Abortion doctor Kenneth Gosnell
Dana DiFlippo reports for the (Philadelphia) Daily News, June 10, 2015:
The babies killed by Kermit Gosnell died in an unimaginably evil way: Born live in botched, illegal, late-term abortions, they were murdered by a depraved doctor and his untrained staff who used scissors to snip their spinal cords even as they began to wriggle and cry.
So perhaps it’s fitting that a memorial service Wednesday at Laurel Hill Cemetery in East Falls where the so-called Gosnell babies now are buried was accompanied by a plague of locusts. Or rather, a swarm of flying ants.
“It’s almost demonic how they all showed up right now, isn’t it?” whispered one mourner, pinching one flying ant between his fingers as another alighted on his neck.
About 40 anti-abortion and Christian activists gathered under sunny skies to pray over the grave site of 47 cremated fetuses that authorities found in a 2010 raid on Gosnell’s West Philly abortion clinic.
The city had held onto the cremains as criminal evidence until Gosnell’s murder trial ended in May 2013. Since then, anti-abortion activists, priests and even Archbishop Charles Chaput have repeatedly asked the city to release the cremains to them for burial, holding occasional rallies and letter-writing campaigns.
Wednesday, Medical Examiner’s Office spokesman Jeff Moran said the cremains were buried at Laurel Hill on Sept. 12, 2013.
The Medical Examiner’s Office buries all remains not claimed by families at Laurel Hill and doesn’t publicly announce it, Moran explained. A few feet from the Gosnell babies’ grave site, a small tombstone marks the spot where 1,500 unclaimed bodies were buried in 2010.
Still, activists who gathered at the scenic, hilly, 78-acre, 179-year-old historic cemetery Wednesday accused city officials of “secretly” burying the Gosnell babies to dodge controversy.
“I would simply say this to the medical examiner and the Philadelphia city government: These children were not unclaimed,” said the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, a pastor with Church on the Hill DC in Washington, D.C., and director of the Christian Defense Coalition. “We came for months after months, seeking these children in love. They were not unclaimed. They were wanted, they were desired, they had meaning and purpose. And so even though we are thankful they are not still in the morgue, it is deeply troubling . . . not making this a more public affair.”
Those gathered at Laurel Hill on Wednesday prayed, sang hymns and preached during a news conference and subsequent graveside service that seemed more anti-abortion rally than memorial. Many repeatedly professed the personhood of fetuses and vowed to someday make Philly “an abortion-free city.”
“Try as hard as he might, neither their killer nor his infamy could erase these babies’ humanity,” said Catherine Glenn Foster, a lawyer with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative Christian nonprofit. “We will use this sacred place to cry, to remember and to say: ‘This ends here.’ ”
Carla Ezell, southeast regional director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, decried the disproportionate rate at which black women get abortions. “It is a plague and a holocaust in our community,” said Ezell, adding that she grew up near Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society at 38th and Lancaster.
Mourners planted white wooden crosses and brought flowers to the grave site, as well as a temporary marker that they aim to replace with a permanent one. They plan to hold a bigger graveside memorial service Sept. 25, during the World Meeting of Families. They have invited Pope Francis to attend.
evidence introduced in Gosnell’s trial
~Éowyn
