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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
‘House of Horrors’ Doctor Considered ‘Pioneer in Abortion Field’
By Selected News Articles @ 6:38 PM :: 3883 Views :: Life

Gosnell in 1972: I perform abortions because ‘I am very concerned about the sanctity of life’

by Ben Johnson, LifeSiteNews.com

PHILADELPHIA, April 16, 2013  – Before he opened his “house of horrors” abortion clinic in which he allegedly killed two women and “hundreds” of newborns, Kermit Gosnell justified his participation in the abortion industry on unusual grounds: upholding the sanctity of life.

Kermit Gosnell said he acted out of reverence for life.

Kermit Gosnell said he acted out of reverence for life.

"As a physician, I am very concerned about the sanctity of life,” Gosnell told a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer during an October 1972 interview. “But it is for this precise reason that I provide abortions for women who want and need them."

He added that, because of his deep reverence for life, "I personally would never agree to have an abortion performed on any woman bearing my child."

Gosnell, who was considered a pioneer in the abortion industry, began performing abortions in New York City in the late 1960s and in Philadelphia in 1972, the year before the Supreme Court'e Roe v. Wade decision. The high court's rulings in Roe and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, would liberalize abortion law nationwide.

He performed 500 abortions a year in the early 1970s at Women's Medical Society facility in West Philadelphia. The Inquirer estimates Gosnell doubled that volume in the years before police raided the clinic on suspicion it was a “pill mill.” The practice earned him estimated $1.8 million a year.

  *   *   *   *   *

Gosnell behind ‘Mother’s Day Massacre’ over 40 years ago that injured 9 women

by Ben Johnson, LifeSiteNews.com

PHILADELPHIA-- Kermit Gosnell's history of injuring women through reckless abortion practices extends as far back as 1972, when he injured nine women by testing an experimental abortion device on them that caused plastic razor blades to lacerate their wombs. Even then, however, Gosnell escaped receiving any disciplinary action, with the state turning a blind eye, as it would for the next four decades as he operated his "House of Horrors."

According to the grand jury report that was compiled after Gosnell was arrested, in 1972 a group of 15 women in their second trimester were bused from Chicago to Gosnell's Philadelphia offices – on Mother's Day – for abortions. According to the grand jury, what unfolded became known as the “Mother's Day Massacre.”

Those women were not told the abortionist intended to use them as guinea pigs for a new device, an abortion “super-coil,” developed by a psychologist masquerading as a "doctor." Randy Hutchins, the only medical professional with a license to work in Gosnell's facility beside Kermit, related to the grand jury how Gosnell described the incident to him:

At the time that he agreed to do this, there was a device that he and a psychologist were working on that was supposed to be plastic – basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. All right. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature...the gel would melt and these 97 things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus, and the fetus would be expelled.

He added, “This was not something that was sanctioned by the FDA. This was just something that he decided – he and this guy decided they were going to use on these women.”

A film crew from New York caught the experiments on film.

Nine of the 15 women were injured. One required a hysterectomy. A joint federal-state investigation found other serious complications including hemorrhaging, infections, and portions of the unborn baby being left inside the uterus – still a common problem.

After the incident, Gosnell left Pennsylvania, spending some time in the Bahamas and New York.

According to Hutchins, Gosnell explained his reasons for leaving the state, saying, "If the State Board of Medicine hadn’t brought any charges against you, all right, and you were away long enough, you could come back and your license was still considered to be in good standing."

The grand jury report notes wryly, "Gosnell was apparently correct. The Pennsylvania Board of Medicine ignored his role in this grotesquely unsuccessful experiment, which seriously and permanently maimed several women."

It continues: "The Board overlooked Gosnell’s unprofessional conduct not only in the 1970s but for the next three decades, as he continued to employ unlicensed workers to practice medicine at his clinic, and as his patients continued to suffer serious injuries or worse during abortion procedures."

"Doctor" Harvey Karman.

The super-coil that Gosnell used had been developed by Harvey Karman, a Los Angeles psychologist who killed a woman in April 1955 after attempting to perform an abortion with a speculum and a nutcracker. After that incident he was charged with performing an illegal abortion, and spent some time in jail.

Karman (born Harvey Walters) tested the device on "hundreds" of women in Bangladesh, at the government's invitation. “Those women suffered a high rate of complications,” the grand jury report states. “Nonetheless, Karman brought his 'super coil' to Philadelphia, where he found an ally in Gosnell.”

Although Karman never earned a doctorate or M.D., after he was released from jail he began saying he had earned a doctorate from a non-existent European university and calling himself “doctor.” Like Gosnell, he was considered a pioneer of abortion rights.

“Doctor” Karman and health writer Merle Goldberg had developed a cannula that effectively aborted unborn babies in the first trimester. The “super-coil” was intended to be its second-trimester counterpart.

Upon his death in 2008 at the age of 84, the Los Angeles Times' obituary remembered Gosnell's one-time partner as the “Creator of device for safer abortions.”

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