Gosnell trial revealed horrors of abortion, media silence

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Mengele. Kevorkian. Now Gosnell can be added to that awful list. Men who perverted the idea that medicine should indeed “first do no harm.”

Dr. Kermit Gosnell was on trial for his life for the first degree murder of four babies born as a result of a failed late-term abortion. The American media that had resisted covering the gruesome case were also on trial.

Both were found guilty.

Followers of the Philadelphia case weren’t surprised with either result. 

The facts in the Gosnell case read more like a demon’s resume than a description of a man sworn to heal.

Gosnell is a monster. He was initially charged “with killing seven babies born alive," along with Karnamaya Mongar a newly-arrived, 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan. 

Prosecutors say Gosnell's staff gave the 90-pound woman a lethal dose of anesthesia and painkillers during a 2009 abortion,” according to the Associated Press. Some charges were dropped and he was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder, as well as “211 counts of failing to comply with a state law that requires a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion is performed.”

The facts read more like a demon’s resume than a description of a man sworn to heal. One former worker testified that she saw “a late-term baby who survived an abortion ‘swimming’ in a toilet and ‘trying to get out.’” 

Another child reportedly was big enough “that Gosnell joked it could have walked to the bus.” Child after child had life ended as scissors snipped spinal cords, decapitating them.

Yet this “house of horrors” would never have seen the light of day if the American media had their way. 

Major outlets ignored the story until conservative anger called them out. The Media Research Center (where I work), Kirsten Powers, Fox News Channel, some in Congress and an army of conservatives on Twitter provided part of the pressure.

Even then, news coverage was paltry – far less than outlets would devote to any story du jour from Manti Te’o and his invisible girlfriend to endless accounts of the Jodi Arias trial.

ABC was the worst. It took that network a couple years after the arrest and 56 straight days of trial to acknowledge Gosnell existed. ABC found more than three hours of air time for other court cases during that time, but waited until Gosnell was convicted before it ever admitted he was even on trial.

“Nightline” co-anchor Terry Moran inadvertently admitted the network’s failure during the May 13 “World News with Diane Sawyer” segment. “For two months, jurors heard often shocking, grisly testimony.” Yes, two months of “shocking, grisly testimony” and only one minute and 51 seconds of news coverage at the very end.

In short, if you rely on ABC for your news coverage, you are out of luck. It’s that kind of timely newsgathering that would have viewers expecting to see reports on the end of WWII or the sinking of the Titanic later this week.

The other two members of the Big Three didn’t impress either. NBC was bad and CBS only a little better. NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Obama a question about Gosnell but didn’t even bother to follow it up. And when NBC finally gave an actual report on the case on May 1, it hid the awful nature of the case. The network that had reported on the smell of a decomposing body in the Casey Anthony trial called Gosnell’s crimes “too gruesome” to tell viewers.

Other outlets were just as averse to reporting the awful story of baby murder. The Washington Post committed to the story after health reporter Sarah Kliff defended her own failure to cover Gosnell because it was a “local crime” story.

But it wasn’t a local crime story. It was part of a national belief in infanticide coming directly from the pro-abortion movement. Just in the time of the Gosnell trial, we’ve seen a Planned Parenthood lobbyist and an abortion doctor both show support for baby murder after the child is born.

Abortion lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow told an astonished hearing that the life of a baby born after a botched abortion should be “left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

The pro-life group Live Action caught a D.C. abortion doctor in an embarrassing admission of, you know, supporting baby murder. “One video features a D.C. doctor, Cesare Santangelo, who said that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, ‘we would not help it,’” reported the Post. For that reveal, he said he considers the heroes of Live Action to be “terrorists.”

That is the world that Kermit Gosnell introduced to America. It’s a world where the liberal fantasies of “safe, available and rare” abortions have been twisted into a convenient rationale for taxpayer-funded baby murder, even after a child is born. It’s an image the abortion community won’t be able to erase.

Dan Gainor is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

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I worked at an abortion clinic like Dr. Gosnell's 'house of horrors'

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    Will Gosnell murder charges stick?

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    BIAS BASH:Responsibility of the media to cover Gosnell case?

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    GOSNELL TRIAL: House of horrors

I looked in the paper and saw a doctor’s office in need of a bilingual receptionist, someone who could schedule appointments for patients – it was perfect for me. I didn’t realize it was an abortion clinic. 

I was a Christian but abortion was not at the top of my list of concerns. I thought it was not a great option but really depended upon the woman’s situation. In my desperation, I put my beliefs aside, only worrying about putting food on the table for my three children and one on the way.

As happens with a lot of abortion clinic employees who are hired to do one thing but are recruited into another, my scheduling position evolved into doing work in the lab.  “Lab” is where we sorted through the parts of the aborted child to make sure they were all accounted for and nothing was left inside the patient.

I also did counseling and somehow stomached the excuses women had to abort – for many it was because the baby was a girl and they wanted a boy while others it was because of a fetal defect and others because they didn’t want another child.  

I tried to soothe my soul by comforting these women during their abortions.

My conscience bothered me at times and I would secretly try to change the patient's mind during counseling. 

One woman came in who was pregnant with twins and already had another child. I just couldn’t counsel her to choose abortion and told her that there are other options. She chose to keep the twins and saw me a couple years later and told me how grateful she was for my advice and that her children were her joy.

As time went by I learned every position in the clinic and the doctor trusted me. However, he was always in a bad mood and rude to patients and employees. He referred to the larger women as cows or whales. I hated how he treated everyone and left but went back because I needed the money.

Although one might say I was used to this type of work, my heart now felt heavier as I watched woman after woman have an abortion. 

Looking back, I believe God was working through my conscience, trying to get my attention and wake me up to the horror of what I was doing. 

I tried to soothe my soul by comforting these women during their abortions or helping them with rides to the airport or bus and even had a few stay at my home because they had no extra money for hotels.

But I saw more things that made me question why I was working there. I saw the doctor increasing prices for no reason, making pregnancies look larger on the ultra sound to charge more. I saw him charge women for being overweight, on medication by a primary doctor, for having had previous C-sections, for having a tilted uterus, and many other reasons he just made up.

But even worse than lying to the women or dealing with a cranky boss was what I saw during the abortions. I was the doctor’s right hand person in the operating room and just like those employees of Dr. Gosnell, I saw the abortionist puncture the soft spot in the baby’s head or snip its neck if it was delivered alive. 

What in the world was I doing there? Where was the teenager who used to take a Bible everywhere she went?

One day a flier was sent to the clinic asking for people to contact a certain pro-life group if they suspected illegal activity at the clinic. I secretly took it home with me, not sure if I would need it at a later date. I considered leaving several times but I had my children and their livelihood to think about.

Eventually, I made a decision to leave and called the number on the flier. That group put me in touch with Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who now runs And Then There Were None, a ministry that helps abortion workers leave their jobs.

I do not know where I would be now without Abby’s help. Her organization has kept me financially stable, helped me spiritually and she has personally been a mentor to me.

My days are brighter knowing that I no longer have to witness abortion and the abuse done to the mothers, not to mention all of the illegal activities done in the clinic.

I am now pro-life without exception and have rediscovered my faith since I left. I go to church every week and take my children with me. I have found the grace of forgiveness and healing. I still cannot believe I worked in the abortion industry for so long. I wish I would have left sooner.

It is my hope that abortion workers will see that there are other options besides working in a job that takes lives or helping in a house of horrors, like that of Dr. Gosnell’s. ATTWN and Abby Johnson can help, just like they did for me. My faith was always there, even in the midst of the horrible things I was doing, and I am so glad that God never gave up on me.  

Deborah Edge worked in the abortion industry for 17 years in the Houston area.

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Hitler's food taster, 95, tells of poisoning fears and horrors of war

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  April 25, 2013 - Margot Woelk, one of Hitler's food testers, shows an old photo album with a picture of herself taken around 1939 or 1940.AP

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  April 25, 2013 - Margot Woelk one of Hitler's food testers, in Berlin.AP

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  April 25, 2013 - Woelk, one of Adolf Hitler's food testers, shows a photo album and points to a picture taken prior to WWII, showing the way to the later built Fuehrer Headquarters.AP

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BERLIN –  They were feasts of sublime asparagus -- laced with fear. And for more than half a century, Margot Woelk kept her secret hidden from the world, even from her husband. Then, a few months after her 95th birthday, she revealed the truth about her wartime role: Adolf Hitler's food taster.

Woelk, then in her mid-twenties, spent two and a half years as one of 15 young women who sampled Hitler's food to make sure it wasn't poisoned before it was served to the Nazi leader in his "Wolf's Lair," the heavily guarded command center in what is now Poland, where he spent much of his time in the final years of World War II.

"He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there," Woelk said of the Nazi leader. "And Hitler was so paranoid that the British would poison him -- that's why he had 15 girls taste the food before he ate it himself."

With many Germans contending with food shortages and a bland diet as the war dragged on, sampling Hitler's food had its advantages.

"The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta," she recalled. "But this constant fear -- we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal."

The petite widow's story is a tale of the horror, pain and dislocation endured by people of all sides who survived World War II.

Only now in the sunset of her life has she been willing to relate her experiences, which she had buried because of shame and the fear of prosecution for having worked with the Nazis, although she insists she was never a party member. She told her story to The Associated Press as she flipped through a photo album with pictures of her as a young woman, in the same Berlin apartment where she was born in 1917.

Woelk says her association with Hitler began after she fled Berlin to escape Allied air attacks. With her husband gone and serving in the German army, she moved in with relatives about 435 miles to the east in Rastenburg, then part of Germany; now it is Ketrzyn, in what became Poland after the war.

There she was drafted into civilian service and assigned for the next two and a half years as a food taster and kitchen bookkeeper at the Wolf's Lair complex, located a few miles outside the town. Hitler was secretive, even in the relative safety of his headquarters, that she never saw him in person -- only his German shepherd Blondie and his SS guards, who chatted with the women.

Hitler's security fears were not unfounded. On July 20, 1944, a trusted colonel detonated a bomb in the Wolf's Lair in an attempt to kill Hitler. He survived, but nearly 5,000 people were executed following the assassination attempt, including the bomber.

"We were sitting on wooden benches when we heard and felt an incredible big bang," she said of the 1944 bombing. "We fell off the benches, and I heard someone shouting `Hitler is dead!' But he wasn't. "

Following the blast, tension rose around the headquarters. Woelk said the Nazis ordered her to leave her relatives' home and move into an abandoned school closer to the compound.

With the Soviet army on the offensive and the war going badly for Germany, one of her SS friends advised her to leave the Wolf's Lair.

She said she returned by train to Berlin and went into hiding.

Woelk said the other women on the food tasting team decided to remain in Rastenburg since their families were all there and it was their home.

"Later, I found out that the Russians shot all of the 14 other girls," she said. It was after Soviet troops overran the headquarters in January 1945.

When she returned to Berlin, she found a city facing complete destruction. Round-the-clock bombing by U.S. and British planes was grinding the city center to rubble. 

On April 20, 1945, Soviet artillery began shelling the outskirts of Berlin and ground forces pushed through toward the heart of the capital against strong resistance by die-hard SS and Hitler Youth fighters.

After about two weeks of heavy fighting, the city surrendered on May 2 -- after Hitler, who had abandoned the Wolf's Lair about five months before, had committed suicide. His successor surrendered a week later, ending the war in Europe.

For many Berlin civilians -- their homes destroyed, family members missing or dead and food almost gone -- the horror did not end with capitulation.

"The Russians then came to Berlin and got me, too," Woelk said. "They took me to a doctor's apartment and raped me for 14 consecutive days. That's why I could never have children. They destroyed everything."

Like millions of Germans and other Europeans, Woelk began rebuilding her life and trying to forget as best she could her bitter memories and the shame of her association with a criminal regime that had destroyed much of Europe.

She worked in a variety of jobs, mostly as a secretary or administrative assistant. Her husband returned from the war but died 23 years ago, she said.

With the frailty of advanced age and the lack of an elevator in her building, she has not left her apartment for the past eight years. Nurses visit several times a day, and a niece stops by frequently, she said.

Now at the end of her life, she feels the need to purge the memories by talking about her story.

"For decades, I tried to shake off those memories," she said. "But they always came back to haunt me at night."  

View the original article here