Two workers at Kermit Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” plead guilty today to third-degree murder in two deaths at the West Philadelphia abortion clinic where seven babies were allegedly aborted alive and viable only to die when their spines were severed with surgical scissors, and where a 41-year old woman died from a drug overdose.
Andrea Moton, who had no formal training, assisted with the abortions and reportedly cut the spinal cords of aborted babies. She admitted her involvement in the death of one baby, according to the Associated Press (AP). Moton was to be tried for murder, conspiracy, racketeering and corruption related to the death of a viable baby born alive at the clinic.
Sherry West pled guilty in the death of Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese immigrant, who died in 2009 after receiving an overdose of anesthesia. West also had no formal training.
Prosecutors said that West performed ultrasound exams, administered anesthesia, and monitored patients in the recovery room. “She was present when patient Karnamaya Mongar died on Feb. 18, a grand jury report investigating the incident found,” according to the AP’s MaryClaire Dale.
West was to be “charged with third-degree murder, drug delivery causing death, illegally performing an abortion after 24 weeks, conspiracy, participating in a corrupt organization, evidence tampering and other charges,” Dale reported. Both women also pled guilty to related charges, “including taking part in a corrupt organization.”
Gosnell, who is charged with eight counts of murder, has pled not guilty.
The atrocities at the Women’s Medical Society were document in excruciating detail in a 261-report issued by a Philadelphia Grand Jury. Prosecutors charged the defendants in January.
Earlier this year over the space of several weeks, we ran excerpts from the Grand Jury Report, which described what went on in what Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams called a “House of Horrors.”
Authorities reportedly found blood everywhere, cat excrement, the bodies of unborn babies crammed into milk jugs, and “Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets,” according to the grand jury report. “All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff—long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic—and staff members could not accurately state what medications or dosages they had administered to the waiting patients.”
What follows is the introduction to the full Grand Jury report, which can be found at http://1.usa.gov/vy8qQH, and a portion of Section Four
Section I: Overview
This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy—and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels—and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it. …
Murder in plain sight
With abortion, as with prescriptions, Gosnell’s approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low—and break the law. That was his competitive edge.
… At the Women’s Medical Society, the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash. Too young? No problem. Didn’t want to wait? Gosnell provided same-day service.
The real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere—because they were too pregnant.
… When you perform late-term “abortions” by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women’s Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. 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. He called that “snipping.”
Over the years, there were hundreds of “snippings.” Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the “snipping” was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all. …
Section IV: The Intentional Killing of Viable Babies
Gosnell left dozens of damaged women in his wake. His reckless treatment left them infected, sterilized, permanently maimed, close to death, and, in at least two cases, dead. Their injuries and deaths resulted directly from Gosnell’s utter disregard for their health and safety. However, if their fate was entirely foreseeable, it was not necessarily the product of specific intent to kill. The same cannot be said of untold numbers of babies – not fetuses in the womb, but live babies, born outside their mothers – whose brief lives ended in Gosnell’s filthy facility. The doctor, or his employees acting at his direction, deliberately killed them as part of the normal course of business. Gosnell and his staff severed the spinal cords of viable, moving, breathing babies who were born alive.
Surgical abortions in Pennsylvania, performed up to 24 weeks of gestational age, are legal. Killing living babies outside the womb in not. The neonatologist who testified before the Grand Jury defined “born alive.” According to his expert witness, the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act defines a human as “somebody who’s been completely expelled from the mother and has either a heartbeat, pulsating cord, or is moving.” Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act defines “born alive” similarly, but adds breathing and brain wave activity as indicators of life. 18 Pa.C.S. § 3203.
Gosnell’s staff testified about scores of gruesome killings of such born-alive infants carried out mainly by Gosnell, but also by employees Steve Massof, Lynda Williams, and Adrienne Moton. These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them. They were considered “standard procedure.” Yet some of the slaughtered were so fully formed, so much like babies that should be dressed and taken home, that even clinic employees who were accustomed to the practice were shocked.
Baby Boy A
One such baby was a boy born in July 2008 to 17-year-old we will call “Sue.” Sue first met Gosnell at the Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, an abortion clinic in Wilmington, Delaware, where Gosnell worked one day a week. The girl was accompanied by her great aunt, who had agreed to pay for the procedure, and who testified before the Grand Jury.
After an ultrasound was performed on Sue, Gosnell told the aunt that the girl’s pregnancy was further along than she had originally told him, and that, therefore, the procedure would cost more than the $1,500 that had been agreed upon; it would now cost $2,500. (Gosnell normally charged $1,625 for 23-24 week abortions.) The aunt paid Gosnell in cash at the Delaware clinic. He inserted laminaria, gave Sue pills to begin labor, and instructed her to be at the Women’s medical Center in Philadelphia at 9:00 the next morning.
She arrived with her aunt at 9:00 a.m. and did not leave the clinic until almost 11:00 that night. An ultrasound conducted by Kareema Cross recorded a gestational age of 29.4 weeks. Cross testified that the girl appeared to be seven or eight months pregnant. Cross said that, during 13 plus hours, the girl was given a large amount of Cytotec to induce labor and delivery. Sue complained of pain and was heavily sedated. According to Cross, the girl was left to labor for hours and hours. Eventually, she gave birth to a large baby boy. Cross estimated that the baby was 18 to 19 inches long. She said he was nearly the size of her own six pound, six ounce, newborn daughter.
After the baby was expelled, Cross noticed that he was breathing, though not for long. After about 10 to 20 seconds, while the mother was asleep, “the doctor just slit the neck,” said Cross. Gosnell put the boy’s body in a shoebox. Cross described the baby as so big that his feet and arms hung over the sides of the container.
Cross said that she saw the baby move after his neck was cut, and after the doctor placed it in the shoebox.
Gosnell told her, “it’s the baby’s reflexes. It’s not really moving.”
The neonatologist testified that what Gosnell told his people was absolutely false. If a baby moves, it is alive.
Equally troubling, it feels a “tremendous amount of pain” when its spinal cord is severed. So, the fact that Baby Boy A. continued to move after his spinal cord was cut with scissors means that he did not die instantly. Maybe the cord was not completely severed. In any case, his few moments of life were spent in excruciating pain.
Cross was not the only one startled by the size and maturity of Baby Boy A. Adrienne Moton and Ashley Baldwin, along with Cross, took photographs because they knew this was a baby that could and should have lived. Cross explained:
Q. Why did you all take a photograph of this baby?
A. Because it was big and it was wrong and we knew it.
We knew something was wrong.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
