Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor who was convicted in 2013 of killing three babies who were born alive in a case that made nationwide headlines, has died. He was 85.
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokesperson Maria Bivens said Gosnell died March 1 at a hospital outside the prison system. He had most recently been incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution-Smithfield, about 60 miles south of Pittsburgh. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Gosnell was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder of the newborns as well as involuntary manslaughter in the drug overdose death of a patient who had undergone an abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic known as the “house of horrors.”
Nearly a decade before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Gosnell case became a flashpoint in the nationwide debate over abortion.
Former employees testified the doctor — who presented himself as a helper of poor and desperate women — routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by “snipping” their spines, as he referred to it.
Conditions at his clinic became known during a 2010 investigation of prescription drug trafficking. Investigators described a foul-smelling place with bags and bottles of fetuses and jars of body parts, along with bloodstained furniture and dirty medical instruments.
Commonwealth authorities had failed to conduct routine inspections of all its abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell’s facility was raided. In the scandal’s aftermath, two top state health officials were fired and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.
In addition to the state murder charges, Gosnell pleaded guilty to 12 federal drug counts, including conspiracy to distribute pain medication and illegal distribution of oxycodone — earning an additional sentence of 30 years behind bars.
As part of the plea, the doctor copped to writing fraudulent prescriptions, as well as selling scripts for more than 1.4 million doses of drugs including Percocet, OxyContin and Xanax.
With Post wires
