By Dave Andrusko
A little over two years and two months ago, the Associated Press led its stomach-turning story (“DA: West Philadelphia abortion doctor killed 7 babies with scissors”) with these four paragraphs.
“WEST PHILADELPHIA – January 19, 2011 — A doctor whose abortion clinic was described as a filthy, foul-smelling ‘house of horrors’ that was overlooked by regulators for years was charged Wednesday with murder, accused of delivering seven babies alive and then using scissors to kill them.
“Dr. Kermit Gosnell was also charged with murder in the death of a woman who suffered an overdose of painkillers while awaiting an abortion.
“In a nearly 300-page grand jury report filled with ghastly, stomach-turning detail, prosecutors said Pennsylvania regulators ignored complaints of barbaric conditions at Gosnell’s clinic, which catered to poor, immigrant and minority women in the city’s impoverished West Philadelphia section.
Prosecutors called the case a ‘complete regulatory collapse.’ ‘Pennsylvania is not a Third World country,’ the district attorney’s office declared in the report. ‘There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago.’”
Now a jury of 12 women and men will decide the fate of the 72-year-old Gosnell who is charged with seven counts of first degree murder and one count of third degree murder. In theory, although highly unlikely in practice, Gosnell could face the death penalty if convicted of first degree murder