When the grand jury report in the Kermit Gosnell trial was released yesterday, one would think that the media would have as the primary takeaway the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's documentation of the numerous atrocities committed in this house of horrors. Yet, for the Associated Press, the real victims seemed to be Gosnell's employees, those poor folks who had no job prospects than infanticide.
Of the eight co-workers charged in the aftermath of Gosnell’s arrest, three have pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. Nonetheless, they all say that they were just doing what they were instructed to do, simply following orders. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted yesterday about MaryClaire Dale of AP, and her April 12 story that lamented how these workers had “few options” for employment:
In testimony at the capital murder trial this past month, an unlicensed doctor and untrained aides described long, chaotic days at the clinic. They said they performed grueling, often gruesome work for little more than minimum wage, paid by Gosnell under the table.
But for most, it was the best job they could find.
Unlicensed doctor Stephen Massof, 50, of Pittsburgh, said he could not get a U.S. medical residency after finishing medical school in Grenada and went to work for Gosnell as a "backup plan" after six years running a bar. He admitted killing two babies by snipping their necks, as he said Gosnell taught him to do.
Eileen O'Neill, 56, had worked as a doctor in Louisiana but relinquished her medical license in 2000 to deal with "post-traumatic stress syndrome," according to her 2011 grand jury testimony. She is the only employee on trial with Gosnell, fighting false billing and racketeering charges.
According to one colleague, O'Neill was increasingly upset at the line of people who came to Gosnell's adjacent medical clinic for painkillers. And she was angry that he wasn't helping her regain her license.
"She said: `All I do is break my neck for him all the time, and he never does anything for me. I'm going to have to do something about it,'" front desk worker Tina Baldwin testified this week, recalling a conversation with O'Neill.
Sherry West, who testified that a baby screamed when it was killed, “had been a longtime surgical technician at the Veterans Administration but quit in 2007 after contracting Hepatitis C. A year later, still waiting on disability benefits, she went to work for Gosnell.” So, these people are complicit in murder, but they should given empathy by us because they hit some rough patches in their lives. Ed Morrissey aptly noted that:
[O]ne could understand if they took the job out of desperation, but left when they saw the conditions and the practice of killing live infants born after botched abortions. It might be more understandable if they had alerted authorities about both after leaving. Instead, though, these adults — most if not all of them well into middle age — made the conscious decision to get paid to endanger and maim women, at least one of whom died, and kill babies.
(H/T Hot Air)
