When senseless murders or mass murders occur across the country, parents mourn, towns hold memorials, victims receive funerals.
Those aware of the atrocities committed by Kermit Gosnell, who is on trial now, charged with delivering living late term babies after botching the abortions, then murdering those babies after they are born, are starting to see more and more reports and coverage.
We have discussed the media's lack of reporting, have discussed the Grand Jury report, the excuses, justifications and explanations from media outlets on their lack of coverage, the lack of inspections and regulations on abortion clinics like Gosnell's "Women's Medical Society."
What we haven't seen is any type of a memorial for those murdered infants, a nation mourning them as they did the victims of Sandy Hook. The Sandy Hook victims had names, parents that loved them, and a nation that mourned.
After the murders at Sandy Hook, Barack Obama stood up and declared something had to be done, then subsequently demanded gun laws, gun control, a national conversation. The only mention of the of Gosnell's victims came from White House spokesperson Jay Carney, calling the trial "unsettling," and declared the White House “does not and cannot take a position on an ongoing trial,” Carney said, in the administration's first statements on the issue.
Gosnell's victims didn't have names.Witness accounts tell of potentially hundreds of Gosnell victims, but the trial and Grand Jury report only discuss, in detail, 7 of them who are simply referred to as "Baby A-G."
(Grand Jury Report embedded here)
Meet Baby Boy A:
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 out 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. * * *
I’m not sure who took the picture first, but when we seen this baby, it was – it was a shock to us because I never seen a baby that big that he had done. So it was – I knew something was wrong because everything, like you can see everything, the hair, eyes, everything. And I never seen for any other procedure that he did, I never seen any like that.
The neonatologist viewed a photograph of Baby Boy A. Based on the baby’s size, hairline, muscle mass, subcutaneous tissue, well-developed scrotum, and other characteristics, the doctor opined that the boy was at least 32 weeks, if not more, in gestational age.
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| Baby Boy A |
Gosnell simply noted the baby boy’s size by joking, as he often did after delivering a large baby. According to Cross, the doctor said: “This baby is big enough to walk around with me or walk me to the bus stop.”
Meet Baby Boy B:
When investigators raided the clinic in February 2010, they sent the fetuses they discovered to the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office. The medical examiner concluded that two of them – aborted at 26 and 28 weeks – were viable, and another, aborted at 22 weeks, was possibly viable. The 28-week fetus, a male (Baby Boy B) had a surgical incision on the back of the neck, which penetrated the first and second vertebrae.The 22-week fetus, female, had a similar incision.
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| Baby Boy B- Found at the clinic in a one-gallon spring water bottle |
Baby C:
When Massof left the clinic in 2008, Lynda Williams took over the job of cutting baby’s necks when Gosnell was not there.Cross saw Williams slit the neck of a baby (“Baby C”) who had been moving and breathing for approximately twenty minutes. Gosnell had delivered the baby and put it on a counter while he suctioned the placenta from the mother. Williams called Cross over to look at the baby because it was breathing and moving its arms when Williams pulled on them. After playing with the baby, Williams slit its neck.
Baby D:
Kareema Cross testified that a woman had delivered this large baby into a toilet before Gosnell arrived at work for the night. Cross said that the baby was moving and looked like it was swimming. Moton reached into the toilet, got the baby out, and cut its neck.
Cross said the baby was between 10 and 15 inches long and had a head the size of a “big pancake.” Cross could not pinpoint the year that this happened, but testified that this killing occurred while Steven Massof was still working at the clinic. (Massof left in July 2008.) Moton herself admitted to Agent Huff that she had severed the spinal cords of living babies. According to her statement, Gosnell trained and instructed her to do this. The charts that the neonatology expert provided us indicate that the size of Baby D was consistent with viability.
Baby E:
“Baby E,” a baby that Ashley Baldwin heard crying before Gosnell killed it. Ashley testified that she heard the baby cry in the large procedure room, the one used for later-term abortions, and saw the baby moving. She said Lynda Williams summoned Dr. Gosnell, who then went into the procedure room where the baby was.
Kareema Cross testified that Ashley had called her over, and that she heard this baby “whine” once while Dr. Gosnell was alone in the procedure room with the baby. Ashley confirmed that Gosnell was the only person in the room with Baby E. When he came out of the room, the baby was dead. Gosnell put the baby’s remains in a waste bin. Ashley saw an incision in Baby’s E’s neck.
Baby F:
Massof testified that he was assisting Gosnell with an abortion when he saw the baby’s leg “jerk and move.” The neonatology expert testified about the significance of movement in determining gestational age, and explained that the muscle tone and neurological development for a baby to pull back a limb exist “definitely in the bigger preemies like above, you know, 25, 26, 27 weekers.” After Massof observed this movement of Baby F outside the mother’s womb, Gosnell severed the baby’s spine with scissors. We believe that the evidence supports charges of murder and conspiracy against Gosnell and Massof.
Baby G:
Steven Massof also testified about the killing of a baby whom he observed breathing. We refer to this baby as “Baby G.” Massof said that he was again helping Gosnell in the large procedure room when he saw the fully expelled baby exhibit what he called “a respiratory excursion,” meaning a breath. According to Massof, Gosnell then “snipped the cervical part of the vertebra.”
It is explained in the Grand Jury report why the Gosnell and his employees are not being tried for the murder of the other babies:
And these were not even the worst cases. Gosnell made little effort to hide his illegal abortion practice. But there were some, “the really big ones,” that even he was afraid to perform in front of others. These abortions were scheduled for Sundays, a day when the clinic was closed and none of the regular employees were present. Only one person was allowed to assist with these special cases – Gosnell’s wife. The files for these patients were not kept at the office; Gosnell took them home with him and disposed of them. We may never know the details of these cases. We do know, however, that, during the rest of the week, Gosnell routinely aborted and killed babi es in the sixth and seventh month of pregnancy. The Sunday babies must have been bigger still.
Anyone who has managed to read this far, if they have a beating heart in their chest and any compassion, will remember these babies, helpless to defend themselves, who were brutally and painfully murdered.
They deserve to be remembered and mourned for, just as any other murder victim is.
RIP Babies A-G.