Abortion Doc's Lawyer: Murder Trial Is a Racist Lynching

Philly doc accused of stabbing fetuses
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 19, 2013 9:08 AM CDT
Abortion Doc's Lawyer: Murder Trial Is a Racist Lynching
In this March 8, 2010 photo, Dr. Kermit Gosnell is seen during an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News at his attorney's office in Philadelphia.   (AP Photo/Philadelphia Daily News, Yong Kim)

The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell—the Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of killing viable fetuses with scissors, among other grisly crimes—was always going to be a charged affair, but Gosnell's lawyer upped the ante yesterday by immediately bringing race into the discussion. "It's an elitist, racist prosecution," attorney Jack McMahon said in his opening statement. "This black man is being taken because of who he is and where he works." He also called the trial a "prosecutorial lynching," the New York Times reports.

Gosnell's murder trial began yesterday with prosecutors accusing the doctor of terminating seven viable fetuses after Pennsylvania's legal 24.5-week limit in painful fashion. "If the baby is alive and you don’t want it to be, that doesn’t mean you have the right to take a pair of scissors and plunge it into the baby’s neck," one prosecutor said. They also said Gosnell had kept fetal remains throughout the clinic, including 20-30 jars of feet—"Was he keeping trophies?"—and that at least one woman had died in his care. (More Kermit Gosnell stories.)

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