In 2013, Kermit Gosnell, late-term abortionist extraordinaire, was found guilty and convicted to three life sentences for the murders of three babies who were born alive and got their spines cut with scissors. He was not, as the sensationalist movie title declares, a prolific serial killer à la Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy. No, not at all. He just killed thousands of babies inside and outside the womb. Okay, okay, he just killed thousands of ‘fetuses’ and/or ‘clumps of cells’ inside and outside the womb. (Science proclaims life begins at conception, but if you cannot handle that fact and believe life begins when the mother feels like taking up the job, then you might as well stop reading now and go learn how to make shakshuka. iykyk)
Good morning, horror friends! Hope you had a great Mother’s Day yesterday. Let’s talk about abortion, shall we?
The feature film Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer (2018) was such a trip and I had zero idea it was based on real life events, after all, the only reason why I was interested in watching the courtroom thriller was because Dean Cain was in it. Well, color me surprised, not only was the movie great with terrific acting, storyline, production, cinematography, and editing, but it was also funny and introspective. And shocking, too.
Against my will thanks to our robust trash reality TV culture, I already knew what a hoarder was and looked like, however, I was not prepared to accept the notion that there were professional hoarders, that is, people exercising their professional careers—and with plenty of paying customers—while being surrounded by garbage, bodily waste and urine, pet waste and urine, dirty floors and surfaces, dirty dishes in break rooms, bags of hazardous waste material inside communal fridges, cockroaches, mice, and mountains upon mountains of clutter in every room. Yikes. Filth and squalor are clear signs of severe mental illness and unsavory behavior, so I wonder why no one said anything. It could not have been because they thought those were normal conditions for inner-city businesses, or could it? (Oh, wait, yes, it could and they did; a grand jury witness offered that as her excuse for never reporting it. Double yikes.)
So, from the 1970’s until the 2010’s, Kermit Gosnell provided late-term abortions in Philadelphia with his main clientele being struggling women of scarce financial means looking for a final solution to their problems, and all done legally at affordable prices (link to sources included below):
Business was booming and money was good. Not only did Gosnell make an enviable living by providing his medical services, but also by running a pill-pushing side hustle. In the end, spoiler alert, the pills were the ones who had the full force of the law (the DEA, the FBI, and the local Police Department) knocking at his door, not the late-term abortions (legal limit is 24 weeks a.k.a. first and second trimesters… Gosnell’s specialty was third trimester abortions a.k.a. illegal), or the multiple health-code violations, or the unlicensed ‘medical staff,’ or the death of Karnamaya Mongar. Nope. It was the pills. Fascinating, just fascinating.
The film provided insight about the criminal case and courtroom trial, about why the judge opposed it from being treated as an anti-pro-choice case, about how the media was biased from the beginning, and, more interestingly to me, it provided a chilling portrayal of Dr. Gosnell’s perverse personality. He was a freaking weirdo.
In my opinion, Gosnell’s psyche must have broken after having seen so much death for so many decades, so much so that eventually he must have not noticed his blasé attitude, his own bizarre behavior, and the hazardous surroundings he had created at work and at home. (Goodness, I almost became sick while watching the residence basement scene for being beyond disgusting, although, in all fairness, we were given a sort of head’s up when he said to the detectives they better not go downstair because it was a bit untidy. Triple yikes).
Personally, I think he was emotionally numb and mentally checked out. Simply going with the flow by showing up to work day after day at 3801 - 3805 Lancaster Avenue, while portraying the character of the popular late-term abortionist that he was, or rather, that he convinced himself to be. Did he enjoy the mechanics of it? Did he honestly believe he was saving women? And let’s not forget about the pills side hustle. Did he like the excess of money? Did he truly believe he was helping the community? If the definitions of delusions of grandeur and self-aggrandizement had a picture, it would be Gosnell’s mugshot.
You have to watch the film if you want to revel in the depiction of a human being belonging to a different species: one that is unnatural and soulless.
In Love and Fear,
—Marath
© 2016-2026
Sources:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3727460 [Documentary]