Dr. Kermit Gosnell, MD: Is Philadelphia’s horrific murder trial overshadowed?

In an earlier entry entitled “They kill babies… and women, too. West Philadelpia MD indicted on 8 counts murder” posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 I wrote in part that “The atrocities of this ONE incident make Nazi madman “scientist” Josef Mengele and madman/mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer almost pale by comparison. Body parts and bodies in freezers and refrigerators, corpse mutilation… all in the “City of Brotherly Love.””

Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial will be starting it’s sixth week, and with testimony such as:
Defense attorney Jack McMahon (heatedly): “After Digoxen and having its neck cut, you’re telling the jury that you saw the baby moving?”
Kareema Cross, 28-year-old employee from 2005 to 2009: “Yes, it was.”
– it doesn’t look good for the former physician, or for his untrained, unlicensed staff.

The indictment against him may be downloaded and read here:
http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf

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Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story

The dead babies. The exploited women. The racism. The numerous governmental failures. It is thoroughly newsworthy.

By Conor Friedersdorf

Please note: This post contains graphic descriptions and imagery.

A procedure room at the Women’s Medical Society. / Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office

The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “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,” it states. “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.”Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate’s coverage includes testimony as grisly as you’d expect. “An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions,” the channel reports. “Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.’ He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, ‘it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'”One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, “Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell’s idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania.”

Until Thursday, I wasn’t aware of this story. It has generated sparse coverage in the national media, and while it’s been mentioned in RSS feeds to which I subscribe, I skip past most news items. I still consume a tremendous amount of journalism. Yet had I been asked at a trivia night about the identity of Kermit Gosnell, I would’ve been stumped and helplessly guessed a green Muppet. Then I saw Kirsten Power’s USA Today column. She makes a powerful, persuasive case that the Gosnell trial ought to be getting a lot more attention in the national press than it is getting.

The media criticism angle interests me. But I agree that the story has been undercovered, and I happen to be a working journalist, so I’ll begin by telling the rest of the story for its own sake. Only then will I explain why I think it deserves more coverage than it has gotten, although it ought to be self-evident by the time I’m done distilling the grand jury’s allegations. Grand juries aren’t infallible. This version of events hasn’t been proven in a court of law. But journalists routinely treat accounts given by police, prosecutors and grand juries as at least plausible if not proven. Try to decide, as you hear the state’s side of the case, whether you think it is credible, and if so, whether the possibility that some or all this happened demands massive journalistic scrutiny.

* * *

On February 18, 2010, the FBI raided the “Women’s Medical Society,” entering its offices about 8:30 p.m. Agents expected to find evidence that it was illegally selling prescription drugs. On entering, they quickly realized something else was amiss. In the grand jury report’s telling, “There was blood on the floor. A stench of

John Edwards, and How to Indict the Ham Sandwich

John Edwards, U.S. Senator, North Carolina (D), official portrait

In legal circles – in which I do not travel – there is a common saying (one which can be found on Wikipedia – the so-called “fount of all knowledge” – please excuse me while I find the vomitorium) – which says  “A good prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.^” 

It is that aphorism – an aphorism, which by the way, is defined as “a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation” – upon which I begin this entry.

John Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina, Democrat, and former presidential candidate, was discovered to have fathered a child out of wedlock while he was married to his now-late former wife Elizabeth, whom was also an attorney, and whom died of a recurrence of cancer.

Fearing public censure, “handlers” for former Senator Edwards’ presidential campaign sought to

They kill babies… and women, too. West Philadelpia MD indicted on 8 counts murder

The atrocities of this ONE incident make Nazi madman “scientist” Josef Mengele and madman/mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer almost pale by comparison. Body parts and bodies in freezers and refrigerators, corpse mutilation… all in the “City of Brotherly Love.” Read on.

Black Children are an Endangered Species - Modern American Genocide - (Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times)

The majority of abortions are performed in ethnic minority communities.
A 30-year study by the pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute revealed that “Black women account for 37% of abortions, non-Hispanic White women for 34%, Hispanic women 22% and women of other races 8%.”
Minorities account for 67% of all abortions, while those same non-White populations account for about 1/3 (33%) of the American population.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 57.4% of the abortions performed in Georgia in 2006 were performed on African-American women, but Blacks make up only 30% of Georgia’s population. Nationwide, the pattern is similarly stacked against Black babies — Black women have approximately 37% of all abortions each year, while Blacks make up only 13% of the national population.
Genocide?
You decide.
(Photo by Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times)

DA: West Philadelphia abortion doctor killed 7 babies with scissors

Updated at 0214 on 19 January 2011

By PATRICK WALTERS and MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

WEST PHILADELPHIA – January 19, 2011 (WPVI) — A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Hot Damn! UAHBomber Amy Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, is a freak, too!

Okay, let’s get this straight. If you’re “emo” or “goth,” you’re a damn freak. You’re mentally unstable. You need psychiatric help. Period. Let somebody help you… PLEASE!!

Now, onto the news.

Guess what?! Amy Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, has publicly said he met Amy at a Dungeons and Dragons meeting. Yeah, great. What’s that like? Saying, ‘I met my wife – who used to be a man – at a bisexual swinger’s sex-swap party’? It’s just plain messed up. Period.

True, Amy Bishop, PhD, aka “the UAHBomber,” was busted for going postal at the