I thought I was very well-versed in the story of Kermit Gosnell, Philadelphia’s abortionist serial killer. I attended the closing arguments of his trial in 2013 (something I wrote about in my 2016 book The Culture War); I visited his trashy and abandoned clinic; I’ve spoken to women who had abortions in Gosnell’s clinic and a key prosecutor on the case; I reviewed the filmGosnell when it came out. Despite all that, Ann McElhinney’s new podcast Serial Killer: A True Crime Podcast is a gut-punch.
McElhinney is a New York Times bestselling author, documentarian, and journalist who has spent her life chasing down stories around the world. None have gripped her like the case of Kermit Gosnell. That case—and the research afterwards that she has turned into a book, a film, and now a podcast—changed her views on abortion and rocked her to her core. When I interviewed her about the podcast several weeks ago, she was still emotionally affected by what she had found. Thousands upon thousands of babies had been murdered is Gosnell’s clinic—some legally, some illegally. She is determined to tell their story.
The story is nightmarish. Hundreds—probably thousands—of babies were born alive, flipped over, and had scissors plunged into their necks and their spinal cords snipped. Gosnell and staff both killed babies born alive; it was standard practice. In at least one case, they played with a baby before killing him. They crammed babies down the toilet; put them in the freezer, stored them in bags. 3801 Lancaster was crawling with bugs and evil. For thousands of little girls and boys, that cruel hellhole was the only place on earth they would ever see. The kill count of Gosnell’s clinic makes H.H. Holmes’ Chicago Murder Castle seem safe.
It is the interviews with Gosnell on the podcast that are, oddly, most chilling. He sounds like a gentleman—I remember seeing him in the courtroom, taking care to smile at the pro-lifers in the first row. But at one point, in his friendly voice, he recounts checking the accuracy of Dr. Bernard Nathanson’s famous film “The Silent Scream,” which shows a baby opening its mouth in an inaudible howl of pain in the womb during the abortion procedure. Gosnell says that his own experience aborting older babies confirms that “The Silent Scream” was real. He said it with a chuckle. He laughed at the agony of a little one.
This is a chilling story, but it is a story of our times. Babies are still dying at the hands of men like Gosnell; younger children in the womb are being mulched by suction machines or dismembered by forceps. Ann McElhinney’s powerful podcast brings that reality home once again.
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Check out my recent interview with Ann McElhinney:
