Spine Snipping

Death in the City of Brotherly Love

by Robert A. Waters

The gruesome events that took place at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society in Philadelphia are beyond belief.  Dr. Kermit Gosnell, owner of the clinic, is on trial for seven counts of first degree murder, one count of third-degree murder, and numerous other charges.  Eight of his employees have already pleaded guilty to killing babies and related crimes.

In addition to “snipping” the spines of living infants that escaped his cocktail of poisons, Dr. Gosnell is accused of murdering Karnamaya Mongar in a botched abortion.  His hospital of horrors reeked with decomposing body parts, cat urine and feces, as well as mold-covered walls.  On shelves surrounding the abortion table, Dr. Gosnell allegedly stored the severed feet of babies in specimen jars.  A grand jury report labled the clinic a “baby charnel house.”  Inside the room where once-secret horrors unfolded, police found broken medical equipment, unsterilized surgical implements, bloody blankets, and blood-stained furniture.

The actual numbers of babies murdered in the clinic will never be known because investigators found few records.

Adrienne Moton, who pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, testified that she had snipped the necks of at least ten viable, living infants.  Some had lived up to thirty minutes before succumbing to her scissors.  In graphic testimony, Moton claimed that Dr. Gosnell taught her the procedure, and that he performed it himself on many occasions.

The grand jury report corroborates Moton’s testimony.  Gosnell, it reads, “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, [and] eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord.”

If Dr. Gosnell is found guilty, he faces the death penalty, like those sad children who never had a chance.