“Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer” — A Review
Steven WoodworthOctober 13, 2018
It probably won’t be the most heavily attended movie this weekend. Facebook and NPR refused to run ads for it, and the major media have maintained a deafening silence about it. Relatively few theaters are running it, but “Gosnell” is well made, emotionally powerful, and — what’s most important for me — factually true.
The movie deals with the case of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who for more than thirty years ran a filthy inner-city abortion mill. Gosnell used untrained, unqualified personnel, unsterilized instruments, and irresponsible doses of dangerous drugs to perform thousands of abortions in grossly unsanitary conditions. At least one mother died as a result of a Gosnell abortion, and a number of others suffered serious, sometimes permanent, medical repercussions.
The movie’s plot unfolds as two Philadelphia police detectives, their boss the chief of the department’s homicide bureau, and a pro-choice female state’s attorney unravel the truth about what had been going on inside the clinic at 3801 Lancaster Street, where the filth and stench are indescribable and where babies’ corpses and severed body parts are stored in bizarre places. There are a number of dramatic plot turns as new evidence comes to light, sometimes from unexpected sources.
The movie makers have obviously taken great pains to be as tasteful as possible in the presentation of a story that is, in its nature, utterly gruesome and revolting. The cameras don’t point at the most disturbing realities of the story but instead at the faces of the actors as they react with horror, revulsion, or grief. The actors were superb, and the effect is very compelling. I’m definitely no fan of scenes of medical gore, but I was able to watch the movie with only occasional grimaces. I’ll admit, though, it got pretty intense sometimes.
Gosnell himself comes through, quite convincingly and true to what the trial revealed about him, as a sort of evil lunatic after the pattern of Heinrich Himmler or Josef Mengele. Relentlessly venal, he aborts babies for the riches it brings him, talks self-righteously of abortion rights and the service he does for the community, and plays classical music on the piano while the police search his house.
Warning: plot spoiler follows
The central message of the movie comes out during the trial in an exchange between Gosnell’s defense lawyer and a prosecution witness. The latter, an immaculately coiffed woman, is the abortionist at a respectable, one suspects suburban, clinic. After the prosecutor’s questions elicit from the abortionist that everything is done according to best abortion practices at her clinic and that no one on her staff would dream of committing any of the gross actions Gosnell regularly does, least of all his habit of delivering living babies and then using scissors to cut their spinal cords at the back of their necks, Gosnell’s defense attorney asks her how she performs second-trimester abortions. By means of a dilation and extraction, she explains. The attorney asks several questions about how that method works. He exhibits a large needle with which poison is injected into the back of the baby’s neck in utero, to insure no live delivery would be possible. Is that how it’s done? The abortionist replies that it is. He displays a forceps. Is this what you then use to pull out the baby, piece by piece? Yes, she says, but the big ones don’t come apart. They come out whole. What if such a whole baby were to come out alive, he asks, by accident? What would the clinic staff do then? Reluctantly the abortionist explains that they would keep the baby warm and as comfortable as possible “until it passed.” So you leave it to die, the lawyer asks. Yes, she admits. The lawyer pounces: seems like it would be more humane just to cut its spine with scissors.
That’s the point. Whether in a filthy, unsanitary inner-city den under the hand of a Gosnell, or in an immaculately clean, sterile, respectable suburban clinic where great care is ostensibly taken to preserve the life and health of the mother, every abortion kills an innocent human life. Every abortion mill is really just a sterile version of 3801 Lancaster.
“Gosnell” probably won’t be the most heavily attended movie this weekend. But it ought to be.
http://thefivepilgrims.com/2018/10/13/gosnell-the-trial-of-americas-biggest-serial-killer-a-review/ |
