The abortionist Kermit Gosnell died in Pennsylvania at age 85. Although his death occurred March 1, it was not made public until March 23. Gosnell was serving three life terms without possibility of parole for his involvement in the post-birth deaths of three babies. He was also convicted of third-degree murder in the death of a mother.

Gosnell came to notoriety in the period between 2010 to 2013, when a grand jury described what went on in what District Attorney Seth Williams dubbed the “house of horrors” Gosnell ran at 3801 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia. The report detailed a catalog of abuses, from unsanitary conditions such as blood-stained floors and recliners to a cat wandering the premises to Gosnell’s extensive collection of aborted babies preserved in jars in the cellar.

The paradox was that Gosnell was raided not for his abortuary but because Pennsylvania authorities and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency suspected him of running a “pill mill,” dispensing illegal prescriptions of drugs. Only when they arrived for a drug investigation did they discover the scope of Gosnell’s filthy abortion business.

That’s not to say the Keystone State should have been surprised. Gosnell had been in the abortion business since 1979. In addition to working in Philadelphia, Gosnell was also a typical carpetbagger, an abortionist who traveled from clinic to clinic which, in his career, included Delaware, Louisiana, and New York. Numerous reports were filed about Gosnell’s lax “standards” but, under pro-abortion governors Republican Tom Ridge and Democrat Ed Rendell, state regulators turned a blind eye to Gosnell’s “clinic.”

It should be noted that Gosnell was not an obstetrician or gynecologist.  He was a family practitioner who developed his own “specialty” in abortion.

And it was a unique Gosnell specialty.  He specialized in late-term abortions which, in theory, were regulated in Pennsylvania but for which, nevertheless, Kermit Gosnell developed a lucrative business. He also perfected his own unique “abortion procedure” : delivery of late-term babies followed by “snipping” with scissors of their spinal cords. There was testimony of more than 100 such killings, but three were sufficiently documented to convict the abortionist.

Sloppy medical care of the mothers was also a Gosnell clinical “standard.”  Perforated uteri and hemorrhages occurred.  One refugee woman from Bhutan died in 2009 from an anesthesia and painkiller overdose administered during her abortion (which was the grounds for Gosnell’s third-degree murder conviction).  Another woman had died in 2000 from a perforated uterus and sepsis following a Gosnell abortion, but that case was settled by a civil court judgment.

No doubt through most of his life Gosnell trafficked in his “care” for “poor women” in a poor Philadelphia neighborhood. It’s a favorite abortion trope: concern for the poor and minorities.  Only when the scope of Gosnell’s “house of horrors” became evident, however, did the abortion establishment disavow him.  The window that the Pennsylvania grand jury report opened into the abuses of unregulated abortion resulted in prompt efforts to turn Gosnell into a “non-person” in the abortion world.  His case was simply ignored and unreported; when forced to confront Gosnell’s abuses, Big Abortion simply declared that he was an “aberration” who did not represent their “mainstream.” The truth is he rendered their practices all too evident.

Pennsylvania still nominally had protective pro-life legislation in place, but, post-Bob Casey Sr., a combination of 15 years of “moderate Republican” Ridge and mainstream Democrat Rendell rendered those laws nugatory. Those horrors, however, were hardly confined to the Quaker State.

In the roughly 13 years since Gosnell’s final sentencing and imprisonment, the scandal of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in fetal body parts broke — and the organization remained protected.  Indeed, Democratic officials in California, including Kamala Harris, rose in defense not of the whistleblowers but of the abortionists, alleging that evidence of the actions was somehow “doctored” and untrustworthy. Kermit Gosnell keeping pickled baby feet in his Philadelphia basement was repugnant; Deborah Nucatola bargaining about the price of organs over cabernet was suddenly “protected.”

Gosnell was convicted for bringing late-term babies (whose abortions were prohibited under Pennsylvania law) to birth and then cutting their spinal cords, i.e. murder.  Ex-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam calmly described making a disabled newborn “comfortable” while conversing with parents about how to eliminate him, and Northam was defended.  On January 22, 2025, every Democrat then in the U.S. Senate – 47 of them – voted against legislation to declare that a baby born alive after abortion must be afforded medical care and be protected from infanticide.

Gosnell was no OB-GYN but a general practitioner. No problem: Off-label use of doctors and drugs (digoxin is a cardiac drug now used to stop fetal hearts in late-term abortions to prevent that pesky “born alive” problem) is no barrier to “abortion rights.” Consider the number of states willing to farm the performing of abortions out to nurses, midwives, and other “medical personnel,” telehealth medical exams for abortions, or remote dispensing of abortion drugs.

In those states where abortionists have rammed through state constitutional amendments to “protect” abortion post-Dobbs, the scope of those amendments, if they do not practically forbid effective regulation of abortionists, nevertheless chills and deters states from getting involved. Such amendments replicate the climate in 1995-2010 Pennsylvania: See no evil.  And, likewise post-Dobbs, in the spirit of protecting abortionists from accountability in pro-life states, there’s been a proliferation of “shield laws” in various states that (unconstitutionally I would argue) immunize doctors from legal liability in other states (even if they practice their trade there, by television or mail). Let’s admit what it is: immunity against answering for malpractice.

The abortion establishment would like to ignore Kermit Gosnell. Until the evening of March 24, America’s paper of record, the New York Times, source of “all the news that’s fit to print,” felt no need to record Gosnell’s demise.  When at last it did, it still crowned him as “imprisoned abortion doctor convicted of murders,” as if his homicides were but the “rallying cry of anti-abortion activists.” Does that mean the “abortion doctor” has been rehabilitated?  The truth is even if the abortion establishment won’t admit it, it acts a lot like Kermit Gosnell (with sometimes slightly better hygienic standards).

Speaking of a man’s passing, Jewish and Christian practice long counseled not to speak ill of the dead.  I hope that in his nearly decade and a half in jail, Kermit Gosnell may have repented his “career,” but I certainly have not heard that in any public forum. Thirty-one years ago, on March 25, 1995, Pope St. John Paul II spoke of the epic contemporary struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.” If one wants to see the ugly side of the latter, consider the life, times, and patrimony of the late Kermit Gosnell of 3801 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia.