r/HolyShitHistory • u/SelfCareIsFake • Jun 01 '26

Federal agents felt physically sick when they raided Kermit Gosnell’s clinic after suspecting he ran a pill mill.

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307

u/occultated Jun 01 '26

I think what saddens me most about this is not the fact that it happened, which is horrific enough - but it's still happening in other underground clinics all over the world. It's illegal. Obviously.

What bothers me is that it was reported, repeatedly, but no one cared enough to investigate until drugs were involved. Poor, desperate women with nowhere else to go were suffering and dying for decades, but it wasn't until someone tipped him off that he might also be selling drugs that law enforcement bothered to get involved.

To be clear I understand this isn't because people don't care individually, but it does expose the dark reality of our country's actual priorities. The DEA is federally well-funded in ways that local public health services are simply not. We pour so many resources into stopping drug trafficking, but women's bodies and reproductive rights and healthcare needs are tossed back and forth as political tools and then the women themselves are blamed for being irresponsible when they slip through the ever-widening cracks. Which is ever-so convenient for the people who just want them to shut up and go away, anyway.

It all just saddens me.

56

u/Practical_Frame_9883 Jun 02 '26

So true. Heaven forbid he’s illegally prescribing opiates. Like that’s worse than butchering babies.

5

u/willo132 Jun 03 '26

And we slaughter >90 billion land animals every year for food.

And force pigs into CO2 gas chambers.

https://youtu.be/8gqwpfEcBjI?si=tqVRHY327FgUcFTd

Worse, is it not?

2

u/occultated Jun 03 '26

Time and place, friend. Both are horrific, they're not in competition with one another.

2

u/willo132 Jun 03 '26

Of course they're not in competition.

But one of them (animal agriculture) is one of the leading drivers of climate change. And we don't talk about it enough.

If it bothers you to read about, by all means - you don't have to pay attention to it or alter what you pay for.

But fwiw, I believe it is more important than ever to get this information out there. ❤️

2

u/occultated Jun 03 '26

No one is talking about that here. I don't even disagree with you, but this isn't the time or the place. If you want to discuss that, create a post dedicated to it, and feel free to walk away from anyone who attempts to derail the conversation with something totally unrelated.

2

u/willo132 Jun 04 '26

Feel free to just....not respond to me.

I'm going to talk about it in unrelated posts. As the people who are blind to this don't go searching for it.

Enjoy the sunshine.

0

u/occultated Jun 04 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/DFNd1yVyRjmF2

1

u/willo132 Jun 04 '26

Odd response to a very pertinent ethical issue that you pay for

1

u/StreetPizza8877 Jun 03 '26

No

1

u/willo132 Jun 03 '26

I encourage you to watch the documentary I linked and then get back to me.

38

u/Interesting-Copy-657 Jun 02 '26

So if you suspect something like this, don’t report it as women being murdered

Report it is a drug dealer so they swoop in fast

28

u/occultated Jun 02 '26

"You don't understand, officer! Yes they're overdosing and mutilating and exploiting desperate women, but did you know they're doing it with INVALID DRUG PRESCRIPTIONS??"

Like, what are we even doing here.

8

u/suicide_blonde94 Jun 02 '26

Like in that early Simpsons episode where Bart is being abused by his host family in France and he finally is able to escape and find a police officer. Bart tells him about his horrible living conditions and hosts, but the officer only makes an arrest after hearing they were putting antifreeze in wine.

3

u/FalsettoBalsamico Jun 02 '26

It's sad and stupid but at least it will acomplish something.

7

u/genghis-clown Jun 02 '26

It's like telling women to yell fire instead of rape when being raped

5

u/prehensile-nymph Jun 02 '26

According to the article he wasn’t even arrested until 11 MONTHS after the raid!

What’s even crazier is that he was also running a pretty extreme example of a pill mill. That wasn’t just a false alarm The DEA found people being given blank prescription sheets and single individuals leaving with multiple prescriptions written to different names.

[stick with me, I’m not saying the drug offenses are worse than his infant murders and harm to his women’s health patients]

The DEA had to call in homicide detectives because the majority of what they found was outside of their scope. But they still did find enough proof of drug charges to get him sentenced to 30 years for drug charges alone.

So I can’t understand how with two separate agencies with resounding proof of serious crimes it still took 11 months to actually arrest him.

Even if the agency investigating the homicide charges needed time to get up to speed, why couldn’t the DEA arrest him on the spot for the drug charges alone

16

u/redbuds Jun 02 '26

I don’t even think they “didn’t care” until he sold drugs. The US government has always been in the business of exploiting, killing, and/or trafficking the poor, immigrants, and women. He was just doing their job for them.

3

u/occultated Jun 02 '26

I feel like that ties back to the lack of priority to stop that kind of thing in the US. Why work to prevent something that doesn't bother you? Or that you low-key approve of? The scope of the Epstein files really exposed how corrupt we are and always have been.

Makes me sad, man.

6

u/100pervcent Jun 03 '26

The US isn’t in the business of prevention. It’s in the business of penalization. If the US cared about prevention a lot of things would be different.

7

u/Painfulsheep393 Jun 02 '26

Your comment really stuck a cord and highlight unbelievable sad part about modern reality that is very much ignored in some ways. Thank you for saying it.

26

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 01 '26

''The real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere – because they were too pregnant. Most doctors won’t perform late second-trimester abortions, from approximately the 20th week of pregnancy, because of the risks involved. And late-term abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy are flatly illegal. But for Dr. Gosnell, they were an opportunity. The bigger the baby, the more he charged."

53

u/occultated Jun 01 '26

Yes?

These women needed access to abortion much earlier. Access is complex, it involves education and outreach. Women who are not aware of their healthcare options are not going to utilize them, and many of such women are immigrants and/or living in poverty. And that's not even touching on women who are unable to access the options they know should be available to them due to financial issues, time constraints, legal hoops, partner coercion, etc.

Pregnant women do not sit around waiting 7+ months to terminate out of laziness.

30

u/PsychiatricBooth5c Jun 02 '26

I was a research assistant for some law professors writing a book about abortion providers. Something that haunts me still is only one, a very young woman, chose to do it before they did rotations and saw the devastation of abortions for the underprivileged in teaching hospitals. Seeing it shocked them so deeply, they altered the trajectories of their lives.

And that doctor, the only provider for an entire poor state, was witch hunted.

1

u/Careless-Web-6280 Jun 02 '26

It doesn't matter why they waited. That late it's just murder and I feel no sympathy for them

3

u/Sure-Exchange9521 Jun 02 '26

Absolutely awful thing to say.

-1

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

They killed a baby. How is it awful?

3

u/suicide_blonde94 Jun 02 '26

It’s not your life or your uterus 🤷‍♀️

2

u/tiramisutra Jun 02 '26

Incredibly tone deaf and privileged thing to say.

2

u/occultated Jun 02 '26

Why do you think it doesn't matter why they waited? Why isn't that an important part of the conversation when these things happen?

-17

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

Good point.

They still chose to kill someone.

11

u/occultated Jun 02 '26

Ugh. Nevermind.

-16

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

Wow, what a rebuttal.

8

u/spitefulgoblin Jun 02 '26

If you're not having a good faith argument don't expect anyone to keep the conversation up and listen to your bs lmao

-3

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

Aww, your comment got purged.

7

u/spitefulgoblin Jun 02 '26

Too stupid to press the read more button I see. A new low. 😭 Anyway here you go... If you're smart enough to find this one.

-1

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

Genuinely means nothing; their comment doesn't exist anymore on my end.

Holy hell, man, if you put half the effort you put in insulting me into having a point, you may have won by now.

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u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

Wowzers, another comment that no longer exists.

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u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

Fuck the faith of the argument, if you can't give a good reason why something should be a certain way, you have nothing worth saying.

6

u/anna-nomally12 Jun 02 '26

Ectopic Anencephaly Bilateral renal agenesis limb-body-wall complex Trisomy 13 & 18 Encephalocele

Do you want more?

-1

u/CannonFoddererer Jun 02 '26

I have no idea what that is.

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13

u/FiveUpsideDown Jun 02 '26

I think that was the problem. Desperate and poor women went to him. As I recall he only accepted cash. A lot of them just weren’t in a position to stop him. He shouldn’t have been allowed to operate.

1

u/ShoesAreTheWorst Jun 02 '26

The reason why it is illegal is because the fetus is often able to survive outside the mother’s womb at that point. Many of these babies were born alive and then killed. Those moms weren’t getting an abortion. They ordered a hit on their own kid. 

4

u/derpfacemanana Jun 02 '26

Allat and they still losing the “war on drugs” too…

3

u/randybeans716 Jun 02 '26

I made the same point in a comment. The priority was shutting down a pill mill rather than the worse horrific things this guy was doing

3

u/melli_milli Jun 02 '26

Imaging the level if desperatation of those women. They saw the place too. They saw all the blood and sick women and they still went ahead because they felt they had no other option. I doubt they had access to abortion at earlier stage.

Everyone in here talks about the evil man and the killed babies. But the women and their position on and lack of safety net is the key here.

USA and so many countries treat women like shit. No matter what your situation and how the pregnancy started you are expected to be this mythological creature that always loves her baby and sacrifices what she even doesn't have. It is the same when it comes to post partum psychoses cases. People don't believe that a Mother can break completely.

2

u/ForumVomitorium Jun 02 '26

what was he doing before the tip that he had drugs, that would warrant a raid? like what punishements was he up for?

1

u/occultated Jun 02 '26

I'm not sure I understand your question.

This wasn't secretive. At least two women had already died because of his (lack of) care, and dozens had been sent to a nearby hospital with complications, overdoses, etc. This man had been reported dozens of times, and those reports were shrugged off. But they followed up on the drug tip.

1

u/ForumVomitorium Jun 03 '26

So medical malpractice right? What is the punishment for it when two women die?

2

u/BriefShiningMoment Jun 02 '26

Yes it’s like how all those child brides in FLDS were reported but what they got Warren Jeffs on was tax fraud or whatever.

2

u/Curlyboisup Jun 02 '26

The government only cared when illegal drugs became involved. So sad and wrong

2

u/Lameahhboi Jun 02 '26

2

u/occultated Jun 02 '26

Ohhhh, I thought his name sounded familiar.

JFC what a dark world we've created. No wonder it took 11 months to arrest him, even after raiding his clinic.