As jurors hear closing arguments in the murder trial of Philadelphia “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell, pro-life activist Lila Rose has set out to prove that Gosnell’s “gruesome and inhuman practices” are “business as usual for the abortion industry in America.”
Rose is best known for a series of undercover videos she produced in hopes of compromising Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. As a young-looking UCLA student, she posed as an underage girl impregnated by a much older boyfriend (sometimes played by fellow undercover enthusiast James O’Keefe), trying to get an abortion without informing her parents and the police. Subsequent operations, which had male actors playing sex traffickers asking about birth control for their underage employees, cost one clinic manager her job. But they also prompted Planned Parenthood to contact local police and the FBI, and were largely considered a failure. When an attempt last year to prove that Planned Parenthood endorsed sex-selective abortion (they don’t) was quickly sniffed out by clinic employees, it seemed Rose and her video production company Live Action were losing steam.
But with the world's worst abortion provider hijacking the national conversation about reproductive rights, Rose has entered the fray again. In two new videos released yesterday, the now-24-year-old sent six-months-pregnant undercover “investigators” into Bronx, New York, and Washington, D.C. abortion clinics to get staff members to describe what they would do in the extremely unlikely event that a botched late-term procedure led to a live birth (something Gosnell allegedly did intentionally).
In the big reveal (video below), providers try to assure the patient. One employee incorrectly says the fetus will be killed by solution in a medical waste jar (recalling a vivid detail from Gosnell's clinic), and another doctor tells the patient that a live fetus won't be intubated.
The New York Times reports that the woman seen telling the undercover patient about jars was “assigned to record the woman’s medical history,” is not an abortion counselor, and was misinformed. (Later, an abortion counselor can be seen explaining to the patient the doctors will do everything he can to save a fetus that survives an abortion, as is the law.) In the Washington Post, the doctor targeted in the D.C. operation stands by his comments, adding that in the unlikely event of a live birth, he would call EMS but ultimately would "let nature take its course."
There's no sugarcoating the logistics of late-term abortions, even the safe, legal and rare ones. But the doctors unwittingly filmed by Rose show a level of concern for their patients' autonomy, dignity and well-being that allegations suggest was absent from Gosnell’s clinic.
Read more posts by Kat Stoeffel
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love and war
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,kermit gosnell