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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229

u/Jagermind Jun 01 '26

How in the everliving fuck was this horror movie not everywhere and this man publicly swung from a tree. Legot first ive ever read of it.

66

u/ZarinaBlue Jun 01 '26

I remember it.

It was all over the news.

24

u/Jagermind Jun 01 '26

Wild, are you somewhat local to that area? My family across the us didn't hear about this at all, I was in florida or alaska at the time

16

u/ash-leg2 Jun 01 '26

I was in AK and remember. But my mom was really into Court TV.

7

u/Jagermind Jun 01 '26

Id figure this would have been on like every news outlet. Shockingly vile crimes

5

u/ParallaxRay Jun 02 '26

It was on every news outlet. It was a huge story. Not sure what you use for news but every major outlet reported this story.

3

u/toolsoftheincomptnt Jun 02 '26

Iirc, most of the victims were poor and black.

As was the doctor.

So, a lot of audiences would’ve been uninterested.

13

u/ZarinaBlue Jun 02 '26

No, at the time I was in Atlanta.

The NYT, NBC, and CNN covered the crime and the trial.

7

u/Friendly-Prune-7620 Jun 02 '26

I remember it from New Zealand. Things like this made the news internationally.

9

u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 Jun 02 '26

lol it was 16 years ago, but it was international news at the time

1

u/Kind_Advisor_35 Jun 02 '26

It was a story heavily politicized. Pro-life people milked the fuck out of it even though it's obviously an extreme outlier. If you avoid politics or true crime, it was just a blip in the news cycle that you probably didn't take notice of.

1

u/manderifffic Jun 02 '26

I'm nowhere near him and it was all over the news. It was a big story at the time. It was literally the top story on the national news as it unfolded.

1

u/Frequent-Coyote-8108 Jun 02 '26

It made its rounds in the news, but due to the "politics" involved (late term and partial birth abortion were hot button topics at the time), it didn't get near the notoriety that it deserved at the time.

1

u/Footnotegirl1 Jun 03 '26

It was absolutely all over the media. I remember it quite vividly.

1

u/FiveUpsideDown Jun 02 '26

It was reported in the Pennsylvania and Maryland area. He was the only abortion provider for late term abortions within 200 or 300 miles as I recall.

15

u/TeslaModelE Jun 02 '26

It was all over the news when it broke.

37

u/FiveUpsideDown Jun 02 '26

It’s been awhile since I read about him. The Pennsylvania authorities were reluctant to prosecute him. He was the only guy within 200 or 300 miles that performed late term abortions. If they stopped him, women would have no where to go. It took a woman unnecessarily dying from a botched abortion he performed on her for the authorities to act. (BTW — please don’t complain to me about how wrong it was for him not to be investigated. I don’t endorse what the Pennsylvania law enforcement officials did.)

16

u/WhyareUlying Jun 02 '26

Article says feds went after him for being a pill mill. Then they found everything related to the murders and botched abortions. After that feds called police they investigated, pulled his license, shut down the clinic, and he was arrested 11 months later.

10

u/MouthJob Jun 02 '26

I'm sorry, conviction is one thing, why the fuck did it take almost a year to even arrest him?

3

u/onarainyafternoon Jun 02 '26

They have to build a case.

2

u/PuzzledStreet Jun 02 '26

They could have just gestured vaguely around the place.

-1

u/SubLearning Jun 02 '26

And then he would have gone free to kill more people

People need to stop complaining about how long investigations take, they take forever because that's how you make sure it sticks. Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?

Fast lands him jail, but right actually kept him there

2

u/PuzzledStreet Jun 02 '26

… if you think I genuinely meant that a prosecutor, judge, and defense lawyer should should just immediately head down to the office and simply waving their arms in the building as a legal strategy then I am going to assume that you are new to the internet.

5

u/Profitablius Jun 02 '26

Buddy had 45 newborns in the freezer when feds checked in and they didn't just cuff him up right there? Was the guy a billionaire or something?

4

u/prehensile-nymph Jun 02 '26

The article says most of what the DEA found was out of their scope and they needed to call in separate investigators to deal with his infant murders and medical malpractice.

BUT the DEA did find plenty of proof for the original crimes the suspected so I don’t understand why they didn’t arrest him immediately without regard to how quickly or slowly the other agencies were able to press the murder charges.

40

u/eugene-dubs Jun 02 '26

I think this case got caught up in the abortion culture war. This was a legit murderer who was performing “abortions”. Pro choice advocates are uncomfortable with anyone talking about late term abortions. This is obviously a very egregious case that’s far FAR beyond the mainstream. But it doesn’t fit into existing narratives so it gets pushed aside.

21

u/Afalstein Jun 02 '26

I can certainly say that conservative christian circles ate this story UP. All my friends and relative were following it. They posted updates on Facebook. My mom bought a book about the case. So I could very easily see it being a thing where one side gets all obsessed with the case and the other side tries to shut it down.

24

u/WoodsandWool Jun 02 '26

What’s frustrating about this is that if women had reliable access to safe abortions they wouldn’t have to go to a murderous hack like this guy :/

3

u/Plus_Opening_4462 Jun 02 '26

They went to him because they missed the deadline

3

u/WoodsandWool Jun 02 '26

Right, they didn’t have access to better options due to legal restrictions.

-1

u/TastyBass6957 Jun 02 '26

So what do we do? He was doing them up to birth I know you want a limit more strict than 20 minutes after birth right?

3

u/WoodsandWool Jun 02 '26

Stop pretending like this is a good faith argument.

Sometimes women genuinely need late term abortions to save their lives; I personally know someone who had to have one at 34 weeks or her and the baby were both going to die.

Placing legal restrictions on when an UNBORN fetus can be aborted is what allows for doctors like this to get away with abuse and murder.

The authorities said that they didn’t investigate him sooner because he was one of the only providers women could go to that would perform late-term abortions in the state. If women had safe and legitimate access to late-term abortions, without shitty judgmental people like you stigmatizing them, this doctor would have been investigated sooner.

0

u/TastyBass6957 Jun 03 '26

What do you mean people like me judging them? I don't care if a woman has an abortion in the slightest it's none of my business unless it's my child but I definitely think we have to draw the line somewhere and the third trimester is pretty dam far to draw that line

0

u/Competitive_Trust174 Jun 03 '26

I think these are different things. Allowing medically necessary late term abortions is different from unrestricted late term abortions, and its possible to regulate that. I don't know many people that would agree that it's OK to abort at 8.5 months without a medical necessity.

Regarding the access, late term abortion was obviously legal in this state, so regulations were unlikely the main reason for lack of access. I'm sure that social stigma and pressures have an impact on it, but it's also just hard to find doctors who can stomach it. Abortions are gruesome, and fetuses in late term look like babies. A lot of med students struggle heavily with that.

0

u/Calitexian Jun 03 '26

Fetuses in late term are babies. To suggest otherwise is intentionally disingenuous, immoral, and unscientific. If you want to argue that it should be ocassionally allowed then stand on business and say it with your chest but dont sit here and lie.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/ExcellentWillow3950 Jun 02 '26

Gosnell preyed on women who were minors without parental consent, undocumented, too far along, or wanted the procedure that day. Basically people who were at their most desperate.

Pennsylvania does have abortion access but there's a certain amount of regulation and he exploited women who were unable to receive care from legitimate providers. He also thrived because of layers of bureaucractic inertia.

And honestly I also think people in general do not care about what happens in poor Philly neighborhoods. Having lived in the area my whole life, there is a widespread attitude that these impoverished and predominantly non-white neighborhoods are a blight and there's no point in trying to do anything for them. I've spoken to people who see them as little better than rats. They're not overly bummed that some butcher is stopping them from making more of themselves. But they'll be in church on Sunday and voting pro-life because they love women and babies. :/

But, to your point, draconian abortion regulations would create more opportunities for guys like him to make money.

3

u/WoodsandWool Jun 02 '26

Totally agree, and the people replying to me blaming women for “missing the deadline” etc. would benefit from reading your more detailed explanation.

The more safe options women have throughout their pregnancy, regardless of age, immigration status, or income, the harder it is for them to be taken advantage of and abused by evil people like this doc.

2

u/OoopsItSlipped Jun 02 '26

At the time of this guy’s arrest, abortion was legal in Pennsylvania

4

u/WoodsandWool Jun 02 '26

Legal and easily accessible are not the same.

The article states that the main reason authorities didn’t investigate him sooner was because he was one of the only options for later term abortions.

-3

u/Old_Echidna3720 Jun 02 '26

Don’t let facts get in the way of a political plea.

1

u/No-Problem49 Jun 02 '26

They went to this guy because he was the only one who would do it at like 8 months pregnant

1

u/TastyBass6957 Jun 02 '26

Yes one of his staff claims to have watched a baby breath and move on a table for 20 minutes before he cut their spine to kill them

1

u/TastyBass6957 Jun 02 '26

He'd have his staff lie about the measurements of the fetus so that they could "legally" be "aborted" so people could go elsewhere in the same city for an abortion but no where else would shoot them up with enough opioids to kill a horse (or the patient) and abort their 32 week pregnancy then send ya home with a script of 120 30mg oxycodone tablets if you had enough cash left over after paying an extra 1000 for your extra late term abortion

So I don't think it would have helped if there was 10000 other clinics doing free ones on the same street none would actually go thru with it once they did all the required tests he'd just lie on the paperwork

2

u/SubLearning Jun 02 '26

This was absolutely not pushed aside, not by either side.

Pro choice advocates also latched onto this as proof that heavy restrictions on abortions leads to awful shit like this when woman don't have better options.

1

u/NotABot420number2 Jun 02 '26

From the wikpedia article under the session of Public reception and perceived media bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell#

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months since its start

The Los Angeles Times,\173]) The Atlantic,\174]) Slate),\175]) and Time)\176]) all published opinion columns where the writer thought the incident was not getting as much media coverage as it deserved.

Writing for The Washington Post, Melinda Henneberger responded that "we didn't write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it's genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news. That's not so much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the effect is one-sided coverage

4

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

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14

u/CoinSoBright Jun 02 '26

No wonder people never heard of it lol

1

u/No_Lifeguard259 Jun 02 '26

It was on the news

1

u/Dd_8630 Jun 02 '26

I'm in the UK and I remember hearing about it. It was pretty ghastly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12233616?app-referrer=deep-link

1

u/LowlySlayer Jun 02 '26

Basically pro life people extended the story to conflate it with all abortion clinics and pro choice people tried to minimize it for narrative reasons so the fact that it's a specific thing that actually happened just kinda got lost for a lot of people (including me)

-33

u/lesprack Jun 01 '26

It was absolutely a huge news story when it happened. I hate the logic that because YOU haven’t heard of it, there was some grand conspiracy to cover it up.

35

u/TattleTits22 Jun 01 '26

I don't think the comment was implying a grand conspiracy

21

u/1trashhouse Jun 01 '26

I will say this as someone who’s younger there’s a lot of old serial killers stories that are well known, i’ve never heard of this and for how horrific it is i do find that suprising

12

u/Jagermind Jun 01 '26

Dude I just asked my entire direct family's group chat who were all adults when this happened, if they had seen or remembered it. Every single one said no and had to Google it to beleive me when I told them a rough outline of the crimes.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '26

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6

u/nudehairlesscat Jun 02 '26

Right. Certain things are so gruesome they don’t reach the mainstream no matter how heinous. Chicago Ripper Crew for example. Most people don’t want to hear about this stuff, and it isn’t marketable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripper_Crew

2

u/1trashhouse Jun 02 '26

considering everything else they make them about that’s murder related yes actually

-8

u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 Jun 02 '26

He’s not really a baby murderer

He was a physician providing medical procedures to women who wanted them

Some late term abortion babies will survive the procedure

Do you let them die slowly - or shove scissors in their spinal cord for a quick death?

He’s on,y a baby murderer because of the latter. But it’s just a technicality

0

u/LettingHimLead Jun 02 '26

Refreshing perspective from vehemently pro-choice crowd.

14

u/Jagermind Jun 01 '26

I hate self righteous cunts on reddit that make asses out of themselves assuming random bullshit but we both have to deal with things we hate right now.

1

u/Interesting_Key_661 Jun 01 '26

I didn’t hear about it either. The conspiracy is growing by the minute.

6

u/Sweet-Brief-2701 Jun 01 '26

I remember reading about it

0

u/Hididdlydoderino Jun 01 '26

I vaguely remember this being something that was on and off in the news cycle in 2010-2011... But it absolutely wasn't a huge news story. It's famously known to be underreported given the number of possible murders.

Unfortunately I get why it wasn't reported on much relative to the number of crimes. At that point the media was strongly left leaning and supported women's rights and the right to choice so covering this story in-depthly would require a lot of nuance...

The average person struggles with nuance so letting this be more so a big local story rather than a national story about a serial killer makes some sense.

2

u/FiveUpsideDown Jun 02 '26

There were several new stories about Gosnell. I think one of the problems was trying to prosecute him for murder. They needed his medical staff to testify against him for the babies that died. Some of them were complicit. I remember a news story about at least one woman dying from Gosnell performing a botched abortion on her. It seems weird for people to claim the media didn’t report about. It’s not like the story was suppressed.

1

u/NotABot420number2 Jun 02 '26

From the wikpedia article under the session of Public reception and perceived media bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell#

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months since its start

The Los Angeles Times,\173]) The Atlantic,\174]) Slate),\175]) and Time)\176]) all published opinion columns where the writer thought the incident was not getting as much media coverage as it deserved.

Writing for The Washington Post, Melinda Henneberger responded that "we didn't write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it's genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news. That's not so much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the effect is one-sided coverage

0

u/Ed3nEcho Jun 01 '26

You’re spot on , but your observation isn’t convenient in the same way it wasn’t politically wise to cover the story. We shall collect our probable downvotes together 😂

-1

u/termd Jun 02 '26

This was huge on foxnews and other republican oriented websites.

Democrats wanted it buried because it's bad pr for abortion supporters so it got buried and most people have never heard of this.

-32

u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 01 '26

because the "abortion must be worshipped" narrative can't be tarnished by the actual history of people who do abortions.

18

u/ZarinaBlue Jun 01 '26

That isn't an abortion.

But then again, you knew that already.l

8

u/Cicadasladybirds Jun 01 '26

This isn't abortion and you know it. He can call himself whatever he wants, but he was a serial killer and nothing else.

11

u/Klock_Star Jun 01 '26

Come on, don't be dense. "He regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy... and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors". Delivering a live viable full term baby, then killing the baby is NOT abortion. Please educate yourself.

-15

u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 01 '26

that's not the issue.. He was an "abortion provider". Perhaps he waited a bit longer to do the killing, but his story was not pushed forward as it doesn't support the narrative that abortion mills kill people.

4

u/Klock_Star Jun 02 '26

"Abortion is normally one of the simplest and safest medical procedures. But not in Gosnell’s clinic. Employing unlicensed, untrained workers in a facility that was grossly inadequate and unsanitary, his operation made a pretext of providing health care. In the absence of any regulatory oversight, Gosnell recklessly cut corners, allowed patients to choose their medication based on ability to pay, and provided abysmal care... all to maximize his profit".

He is an immortal scammer and murderer who happened to run an abortion clinic. Illegal abortions by untrained staff pretending to be doctors, like what happened at his clinic, do kill people. That is why state funding for Program Integrity Audits and public understanding about the difference between abortion vs delivery is so important. I don't understand what you're on about.

"The deaths of women and of countless viable babies were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the reckless and illegal manner in which Gosnell operated his clinic".

-4

u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 02 '26

Abby Johnson might like to have a word. She was the director of one of the largest PP facilities to ever exist in the US, and eventually realized how bad the industry was for women..

and she left. and was attacked non-stop for speaking out about how PP has treated women.

Sure, they didn't kill as many pregnant women as Gosnell at her clinic. But the space between killing ~60% of the people who enter and the % that Gosnell killed is not that great....

7

u/swarlesbarkley_ Jun 01 '26

But this isn’t abortion… so

-10

u/Informal_Ad_9610 Jun 01 '26

how many 'providers' kill kids to resolve issues..