By Dave Andrusko
Already facing a March 2013, trial on seven counts of murder, West Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell yesterday pled not guilty to federal drug charges. No trial date was set by U.S. Magistrate Henry S. Perkin.
Gosnell, who had been in state custody, will now be detained by the Bureau of Prisons on the federal charges of using his offices to illegally dispense thousands of prescriptions for highly addictive painkillers. His office was originally raided in 2010 not because of abortion but because of suspicions that he was dispensing oxycodone for no legitimate medical purpose.
According to the Philadelphia Daily News,
“Federal prosecutors charged Gosnell last month with using his medical office as a ‘pill mill’ to dispense thousands of prescriptions for highly addictive painkillers to cash-paying customers between 2008 and January 2010.
“They said Gosnell, with the help of three co-defendants, distributed more than 500,000 pills containing oxycodone, 400,000 pills containing alprazolam and more than 19,000 ounces of a cough syrup containing codeine from June 2008 to February 2010 for no legitimate medical purpose.
“The co-defendants aided Gosnell by taking customers’ orders for prescription refills and selling the scripts, the indictment said.
“After charging customers an initial fee of $115 for an office visit, which was later increased, Gosnell, beginning in July 2009, began charging customers for refill prescriptions at the time of pickup, typically $20 for those paying in cash and $10 for those with insurance, prosecutors said.”
If Gosnell is convicted of all drug charges, he faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison.
One after another of Gosnell’s employees at the Women’s Medical Society abortion clinic have pled guilty to charges up to and including murder. The latest development occurred earlier this month when we learned that Steven Massof, already convicted of killing two babies born alive at Gosnell’s abortion clinic, is due in federal court February 8 to enter a plea on the charge that he illegally prescribed oxycodone.
Massof is one of the ten Gosnell employees who were charged following the raid and the publication eleven months later of a scathing Grand Jury report that laid out the alleged atrocities at the abortion clinic.
Massof’s convictions make for stomach-turning reading. Last November Teresa Masterson described the setting for television station NBC 10 in Philadelphia:
“The medical school graduate who admitted to snapping the necks of at least 100 moving and breathing babies born in Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the deaths of two late-term babies.
“Steven Massof, 49, of Pittsburgh, pleaded guilty on Thursday to two counts of third-degree murder, murder conspiracy and other charges.
“Massof testified to a grand jury that he regularly delivered babies whose mothers were induced, snipped the umbilical cords and then cut the babies’ spinal cords, as it was ‘standard procedure.’
“When asked how often this happened, Massof answered:
“’More times than I really care to remember. I would have to say every week it would happen to at least 50 percent of the patients.’”
Massof testified that he thought all of those babies were larger than 24 weeks.
According to the Grand Jury report, Massof was an unlicensed medical school graduate who “worked as a bartender and cook in Pittsburgh after graduating from medical school.”
As for Gosnell himself, he is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of seven babies aborted alive and then killed when their spines were severed; and with third-degree murder in the case of the 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, who died from a drug overdose prescribed by Gosnell. Gosnell is awaiting trial.
Referring to the Grand Jury’s 281-page report, prosecutors called Gosnell’s abortion clinic “a baby charnel house,” with fetal remains strewn around the office which reeked of cat urine. The report “read like a grisly script,” according to the New York Times. “Plastic bags and mineral water bottles holding aborted fetuses were found stashed in Dr. Gosnell’s clinic. Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf, the Philadelphia district attorney, Seth Williams, said in a statement.”
The Grand Jury also wrote
“Gosnell routinely cracked jokes about babies whose necks he had just slit. He treated his patients with condescension—slapping them, providing abysmal care, and often refusing even to see or talk to them—unless they were Caucasian, or had money. He yelled at and intimidated his staff. And he took advantage of poor women in desperate situations.”
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