Abortion Doctor Charged with 8 Murders.

Supposed to kill them IN utero, asshole.

Quote :

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to visit or inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them, District Attorney Seth Williams said.

Are you fucking kidding me? You don't inspect doctors offices unless they have criminal charges against them? What the hell is wrong with you people???

Quote :

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Efficient. Except for how DANGEROUS THAT IS.

Quote :

Williams said patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society.

Authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic last year and stumbled on what Williams called a “house of horrors.”

“There were bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

So out of what I'm assuming is lack of options for these minority women, as well as lack of money, they have to go to this barbaric fucker.

Quote :

Workers, some of whom were also charged with murder, were untrained and unlicensed, including a high-school student who performed anesthesia with potentially lethal narcotics, Williams said.

I'll take that as a yes.

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

Quote :

“There were bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

Holy. Fuck. I can't even imagine the thought process behind this. "It looks cool!"? "I can't throw them out, I might need them some day"? "They give me that je-ne-sais-quoi that all the other mad scientists have"?

Some people are so fucked up in their heads. This is so awful.

*shudder*

ZoZo wrote:

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

This. So fucking much.

The thing with the feet sounds more like something from a B horror movie than real life. I predict there will be a 'based on true events' story within five years.

Law & Order will probably do it within six months.

ZoZo wrote:

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

Those are available in Philadelphia.

Penguin wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

Those are available in Philadelphia.

Still got a mandatory waiting period. That impedes abortion access. While better than many US states, things like that impact on women's ability to access abortion services. That's why such laws are passed.

Penguin wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

Those are available in Philadelphia.

Still got a mandatory waiting period. That impedes abortion access. While better than many US states, things like that impact on women's ability to access abortion services. That's why such laws are passed.

God. I'm reading this while sitting next to pictures of my adorable niece, and this makes me want to scream, cry, and cuddle her, in that order.

ZoZo wrote:

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

Don't forget "affordable". What do you want to bet these women went to him because they were too poor to for a better doctor?

So let me get this straight (based on the arguments on this I've seen elsewhere):

- an unqualified doctor (you can't perform abortions if you aren't a board-certified OB-GYN)
- using unqualified staff
- performing procedures that even the most generous readings of the law still consider illegal
- in a facility I wouldn't take my dog to

is somehow an indictment against the legal procedures out there?

Am I missing something? When you have a situation like this, it's an indictment against the regulatory system, against the lax procedures many medical licensing boards use, and an indictment against the doctor who really did decide to play God.

It's not an indictment against the other doctors who do follow the rules. When a cardiac surgeon screws up and a patient dies on the table, it doesn't put the entire specialty on trial.

Spotts1701 wrote:

It's not an indictment against the other doctors who do follow the rules. When a cardiac surgeon screws up and a patient dies on the table, it doesn't put the entire specialty on trial.

Not to put feminism wank back on the table, but I find that anything to do with marriage, sex, babies, pregnancy, and abortion etc will always be on trial- to me it seems like an extended form of (your sin here) shaming.

"Abortions wouldn't be necessary if these women would keep it in their pants."

"Unexpected pregnancies are for stupid, poor women who are too slutty to use condoms."

"These poor foreigns are just breeding all over the place, as long as they stop it somehow, I don't care."

"Abortion doctors are feeding a system of unplanned birthing, they're advocates for killing babies as birth control."

"It's not the Christian way- they're sinners, and this is what you get when you sin."

No one really *says* them, but these are the connotations surrounding the practice, and it hurts the procedure's reputation which is very important. People look for any reason to shoot down controversial things and play up the one fuck-up as indicative of all. It's not fair, but it's what is.

Jesus. wrote:

Spotts1701 wrote:

It's not an indictment against the other doctors who do follow the rules. When a cardiac surgeon screws up and a patient dies on the table, it doesn't put the entire specialty on trial.

Not to put feminism wank back on the table, but I find that anything to do with marriage, sex, babies, pregnancy, and abortion etc will always be on trial- to me it seems like an extended form of (your sin here) shaming.

"Abortions wouldn't be necessary if these women would keep it in their pants."

"Unexpected pregnancies are for stupid, poor women who are too slutty to use condoms."

"These poor foreigns are just breeding all over the place, as long as they stop it somehow, I don't care."

"Abortion doctors are feeding a system of unplanned birthing, they're advocates for killing babies as birth control."

"It's not the Christian way- they're sinners, and this is what you get when you sin."

No one really *says* them, but these are the connotations surrounding the practice, and it hurts the procedure's reputation which is very important. People look for any reason to shoot down controversial things and play up the one fuck-up as indicative of all. It's not fair, but it's what is.

Sad but, alas, very true. This almost sounds like how it used to be done before abortion was made legal. Most of the doctors who did it were back-alley butchers who'd lost their medical licenses, or unlicensed 'nurses' with little to no training. The chance of them botching the procedure was high, since a good many of them drank (they also used the booze as a sterilizing agent and to anesthesize the patient). Most women waited till they were starting to show before they actually had the procedure done. So it wasn't that unusual for the babies to sometimes be born alive and be killed, and the chance of the mother dying, or developing an infection that would leave her sterile, was astronomically high.

And in most cases, the women who went to these butchers were poor, minorities or girls who'd been raped. The well-to-do had doctors who would 'take care of their little problem,' with no one being any the wiser; though even that was an iffy prospect.

This is the 'good old days' the Christian Right is so nostalgic for, BTW.

Spotts1701 wrote:

So let me get this straight (based on the arguments on this I've seen elsewhere):

- an unqualified doctor (you can't perform abortions if you aren't a board-certified OB-GYN)
- using unqualified staff
- performing procedures that even the most generous readings of the law still consider illegal
- in a facility I wouldn't take my dog to

is somehow an indictment against the legal procedures out there?

Am I missing something? When you have a situation like this, it's an indictment against the regulatory system, against the lax procedures many medical licensing boards use, and an indictment against the doctor who really did decide to play God.

It's not an indictment against the other doctors who do follow the rules. When a cardiac surgeon screws up and a patient dies on the table, it doesn't put the entire specialty on trial.

It's relevant because this didn't happen in a vacuum. You've made pointed out that the doctor and staff were unqualified and fairly evil.

What you've completely missed out on is the women they were doing this to. Did you stop to wonder why they went there, so late? You vaguely mentioned that you wouldn't take your dog to the facility, but that's about it. Why would these women need to go to this facility and undergo these procedures?

To answer that, the system is relevant. The fact that US abortion rights are slowly being chipped away is relevant.

It's a lot more complicated than a case of "bad person does bad things".

rachel wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Fucking hell. This is why we need to fight for access to legal, safe, early abortions for women, so shit like this doesn't ever need to happen.

Don't forget "affordable". What do you want to bet these women went to him because they were too poor to for a better doctor?

Word. Absolutely. This cannot be forgotten.

ZoZo wrote:

What you've completely missed out on is the women they were doing this to. Did you stop to wonder why they went there, so late? You vaguely mentioned that you wouldn't take your dog to the facility, but that's about it. Why would these women need to go to this facility and undergo these procedures?

To answer that, the system is relevant. The fact that US abortion rights are slowly being chipped away is relevant.

It's a lot more complicated than a case of "bad person does bad things".

Except that any form of abortion past the 24-week mark is barely legal - most of it still is illegal, and you won't find many pro-choice advocates arguing to change that aspect of the law except in the most extreme circumstances (life of the mother, etc.).

From what I read, this Mengele wannabe didn't have any trouble lying to these women as to how far along they were, and ran parallel clinics (a cleaner one for women he feared would complain, and a dirty one for women he knew wouldn't). And the most likely reason they went there in the first place is that there aren't a lot of options out there - the George Tiller murder put a deep chill on a specialty that many doctors already avoid because they don't like the idea of having to hire armed guards just to go to work.

And I don't see this case as that complicated - any pro-life advocate who argues that legal abortions should be lumped in with this quack's house of horrors needs to point out that this is what you would get if Roe and its progeny were to fade away.

You hit it on the head there: there aren't a lot of options out there for women.

Which is why, as we've originally said, we need to fight to improve access. It's not enough that abortion is legal. It needs to be accessible and affordable, or women end up going to psychos like this.

My only contribution to this thread will be this link: the Grand Jury report on their findings. It's 281 pages in Adobe, so it's quite a hefty read, but definitely worth looking through.

PLEASE NOTE: That link contains graphic and disturbing images, presented right along with the text. If you read it, there's really no way to avoid seeing the pictures, so be careful.

Quote :

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

*cringes* I was born in the fucking sixth month of gestation...

Just, that is a horrible, horrible way to enter the world. Poor babies.

I admit I fully don't understand the individual situations here, but it seems that these births/botched abortions/whateverthehelltheywere didn't kill the mothers and obviously didn't kill the babies (immediately... though a baby born in the sixth month would need to be hooked up to a ventilator very quickly after birth), so why not help the babies live? Why kill them? Especially in such a horrid way.

Malganis wrote:

Quote :

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

*cringes* I was born in the fucking sixth month of gestation...

Just, that is a horrible, horrible way to enter the world. Poor babies.

I admit I fully don't understand the individual situations here, but it seems that these births/botched abortions/whateverthehelltheywere didn't kill the mothers and obviously didn't kill the babies (immediately... though a baby born in the sixth month would need to be hooked up to a ventilator very quickly after birth), so why not help the babies live? Why kill them? Especially in such a horrid way.

Because the idea is that the mothers want the baby gone. It's fundamentally an abortion clinic, and this guy was doing what he thought was an abortion, I suppose. It's sick, but to him the ends justify the means.

Selections from the report:

Clinic

Quote :

Former employees, including Latosha Lewis and Kareema Cross, testified to the abhorrent conditions when the clinic was operating. They described the odor that struck one immediately upon entering – a mix of smells emanating from the cloudy fish tank where the turtles were fed crushed clams and baby formula; and from boxes of medical waste that sat around for weeks at a time, leaking blood, whenever Gosnell failed to pay the bill to the disposal company. They described blood-splattered floors, and blood-stained chairs in which patients waited for and then recovered from abortions. Even the stirrups on the procedure table were often caked with dried blood that was not cleaned off between procedures. There were cat feces and hair throughout the facility, including in the two procedure rooms. Gosnell, they said, kept two cats at the facility (until one died) and let them roam freely. The cats not only defecated everywhere, they were infested with fleas. They slept on beds in the facility when patients were not using them.

Kareema Cross testified about the procedure rooms: “The rooms were dirty. Blood everywhere. Dust everywhere. Nothing was clean.” The bathrooms, according to Lewis, were cleaned just once a week despite the fact that patients were vomiting in the sinks and delivering babies in the toilets.

Souvenirs

Quote :

Gosnell engaged in other practices with patients that defy any medical or even common-sense explanation. Steven Massof testified that the doctor would often photograph women’s genitalia before he performed their abortions. According to Massof, Gosnell told him that he was photographing women from Liberia and other African countries who had undergone clitorodectomies, the surgical removal of the clitoris.

Massof said that Gosnell took pictures of women, and of fetuses, with a digital camera and with his phone. Gosnell told Massof that he was taking the photographs for “his teaching,” but Massof said that he was unaware that Gosnell taught anywhere. Gosnell would often show the photographs to Massof and exclaim about the skill of the surgeons who had sewn the women’s labia together, leaving only a small opening to allow menstrual flow.

Another of the doctor’s practices that defies explanation was his habit of cutting the feet off of aborted fetuses and saving them in specimen jars in the clinic. Kareema Cross showed the Grand Jury photographs she had taken in 2008 of a closet where Gosnell stored jars containing severed feet. During the February 2010 raid, investigators were shocked to see a row of jars on a clinic shelf containing fetal parts. Ashley Baldwin testified that she saw about 30 such jars.

History

Quote :

There was a device that he and a psychologist were working on that was supposed to be plastic – basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. All right. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, it would then – the gel would melt and these 97 things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus, and the fetus would be expelled. The problem was that they never tested it. They didn’t test it on any animals. They never did any – any – any other human trials. This was not something that was sanctioned by the FDA. This was just something that he decided – he and this guy decided they were going to use on these women.

Gosnell, according to Hutchins, inserted the super coils into the women’s uteruses. The event was filmed and later shown on a New York City educational television program. The Inquirer reported the results of this human experimentation as follows:

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health subsequently did an investigation that detailed serious complications suffered by nine of the 15 women, including one who needed a hysterectomy. The complications included a punctured uterus, hemorrhage, infections, and retained fetal remains. The CDC researchers recommended strict controls on any future testing of the device. . . . Karman spent two years in court battles in Philadelphia. He was convicted of practicing medicine without a license, but a Common Pleas Court judge overturned the conviction in 1974, saying then-District Attorney Arlen Specter had failed to show which women Karman had treated. Gosnell – who testified that Karman had done an “innocuous” part of the procedures but not fetal extractions – was not charged with anything.

The Pennsylvania Board of Medicine ignored his role in this grotesquely unsuccessful experiment, which seriously and permanently maimed several women. The Board overlooked Gosnell’s unprofessional conduct not only in the 1970s but for the next three decades, as he continued to employ unlicensed workers to practice medicine at his clinic, and as his patients continued to suffer serious injuries or worse during abortion procedures

There is no such thing as an isolated incident.

Quote :

There was a device that he and a psychologist were working on that was supposed to be plastic – basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. All right. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, it would then – the gel would melt and these 97 things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus, and the fetus would be expelled.

What the fuck ever lead these people to believe that using a plastic version of the razor-ball from Phantasm to perform abortions would ever be a good idea. Just... that is not going to work. I can look at that and say "that is not going to work". Just... fuuuuuuuuck.

I just don't know what to say...

I could ask why these women weren't able to use condoms or birth control or why they couldn't just put their children up for adoption, but I know I would get my head bitten off about how some women couldn't afford those things.

But how much does it cost to correct the mistakes made by these chop-shop doctors who seem to take pleasure in snuffing out a life just as it begins?

Let the wank commence...

I feel sick.