It’s been five years since Kermit Gosnell’s conviction

Yesterday, as pro-life advocates around the United States celebrated Mother’s Day, Kermit Gosnell marked the five years of life as a convicted felon.

Gosnell, the notorious Philadelphia abortionist, was convicted on May 13, 2013 of three counts of murder, one count of manslaughter, and 211 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s abortion waiting period law. The murder counts were for the deaths of three infants known only as Baby A, Baby C, and Baby D. The manslaughter count was for the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese refugee who died after Gosnell administered her an overdose of sedatives during her abortion at 19 weeks.

Abortion advocates are sick of hearing about Gosnell. He was an outlier, they claim. Why are we still harping on this, five years later?

The truth is we have no idea if Gosnell was an outlier. He, like many others in states with abortion-friendly governors, operated without oversight for years. The reason he finally got caught? His over-prescription of narcotics caught the attention of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

That is part of a pattern. Time and time again, dangerous abortionists operate unimpeded for years, even decades, leaving a wide path of destruction in their wake. The abortion industry routinely refuses to police its own. To give just three examples (which are by no means the only ones):

• Michigan abortionist Alberto Hodari received a $10,000 slap on the wrist in the 2003 abortion death of Regina Johnson; horrifically botched an abortion in 2008; also in 2008, forced a woman to go through with an abortion after she had changed her mind; was cited for numerous health and safety violations in 2009; also in 2009, missed an ectopic pregnancy; and remained in practice until his retirement in 2013. 
• James Pendergraft‘s medical license was suspended four separate times, but each time, he was allowed to resume his butchery. Like Gosnell, his downfall only came when he was caught dealing drugs—but even now, a Florida abortion facility affiliated with Pendergraft continues to operate without a license. 
• Abortionist Steven Chase Brigham is so horrific, the vehemently pro-abortion blog RH Reality Check reported: “Since the early 1990s, public records show, Brigham’s patients have suffered emergency hysterectomies, severe bowel injuries, severed ureters, and sweeping lacerations to the uterus. Over a period of two decades, Brigham has been barred from practicing medicine in at least six states, sued by his landlords and business associates, and even served jail time for failing to pay taxes. And yet today, Brigham remains in control of a network of 15 abortion clinics in four states, and there appears little that most state authorities are able—or willing—to do about it.”

It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre—the brainchild of Harvey Karman, an eccentric California man without medical training who had served 2½ years in prison for performing illegal abortions in the 1950s. Karman teamed with a young Philadelphia doctor who offered to perform abortions on 15 impoverished women, each between four and six months pregnant, who were bused to the Philadelphia clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972.

What the women didn’t know was that they were guinea pigs for a device Karman had invented, which he called the “super coil.” He had tested it only on wartime rape victims in Bangladesh, where he had traveled under the sponsorship of the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

That young Philadelphia doctor, of course, was Gosnell. The way the “Super Coil” worked was that a bunch of razors were coated with a protective gel and wrapped into a ball before being placed into the mother’s uterus. After warming up in the body, the gel would melt and the razors would spring open, cutting up the baby.

Of the 15 mothers who underwent the procedure, nine suffered serious complications, including one who needed a hysterectomy. Others had a punctured uterus, hemorrhage, infections and retained fetal remains. Karman’s conviction (only for practicing medicine without a license) was overturned and Gosnell totally got away with it. 

Imagine if Gosnell’s license were revoked in 1972! Karnamaya Mongar, and tens of thousands of innocent children, might still be alive.

Justice delayed is justice denied. If health officials acted promptly to shut down abortionists upon their first offense, countless lives would be saved, and women would be spared injury and heartache.