Section IV: The Intentional Killing of Viable Babies
Gosnell left dozens of damaged women in his wake. His reckless treatment left
them infected, sterilized, permanently maimed, close to death, and, in at least two cases,
dead. Their injuries and deaths resulted directly from Gosnell’s utter disregard for their
health and safety. However, if their fate was entirely foreseeable, it was not necessarily
the product of specific intent to kill. The same cannot be said of untold numbers of babies
– not fetuses in the womb, but live babies, born outside their mothers – whose brief lives
ended in Gosnell’s filthy facility. The doctor, or his employees acting at his direction,
deliberately killed them as part of the normal course of business.
Gosnell and his staff severed the spinal cords of viable, moving, breathing babies
who were born alive.
Surgical abortions in Pennsylvania, performed up to 24 weeks of gestational age,
are legal. Killing living babies outside the womb is not. The neonatologist who testified
before the Grand Jury defined “born alive.” According to this expert witness, the federal
Born-Alive Infants Protection Act defines a human as “somebody who’s been completely
expelled from the mother and has either a heartbeat, pulsating cord, or is moving.”
Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act defines “born alive” similarly, but adds breathing
and brain wave activity as indicators of life. 18 Pa.C.S. §3203.