Abortion has always been a controversy, and it is one I’m very passionate about. I won’t spend this article digging into the details of my beliefs and offending as many people as I can. But I will say I believe life begins at conception. An unborn baby should have the right to live and with the exception of extreme cases like rape, which I still haven’t made a concrete decision about, I think abortion is murder.
But regardless of what anyone believes, whether he or she is pro-life or pro-choice, I think everyone can agree on the fact that Dr. Kermit Gosnell deserves to endure the worst kind of punishment available to mankind.
Gosnell, 69, is a doctor from Philadelphia who performed abortions for hundreds of women in his office called the Women’s Medical Society. He, along with his wife and eight other people were arrested recently, with four facing murder charges. Gosnell faces eight counts of murder. One of which is of a woman named Karnamaya Mongar, 41, who died from an overdose of anesthetics after she received an abortion from Gosnell. He is also charged with the deaths of seven other babies that were born alive during illegal late-term abortions.
In a news article from the CBS Philadelphia affiliate, the District Attorney Seth Williams said in spite of abortion being a hot topic, the law is the law.
“As district attorney, my job is to carry out the law. A doctor who knowingly and systematically mistreats female patients, to the point that one of them dies in his so-called ‘care,’ commits murder under the law. A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law,” Williams said. 


Yes, you read that correctly: severing spinal cords of living babies. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in Gosnell’s terror.
Gosnell was a family practitioner — he was never registered as an OB/GYN.
The horror depicted in his clinic after it was searched is almost too much to bear. There were reports of bottles of aborted fetuses throughout the office. There were jars of baby feet lining his shelves. According to a grand jury report, “There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets.”
This place sounds like something out of a horror movie. Only it’s much worse than that: this is real life.
Who would go to this monster?
Minors went to him. He gave them abortions without parental consent, circumventing laws. Mongar, a victim of his malpractice, was a refugee who recently arrived in the U.S. from Nepal. She couldn’t read English.
According to DA Williams’ statement in the article, Gosnell made approximately $1.8 million dollars last year alone performing abortions.
First of all, I can’t believe Gosnell had a clinic like that as long as he did. I can’t believe this monster made almost $2 million by mistreating women and murdering babies.
I cannot begin to fathom how Gosnell could take the lives of newborn babies by covering up their deaths as simply “abortions.”
I hope justice is served with this man. To be honest, my heart breaks for him. But as badly as I don’t want to assume, I bet it’s safe to say Gosnell only saw $1.8 million, not jars full of feet of the babies he murdered, or the life of the woman he took.
Mary Chase Breedlove is a sophomore majoring in communication. She can be contacted at [email protected].