spinal cords, without any consideration for the babies’ viability, was an integral part of what Gosnell’s employees called his “ standard procedure.”
Steve Massof described this “standard procedure.” It required the clinic’s unequipped staff to manage a clinic full of sedated patients who were thrown into full labor, and then to “deal” with whatever precipitated, including live babies – all while the doctor was at home, or jogging, or working at a clinic in Wilmington. In particular, Massof described what Gosnell expected him to do when babies precipitated in the afternoon and evening before the doctor arrived:
A: As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Gosnell would dilate the cervix to make room for passage of the products. And with the Cytotec, softening the cervix, the outlet of the uterus, well, mother nature would take its course. Every woman is different.
Q: What would happen?
A: Well, the fetus would precipitate.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Oh, come right out, right out. Just you know, I would be called, somebody would call me and at that point what I would have to do is , I’d have to go and tend the patient.
Q: How would you do that? What would you do?
A: A – well, my first – my first reaction would be is at that point it depended sometimes it happened in the waiting room, sometimes it happened in the bathroom because, you know, a woman would be pushing in the bathroom. Sometimes, you know, it happened everywhere in the clinic. So what I would do is, I’d make sure that when – if the fetus precipitated, the cord was cut. Also, a standard procedure, the cervical spine was cut, as well as make sure that there wasn’t bleeding or, in other words, the placenta came down and that’s the way – we insured less blood would be lost.
Q: How often did this happen?
A: more times than I really care to remember. I would have to say every week it would happen to at least 50 percent of the patients.
Q: fifty percent of the time?
A: Yeah, easy, easy. That – you know, and that is how, you know, and that’s what would happen.
Q: You said it was standard procedure to cut the – first to cut the umbilical cord?
A: Yes.
Q: That’s from the mother or how is that attached?
A: Well that is from the mother to the fetus.
Q: And where would it be? Would it still be – the placenta would still be in the mother’s uterus?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay
A: Yes. And so I would cut the attachment and you know, then the cervical portion of the spine at that point. Those were the larger patients.
Q: so you said that was standard procedure. What do you mean when you say standard procedure?
A: Well, that’s – that was his standard procedure.
Q: When you say his, do you mean Gosnell?
A: Yes.
Q: Did he show you how to do that?
A: Yes, he did.
Q: When did he show you how to do that?
A: He showed me how to do that maybe 2004, sometime within a year I started working there, that is what he did during his [second-trimester] procedures.
Tina Baldwin corroborated that this was Gosnell’s standard procedure. She explained that after a fetus was expelled, Gosnell “used to go ahead and do the suction in the back of the neck.” She saw this “hundreds” of times. Gosnell told her that this was “part of the demise.”
Gosnell’s technique of aborting pregnancies by inducing labor and delivery, while unnecessarily painful for the women, did not itself constitute a crime. What made his procedure criminal was that he routinely performed these abortions past the 24-week limit prescribed by law. Not only was this a crime in itself, it also meant that he was regularly delivering babies who had a reasonable chance of survival.
Except Gosnell would not give them that chance. Pennsylvania law requires physicians to provide customary care for living babies outside the womb. Gosnell chose instead to slit their necks and store their bodies in various household containers, as if they were trash.
Although the Grand Jury learned that there is some difference of opinion as to the earliest point of viability, the experts who appeared before the Grand Jury all agreed that, by 24 weeks, organs are sufficiently developed that prognosis for survival is good. These babies can sometimes breathe on their own, though many require assistance. When a woman delivers at 24 weeks or later in a responsible medical setting, such assistance is provided, and resuscitation of the baby is routine. Indeed, a doctor’s failure to provide assistance constitutes infanticide under Pennsylvania law.
Gosnell’s intent to never resuscitate was obvious from his failure to employ even minimally qualified personnel or to have the equipment necessary to save the lives of newborn infants. The policy he instituted and carries out was not to try to revive live, viable babies. It was to kill them.
Gosnell severed spinal cords and suctioned and crushed skulls after the babies were fully delivered.
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