By Cheryl Sullenger
From the time the very first Google News alert popped up in my inbox in February 2010, I knew the Kermit Gosnell case was going to be big.
That alert from a local Philadelphia news station indicated an abortion facility had been raided by police. That kind of thing doesn’t happen very often, so it meant that something hugely significant was happening
Then came the clinic shut-down order from the health department, followed by searches of Gosnell’s home. His medical licenses were suspended in Pennsylvania and Delaware, where he worked at two disreputable abortion facilities that soon closed.
But Gosnell wasn’t immediately arrested. After the raid, Gosnell began to appear in the news giving several very revealing interviews about his abortion business and how he regarded his urban practice that focused on poor women of color. It became obvious that he viewed himself as a hero to women in those interviews. This wasn’t just spin for the benefit of the television audience. He seemed to truly believe it.
I was intrigued.
Then came the arrests nearly a year after that first raid, and along with it a lengthy grand jury report with very detailed and often shocking accounts of the crimes Gosnell and his eight co-defendants had committed that involved illegal late-term abortions, the unlicensed practice of medicine, the death of Karnamaya Mongar from a sedation overdose, and – most shocking of all – the evidence that very late-term babies were born alive on a routine basis then murdered with a pair of scissors to the back of the neck.
Gosnell called it snipping, and he assured his staff that this was a completely normal way to terminate the life of a living, breathing baby.
Of course, it was anything but normal. I knew I had to attend the trial, if there was one. All those clinic workers were expected to testify after making plea deals that guaranteed leniency in exchange for cooperation with the prosecution.
This was a rare opportunity to hear directly from these witnesses of abortion abuses first hand, on the record, and under oath.
The trial certainly did not disappoint. In a courtroom filled with grisly abortion equipment and filthy furnishings brought in from what had become known as Gosnell’s “House of Horrors,” an incredible drama played out.
There was testimony from unlicensed workers posing as doctors, a high school girl that acted as the anesthesiologist using a home-made chart she constructed from an old text book, and clinic workers with mental health issues who ran amok over women who were drugged into stupors when Gosnell wasn’t around.
A Crime Scene Unit officer described Gosnell’s clinic as filthy and cluttered, and presented photographs to prove it. Cats that lived in the clinic relieved themselves where ever they wanted. Disposable plastic surgical implements were used and reused to the point there they were actually spreading sexually transmitted parasites from one woman to another.
The frozen remains of babies were found in a refrigerator. Photos showed in court revealed the nearly mummified remains of aborted babies, each with a gaping wound in the back of their necks.
And then there were the specimen jars of severed baby feet that had been discovered in a cupboard by police. While they were discussed in court, they were never presented to the jury.
There is little wonder that a movie was produced about the Gosnell trial. Although I have never seen it, I do encourage others to watch it because it gives a rare glimpse into the seedy world of so-called “safe and legal” abortion.
But it is important to remember that as bad as his abortion business was, Gosnell is not alone.
That’s why I wrote a book about my experiences attending and covering the Gosnell trial. I noticed over and over that practices found at his “House of Horrors” could be found at abortion facilities across the country.
I have documented cases of other squalid abortion facilities, other cases of unqualified workers, other incidents of patient deaths due to incompetence, other cases of criminal late-term abortions, other incidents of abortion related-fraud, and – perhaps most tragically – other cases of babies born alive during abortions and intentionally killed by the abortionist.
I tell those stories in my book, The Trial of Kermit Gosnell, to illustrate the point that Gosnell was not an outlier. Abortion in America is not always done in sparkling sanitary facilities by caring competent doctors. Quite the contrary! My research has shown that more often than not, abortions are done in facilities that cannot pass a health and safety inspection, where untrained workers don’t know how to properly sterilize surgical equipment, and where the abortionists are often incompetent and sloppy.
I invite you to read The Trial of Kermit Gosnell and learn the truth about what really happens in our abortion facilities. It can be a disturbing and even frightening thought to consider that other abortionists in the mold of Gosnell continue to lurk within abortion facilities around the country today. I hope my book will inform and motivate readers to commit their energies to ending abortion and its horrors in our nation.

Get The Trial of Kermit Gosnell on Amazon.com.