US abortion doc set for last court hearing


Associated Press

Posted on May 15, 2013 at 8:33 AM

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies born alive at his clinic will be formally sentenced in the death of one of the babies Wednesday, along with the overdose death of a patient and hundreds of abortion law violations.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell has decided not to appeal the first-degree murder conviction handed down Monday for killing three babies. Instead, the 72-year-old physician will accept several terms of life without parole and avoid a potential death sentence.

Gosnell assured a judge Tuesday that he was making the deal freely, and was then sentenced in the deaths of the first two babies. He offered the same odd, bemused smile that has become his trademark in court.

Gosnell's rogue career and ensuing murder trial has become the latest flashpoint in the nation's enduring abortion debate.

Prosecutors had argued during the two-month trial that he routinely used scissors to "snip" babies born alive, and they pursued murder convictions in seven infant deaths. But the judge dismissed three of the counts, and the jury rejected a fourth.

Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell 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. Eight have pleaded guilty in the case, and a ninth was convicted at trial with Gosnell, albeit of relatively minor charges.



"He wanted this case aired out in a courtroom and it got aired out in a courtroom in a fair way. And now he's accepting what will happen," McMahon said Tuesday, adding that Gosnell would now plead to pending federal drug charges.






The defense also contended that the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar of Virginia, a Bhutanese immigrant who had been given repeated doses of Demerol and other powerful drugs to sedate her and induce labor, was caused by unforeseen complications and did not amount to murder, as prosecutors charged.




