An abortion doctor who was serving a life sentence in prison for murdering three babies died in a Pennsylvania hospital earlier this month, prison officials announced on Monday.
Dr Kermit Gosnell, whose high-profile baby murder case shocked the nation in the early 2010s, died on March 1 in a hospital outside the prison system at the age of 85. His cause of death was not made public.
The abortionist’s vile West Philadelphia clinic, which police said reeked of ‘cat feces, formaldehyde and human urine’ when they raided it in 2010, was where Gosnell killed at least three newborns by sticking scissors into the backs of their necks.
Former employees testified to witnessing the doctor deliver babies who were still whimpering and moving before severing their spines with the scissors, a grotesque process that he dubbed ‘snipping.’
Gosnell, a father of six, was convicted in 2013 on charges of murdering three babies, as well as involuntary manslaughter of a patient. He had originally been charged with eight counts of murder but some of the cases were dropped.
The doctor was also convicted of various other crimes, including violations of Pennsylvania’s abortion laws. Even when he was not murdering newborns, he would routinely perform abortions past the state’s 24-week limit.
Gosnell had been moved around the prison system over the nearly 13 years since he was convicted and was most recently incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution-Smithfield, which is about 60 miles south of Pittsburgh.
The doctor, who was called ‘America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer’ in a 2017 book by authors Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAteer, kept a collection of fetuses and their body parts in his ‘house of horrors’ clinic.
When police raided the location, they found a total of 47 fetuses, some of them wrapped in bags and kept in a freezer.
They also found body parts kept in jars, including tiny feet that he had severed and preserved.
Detectives said they believed that the twisted abortionist would even dump the remains of fetuses into the waters near his home in Brigantine, New Jersey, where they were devoured by crabs.
He and two other men were spotted emptying bags from a dock, but by the time divers searched the waters, they found nothing.
Gosnell’s deeply disturbing practices came to light after Philadelphia police began investigating claims that he was selling prescriptions that fueled the city’s illegal trade in opioid painkillers.
During their extensive probe, they stumbled across the case of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, an immigrant from Bhutan, who had died during an abortion.
Mongar had been driven through the night to Gosnell’s clinic because she was past the 14-week limit for abortions in her home state of Virginia.
In February 2010, police searched the clinic and discovered a scene straight out of a horror movie.
In their book, McElhinney and McAteer described what police found: ‘Everything was covered in cat hair — the chairs, blankets, and all the surfaces. Investigators saw semi-conscious women moaning in the waiting room,’ the authors wrote.
‘The clinic’s two surgical procedure rooms were filthy and unsanitary… Instruments were not sterile. Equipment was outdated and rusty.
‘Women recovering from abortions sat on dirty recliners covered with bloodstained blankets that employees said they “tried” to have cleaned weekly,’ the authors continued.
‘Some of the workers pointed to the stains on the walls. Those were where patients would urinate because the toilets didn’t work. Later, at trial, it was revealed that the toilets were often backed up with fetal remains.’
Gosnell’s shocking case made him the poster boy for anti-abortionists trying to limit or outlaw the procedure.
Pro-choice supporters also used the case as an example of why women should have better access to safe and legal abortions, so they would not have to receive dangerous care from unqualified individuals.
Following the disgraced doctor’s trial, it came to light that Pennsylvania authorities had failed to conduct proper inspections of all the state’s abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell’s location was raided.
The case led to two of the state’s top health officials getting fired, and Pennsylvania overhauled its rules for abortion clinics and made them more stringent.
