when you are there. i'm laura ingram in for bill o'reilly. the spin stops right here because we're always looking out for you. have a great weekend! >> bret: the court of common pleas in pennsylvania goes all the way back to 1776 but you have to bond ferrara they ever had a case more horrific than the capital murder trial of abortion doctor kermit gosnell. a strong viewer warning is in order. the story we are about to tell is grim. the kermit gosnell case is a landmark legal battle about race, class and the reality of abortion in america. but the details are appalling. they are set out in this 281 page grand jury report that summed up its allegations against gosnell on page 1, paragraph 1.

quote, he regularly and illegally delivered live viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy and murdered them by severing their spinal cords with scissors. many people came to know that something was going on here but you no one put a stop to it. several of the employees testified that this happened and some pleaded guilty to murdering babies. as i speak, a philadelphia jury has not yet decided the fate of kermit gosnell whose controversial career began a half century ago at the dawn of the abortion rights movement. kermit gosnell was born in philadelphia in 1941. raised in a working class black neighborhooded he was a striver. from his humble beginnings he would ultimately go on to graduate from philadelphia's jefferson medical college in 1966. the '60 its and early '70s were

heady days for a generation pushing social and political change and kermit gosnell m.d. fit right in says author and fox news editor peter boyer. >> he was the ultimate expression of the civil rights movement but also on the edge of an almost radical vein of thought when it came to what he called women's health issues which became a kind of euphemism for the abortion rights movement. >> bret: may 1972. the supreme court herd arguements in an historic abortion case but it would be months before the actual roe v. wade decision. one group drum up political theater ahead of the decision. they reach out to kermit gosnell who trained at a new york abortion clinic before returning to philadelphia yes. >> became consequently in one of the weirdest andved

darkest episodes in the abork rights movement. >> bret: it would ultimately become the subject of a u.s. senate hearing. the story began in chicago where abortion was illegal. the women's group chartered a bus to drive 15 poor pregnant women in their second trimester to philadelphia where abortion law was ambiguous. there the next day, mother's day, kerr met and another doctor performed free abortions on all of them with tv cameras rolling. the television footage is lost. only news paper accounts survived. they report the that gosnell was using something called a super coil. >> the super coil was an experimental medical device meant to be inserted into the uterus of a woman who is pregnant and gradually as the super coil heated up to body temperature it would expand and

start really lass rating, tearing, cutting, causing bleeding. >> dr. kidd any wolfe one of ralph nader's consumer watch dogs was appalled by the stunt. >> they were never told this was an experiment or the known dangers about it. dr. gosnell's license should are have been yanked then. >> nine of the 15 women suffered complications. three ended up in the hospital. the episode became known as the mother's day massacre. when the senate held its hearing a year later gosnellish sued a defayant statement casting himself as one doctor who actually did something for women's health rather than just talk about it. of the mother's day abortions gosnell wrote "it would have been irresponsible not to respond to these women." after roe v. wade made abortion a constitutional right gosnell would make a career out o the ground of performing them even

though he was never certified as an obstetrician or gynecologist. >> he didn't make it through a residency. you would be scrambling and trying to get a career together what do i do? you find a role. if it works for you, you keep doing it. >> bret: it worked. before the '70 were over he opened the women's medical sew seity at 38th street and lancaster avenue in west philadelphia complete with the silhouette of a couple swinging a child between them. >> the neighbor hehood loved gosnell and they said he was respected upstanding member of the community and known for his reputation in the community. >> bret: jen thompson made a short film about gosnell called 3801 lancaster. >> we had people tell us if they had a problem dr. gosnell was the one to go to.

>> bret: the clinic operated on the shady side from the beginning suggests philadelphia district attorney is seth williams. >> the doctor was not a board certified obstetrician or gynecologist. they used the name of another physician who was certified to open the clinic. >> bret: government health officials didn't seem to care. >> we found that the first inspection was done in 1978 and it was good for a year to 1979. the second inspection was done for ten years later in 1989. >> bret: when they did inspect they found significant problems like not having licensed nurses on staff. but authorities looked the other way. >> in 1993 was the last time for the approval and over 17 years no one is set foot in that clinic and no one did any annual inspections and no one went out for any complaints. >> bret: the grand jury would learn one reason why that happened. politics.

syndicated columnist and fox news contributor kirsten powers. >> testimony done by a department of health top official recounted a meeting under the new administration of tom ridge they decided they didn't want to in peck the abortion clinics because this would put up barriers of access. governor ridge's administration was concerned if they did team inspections they would find too many violations. >> bret: meanwhile, gosnell's clinic become stunningly profitable. prosecutors estimate he was taking in $15,000 a night. close to $2 million a year in cash. and he kept costs low at his ill equipped clinic with an untrained staff. >> and he had them doing jobs that are for professionals. he had them doing ultrasound. there was a 15-year-old who was hired to work at clinic. dr. gosnell gave her a science textbook which she read for 20

minutes and she became an anesthesiologist. another went to a caribbean medical school but was never licensed to practice. >> a doctor went to school in grenada and after the clinic was closed he became a telemarketer. >> he wasn't even there during the day. he would have the untrained unlicensed staff monitoring the women and then he would come there at 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 at night and have the abortions performed throughout the night until 3:00 in the morning. >> bret: and that is just the beginning. according to prosecutors in their case against gosnell his women's medical sew i society s much worse than a poorly run clinic, it was a home to butchery and murder plain and simple. after the break. [ male announcer ] when you take shortcuts,

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was kermit gosnell a courageous crusader who helped women exercise their reproductive rights or an incompetent unethical doctor who found a niche performing abortions for poor desperate women with no place else to turn. >> that was the place to go for your abortion and you could go without your parents consent and if you got pregnant again with two or are three months you could go right back. you would go there to take care of peace and handle the situation. >> she says she learnd that when she got pregnant back in the 1990s. she didn't decide to get an abortion but you when her mother found out she convinced her. >> that is the answer to a young teenaged girl finding out that she is pregnant, still in high school is to terrorist pregnancy.my natto terminate te >> bret: she took more time to

options.other high pressure most told her it would be too painful to endure without anesthesia. >> if you are past the 12 weeks you could not get an abortion without the anesthesia and with the anesthesia it cost more money so the clinic where dr. gosnell was at said you did not have to worry about that. you could be over a certain amount of weeks and still get the abortion done. >> bret: then hudson haded to come up with gosnell's $350 fee. by the time she got it she worried she was so far along that even gosnell's clinic would make her buy anesthesia. it didn't. >> they did the thesonogram and he was like you are a little over 12 weeks and i kind of was like a little over in my head like that was like almost 18 weeks and they prepped me, no counseling or anything. >> as soon as the procedure

began, hudson knew the clinic had done her no favors. >> i literally felt like a part of my insides like ripped. i remember just asking him like do i supposed to be in this much pain. i felt like something was like ripping like literally leak ripping inside of me. >> that is almost like torture. >> bret: dr. nanny alvarez is a respected og-gyn. >> people were given the option of paying for how much pain free status they wanted to be in. imagine taking your appendix without anesthesia or telling somebody we will take your appendix but how much anesthesia are you willing to pay for. >> bret: and there was other cause for alarm. in the mid '90s, a pediatrician who practiced nearby notice something troubling. philadelphia prosecutor ann

pontario. >> he had seen young girls and women who had gone to the clinic come back with venereal diseases. dr. gosnell was reusing the instruments. the bloody instruments were passed from one to the next. the possibility of infection was uncontrollable. >> bret: pennsylvania health officials received this complaint and dozens of others through the decades. complaints feeled by patients gosnell harmed because again prosecutors say no state inspector set foot in his clinic for years. if state officials had done their job would a young mother of two, her name, shamika shah, still be alived. she died due to a botched late term abortion by gosnell in 2000. >> he basically cut her in pieces. her uterus was perforated. part of the placenta was left in her womb. he butchered her.

>> margo is shamika's cousin and a pennsylvania state representative. she says after her cousins took her home her condition worsened. >> he told her and her other fellow cousins in her same age group not to call if there was a problem because it would be trouble for them. she was rolling on the floor. she was screaming. she was crying. she was gasping for air. and she was bleeding profusely. they were afraid to call the clinic. they finally did call the clinic and got no answer, no callback. finally her mother came home and took her to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. shaw's family sued and said they were stone walled by state officials. >> the attorney asks the department of health please give us anything you can about the famous music set and the replay this time was not that we can't give it to you.

there are no complaints. >> the department of health top attorney their general counsel when asked about why they did not follow up on the complaints her answer was and i quote "people die." >> the department of public health, once again failed the community, failed my he cousin. >> bret: the shaws settled the lawsuit for $900,000. one of at least five gosnell malpractice cases resulting in $1.7 million in payoffs. in 2001, one of the staffers tried to blow the whistle on him by calling the pennsylvania secretary of state. prosecutor mariana sorenson. >> her name was marcella stanley and choung and she was one of the unlance unlicensed s treated like a doctor. she was nervous that she was going kill a woman and she told them everything they needed to

know to shut this man down forever. >> bret: all that got shut down she said was the investigation. >> it was closed by the department of the state prosecutor saying prosecution not warranted. >> bret: but the word about gosnell was is getting out prosecutors say and that was hurting his business. >> he could not get the referrals. he didn't get many first trimester patients any more and so he changed his model by going with the more expensive late term and illegal abortions. >> many people knew along the atlantic seaboard if you could not get a late term abortion anywhere else you could go to the women's medical society run by dr. gosnell and if you could pay you could get a late term abortion. >> bret: even if you are more than 24 weeks pregnant. though those abortions are illegal in pennsylvania and many other states.

legal or not, dr. manny alvarez says late term abortions are complicated and dangerous. >> many things can go wrong. the chances are bleeding are tremendous. the other complication is the mechanics of removing a fetus of 24 weeks. you run the chance of perforating the uterus. you have issues of infection. you have to have the skills. you have to have the infrastructure. you have to have the healthcare personnel. for people to be doing this out of a so-called little private office really there is no words to describe the crime. >> bret: unlike the ala carte pricing for anesthesia in short-term abortions he insisted that late term patients be heavily sedated. >> he didn't like anybody who was loud because he didn't want to attract the police. what he would do is tell the

women to med them up. med 'em up. >> 41-year-old caramaya was a mother of grow and grandmother of one and 18 weeks pregnant. four months earlier she had moved to virginia from nepal and wanted to end the pregnancy. three local clinics would not perform the abortion but you one referred her to the women's medical society. her friend and daughter drove her to gosnell's clinic. >> should be given once every three hours and this medication was given to her every hour on the hour and she was given another drug that is to induce sleepiness. she was given demerol, dose after demerol does after demerol dose. >> she was a small woman but gosnell's two unlicensed linda williams andams and sherry west who would later be

charged with murder did not adjust the medication to her size. >> she lost all vital signs and stopped breathing. >> when could not revive her he went into cover up a mode. he didn't call the ambulance for hours and didn't tell the paramedics about the heavy doses of demerol and when they did get a pulse he couldn't find the key hes to the padlocked emergency exit. >> the survival chances were severely hampered by the fact it took the paramedics 20 minutes getting the door open. >> she was pronounced dead at the hospital. even all that the health department declined to send investigators to the clinic. ann pontario says if they had they might have made another shocking discovery. evidence of the gosnell clinic's most horrifying secret

of all. >> these babies were born and born alive and they were kill. >> when fox news reporting continues. after the break.

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>> bret: you heard about the harm some women suffered at kermit gosnell's women's

medical society. those injuries, those deaths all unintentional. not so witnesses say in the case of babies born alive in the clinic. >> he was inducing labor and he was having these women deliver babies and deliver fe fetuses. >> the witnesses testified the means by which the baby's lives were taken wasn't a traditional type of abortion procedure. they were drugged up and birth induce and once the baby left the mother's body taking its first breath at that point that is how this doctor elected to kill these babies. >> he had a process that he referred to as snipping that the children would be born alive and that they would then take scissors and place them at the base of the skull and snip or sever the spinal cord of those children that were born alive. >> this is a very, very painful

thing. and some of these babies did not die immediately. >> those aren't botched abortions. that is homicide. >> and the reason he was doing this is because he had 46 lawsuits and he was paying out money for women who remained mutilated and it was easier to deliver a baby rather than go in there and extract it himself. >> the grand jury heard about that from steve masoff a grenada med school grad who worked as the $300 a week unlicensed medical resident. >> the fetus would precipitate. >> what do you mean. >> attend to the patient. >> what would you do. >> i would make sure that the cord was cut. also a standard procedure the cervical spine was cut. >> how often did this happen? many times more than i really care to remember. i would have to say every week it would happen to at least 50%

of the patients. >> and there was testimony given to the grand jury that this process of snipping happened hundreds of times. >> one of the assistants testified at one point gosnell told h her the law had changed and he couldn't snip babies necks any more so gosnell tried injecting a drug into the fetus' heart to kill it in the woman but he couldn't do it right, cross testified. >> he tried to do the needle in the stomach and that is what was supposed to have killed the baby before the baby came out but if he didn't he would say oh, well, the law saysky do it, i can still slit the baby's neck because the needle didn't work. >> according to cross and others the needle never worked so the grand jury found gosnell stops trying it all together and reverted to his old system of killing babies after they

were born. >> i think there is a lot of evidence here that it didn't matter to this doctor one bit whether he killed the fetus inside womb or outside the womb. it was clear in the late term abortions he was using medications to dope up the patients and try to get the baby out and kill it outside the womb. >> the babies allegedly born alive never got names. the grand jury would refer to some by letters starting with baby boy. >> they are so alarmed at the size and development all developed all of the features, all of the body parts, they took photographs because they were horrified this was something that was terribly wrong what was happening there and they knew it. >> bret: gosnell's sono gram records say the mother was 29.4 weeks pregnant. well, beyond the legal limit

for anew york city, pennsylvania. a prosecution expert concluded that baby boy a was at least 32 weeks in the womb. >> a 30 week fetus has an over 80% chance of surviving. i have delivered babe yos at 24 weeks and now they come and see me and they are high school students and, you know, so at 30 weeks, come on. >> bret: she told the grand jury that the baby was breathing when she saw you dr. gosnell just slit its neck and then put the baby in a shoe box too small to hold him. >> the doctor stated that this baby boy was big enough to take him, walk him to the bus stop. >> the body of baby boy b would be found in gosnell's freezer. >> baby boy b was 28 weeks old

at an age when babies can freeze found frozen in a water bottle with the evidence of the spine being snipped from behind and the vertebrae penetrated. something that would cause great pain. only one thing theone thing medical examiner testified, it was the slit to the back of the neck and the testimony was that scissors were put through and perforated through that area to cut the spinal cord and kill the baby. >> bret: based on the grand jury report not all of the killing was done by gosnell himself. cross testified she witnessed linda williams murder a baby, baby c who had been breathing and moving for 20 minutes. >> williams called cross over to take a look at the babe a yan she says why to you think ms. williams killed that babia

that was alive and breathing and moving for 20 minutes and she said i guess because she had seen dr. gosnell do it so many times. >> bret: some deliveries did not happen on an operating table. >> there were women who because they were given so much medication they were going to the bathroom and they would deliver babies into the toilet. >> in the later stages of pregnancy the only thing holding the baby in place is oust and tight cervix but a drug like cytotex relaxes the cervix so a women could literally be sitting in the bathroom and deliver a baby. that is a live birth. >> bret: when baby d was delivered in a toilet gosnell's assistant took over. >> moton reached in to this little baby swimming trying to save its own life and get out of the toilet, grabbed the baby

and slit its neck. >> moten has admitted to killing babies ten times. according to testimony others just watched and did nothing. >> baby e is a baby that ashley balden testified she saw in the procedure room and heard the baby whining and make crying noises and the baby was alive and when the doctor came out of the room the baby was dead. she saw the baby thrown in the trash like garbage dr. gosnell. >> have you seen a horror movie where you hear a baby crying in the room and the murderer goes inton the baby stops crying? that is baby e. >> bret: mosof testified he personally cut the necks of multiple babies. baby g is the last murder victim named by the grand jury but the panel believes gosnell

killed many more babies outside of the site of his compliance staff. >> we know that dr. gosnell would perform the latest of late term abortions on sunday when none of the other staff members were present. only he and his wife would come in to the clinic. we really have no way of accurately determining beyond a reasonable doubt how many children met their demise as a result of these sunday late term abortions. >> bret: degosnell's alleged steps to avoid te avoid detects hard to believe that sooner or later his enterprise would not be found out but it took 31 years and not for the reason you would think. that story, when we return. to order a copy of this and other fox news reporting specials on dvd go to www.

foxnews.com/specials.

>> bret: thetruthisitwasn'tthe a thetruthisitwasn'tthea thetruthisitwasn'ttheabortionsl 'scareeritwasthedrugs. theclinicwasanabortionmillat nig theclinicwasanabortionmillatnig htbut authorities say he was up to no good during the day as well. they raided the clinic because they believed it was a pill mill that illegally sold prescriptions for powerful pain killers and other medicines. >> the search is a culmination of an investigation into a massive illegal drug selling operation involving prescriptions for oxycontin and other narcotics. >> bret: the fbi and the dea led the raid on february 18th, 2010. >> they thought that they would find a normal clinic that allowed this doctor to make so much money and for so many

people to get illegal preascriptions for narcotics. what they discovered was a horrific almost out of one of the worst movies or horror novels that you could imagine. >> bret: official from the pennsylvania department of health and department of state came along. according to the grand jury report it wasser that first visit to the clinic in more than 15 years. >> instead of just seeing pills they saw blood. blood stain walls. urine on the walls. feces. infestation. >> medical waste bags everywhere in the clinic. >> also found a refrigerator where the employees kept their lunch but that also had bags filled with fetal remains. they found jar after jar after jar filled with remains and specifically severed feet in jars. >> it just completely overwhelming.

you just don't know how to process something like that. >> bret: at age 16, december manning went to gosnell's abortion clinic in 2009. she learned just this year that he had cut off the foot of her child and saved it. hawkins also learned that gosnell lied to her about the age of her baby. he said she was far less than 21 weeks. >> i was actually 23 weeks and four days. i already considered that there is a possibility that he snipped my kid. >> the grand jury found that investigators recovered the remains of 45 fetu fetuses ande admitted to a detective that 10% to 20% were probably older than 24 weeksion the legal cutoff. baby boy b was one of two the prosecution claims were medically firmed to have been viable. they also found women, dazed women. >> they were almost stuporous.

they were jam inside a room where they are all there together. some of them were bleeding. and so the department of health they called and told the detectives call for an ambulance. >> at the same time they searched gosnell's house and found patient files, almost a quarter million dollars in cash and a gun. the state and local authorities that had ignored the abortion mill for more than a generation now swung into action. february 22, 2010, the board of medicine suspended gosnell's medical license. march 12 the department of health began the process of shutting down the clinic. may 4, the philadelphia d.a. submitted the case to a grand jury. for more than six months the grand jury reviewed thousands of pieces of evidence and heard testimony from 58 witnesses before releasing a 281-page report. >> the presentment charges one count of third-degree murder against gosnell and his

associates for killing carnamaya and 7 counts of first-degree murder for the intentional killing of viable babies born alive. >> though the d. a. charged gosnell with only 7 murders if the allegations of the grand jury are true he could be guilty of hundreds of premeditated killings. more than any american mass murderer or serial killer. the prosecution filed notice that it might seek the death penalty. >> i haven't seen a great deal of publicity because i have lived through negative publicity before. >> if you are not making -- i think that my patients are aware that i do my very best by them. >> it was as if he was saying

that is my job, you know. i'm being charged with killing these babesies, that is why they came to me. >> nine of the employees were also charged. three pleaded guilty to an assortment of crimes. perjury, racketeering, corrupting a minor and conspiracy. sherry west pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. three others pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the deaths of babies born alive. steven admitted he assisted in the snipping of the necks of baby f and baby g after they were born alive. to avoid death or life in prison he pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. williams pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. adrian moton who snipped the neck of baby d pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and

other charges. finally, pearl gosnell, dr. gosnell's wife pleaded guilty to illegal late term abortion and conspiracy. she would not testify against her husband. the others would testify at trial to what they saw and what they did. horrible crimes no longer alleged but admitted. >> actual people that worked under the employ of dr. kermit gosnell admitted that they murdered babies as part of the regular routine practice of what was going on in that shop of horrors. so this isn't speculation. this isn't a theory by the prosecution. this is real and it is murder. >> bret: the remaining question was whether a jury would find gosnell himself guilty of any of the killings. he pleaded not guilty to murder and a long list of lesser charges that included

infantacide, conspiracy, illegal late term abortions. his employee eileen o'neill would stand charge with him on charges of theft by deception. a 17 member jury was impanelled including alternates. there were 8 men and nine women. in the opening argument gosnell's attorney told them prosecutoriala "ross cue torial lynching" and referring to gosnell this black man is being taken because of who he is and where he works. the clinic they staid had a lower than average complication rate and repeat business as well and he said the prosecution was elitist, "they want to put mayo clinic standards on a west philadelphia clinic." explosive charges. would the jury be convinced? fox news reporting continues after the break. [ male announcer] surprise -- you're having triplets.

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>> bret: returning to our story. the jury heard how the lawyer is framed the kermit gosnell case. the prosecution says the abortion doctor is a murderer who made a practice of delivering live babies and then killing them in cold blood. the defense says it is a racist prosecution of an inner city doctor doing his best for poor women with no where else to turn. now, the jury would hear from people who actually worked in the clinic what they saw and what they did. march 18 began a five week parade of witnesses for the prosecution. to peter boyer, the trial testimony lent a new dimension horrifying allegations

in the grab jury report. >> she told the court that she had snipped the spines of ten babies who had been born alive. she did these things and was asked was that murder, did you consider it wrong? and she he said, you know, at first i didn't. >> bret: the testimony captured for boyer what the german philosopher anna errant talking about the holocaust called the bonality of evil. >> there was another employee who gave testimony, a young woman named linda williams and she talked about the snipping of the spinal cord and was asked did you have any awareness that this was murder and she told the jury i only do what i'm told to do. what i was told to do was snip their neck. >> this was some of the most horrifying testimony i have sat

through in a courtroom. >> kimberly guilfoyle is a former sex crimes prosecutor. >> i wonder the how they would get that out of their head. the photos blown up of the big full term almost essentially babe yos and you see life there. >> bret: gosnell's lawyer tried to undermine the prosecution's case count by count. he painted some witnesses as disgruntled employees and suggested the prosecution used threats of the death penalty and long prison terms to get clinic workers to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit. he said all of the babies gosnell is charged with killing were already best or at best doomed because he had injected them with a drug to stop their hearts and he scored his biggest point during the testimony about baby boy b. a baby the prosecution alleges who was born alive at 28 weeks and then killed by gosnell and placed in his freezer. >> the defense attorney mr. mcmahon got up and he has a

very like booming voice and he moved around and circled right in front of the jury to show that he wasn't afraid of the evidence and he had seen the photos too and questioned the chief medical examiner and asked him can you say with a reasonable degree of medal certainty that this baby was born alive. and the witness said no, i cannot. >> bret: with that testimony, on a defense motion, the judge himself acquitted gosnell of the murder of baby boy b. he also threw out the murder charges relating to babies f and g. the judge did not explain his ruling but fox news medical expert dr. mark siegel says the judge is wrong if he based his ruling on the fact that the babies had been observed moving but not necessarily breathing. >> there may be some debate about whether life begins at inception but what there is no debate about. if a baby is born and you need

to use a respirator to get that baby breatheing that is a a viable life. >> bret: either way the defense had knocked out three of the seven capital murder charges against gosnell before it even began presenting its case. that was scheduled to begin wednesday, april 24. when court went into is session that morning. another bombshell. the defense rested without calling a single witness. no medical experts. no clinic employees. no satisfied patients. no gosnell himself. >> it was a high risk move. kermit gosnell's attorney was gambling the doctor's life on a closing argument. a closing arguement that would reignite the explosive charges made at the outset of the trial that his client was the victim of a racist elitist prosecutowe realities of abortion in america. after the break.

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>> bret: and now the conclusion to our story. it has been more are than two years since the allegations were leveled at dr. kermit gosnell and nearly two months since his trial started. it was time to finally come to terms with what did or did not

happen in his west philadelphia abortion clinic. for the jury, and for the nation as well. when kermit gosnell's trial started something odd happened. or to be more precise didn't happen. the seats reserved for the media were empty. >> we have a mainstream media that typically likes to cover any issues related to reproductive rights or abortion thoroughly but generally this trial was ignored. >> bret: kirsten powers was appalled and wrote a usa today piece saying so. >> you would have had to be following activist blowing actn right or left.klogsactivist ble >> in the same way there are policy implications like a mass shooting in newtown, there are

serious implications about what happened at the abortion clinic. i was quit shocked i hadn't heard anything about this. >> bret: most americans had never heard of the gosnell case according to a fox news poll. of those following the trial a majority attributed the lack of national news coverage to media bias. far few figured it was just a local store relationship or too gruesome to tell. antiabortion leaders say if americans know what happens in gosnell's clinic many more would oppose legalized abortion but some prochoicers believe the opposite. >> i'm happy to see the story given play because of what i think it teaches us about where america is and how much harm our policies are doing to women. >> bret: state senator dalen leach thinks americans would be more likely to support policies that would give poor women more

access to better abortion services. >> no one is defending what he did or his practices or that conduct. >> bret: but gosnell lawyers would offer a defense of what they say their client really did in thinks clinic and the jury would hear it during the closing argument. the media would hear it, too. for it is worth noting when jack mcmahon gosnell's defense lawyer stood up to speak the press section of the courtroom was packed. fox news editor at large peter boyer was there. >> gosnell's attorney asserted once again, that it was an elitist and racist prosecution. he said that his client had been singled out because he was an of a concern american pro providing abortion services in an urban community. >> he did more than play the race card. >> the attorney told the jury you are not here to decide whether or not abortion is pretty, it is not pretty. it is bloody. it is real.

>> it was almost like the jack nicholson scene in "a few good men." i'm providing services to poor people and you can't handle the truth. >> the prosecution pain stakingly went through its case against gosnell one more time. more than 150 criminal don'ts. racketeering. performing abortions without a waiting period. performing illegal late term abortions. third-degree murder of carnaya and in the deaths of baby boy a and babies c, d and e, four counts of murder in the first-degree. a grim cat that log of innocent life callously terminated as a matter of routine. the judge reminded the jurors that their duty was to discover the truth and they began their deliberations. in their hands, the life of dr. kermit gosnell and it might be said the conscience of a

nation. wednesday passed, no verdict. is thursday. no verdict. the deliberations continue. regardless of your view of gosnell himself, this trial haded by the end become less about the fate of one man and more about a turning point in the most enduring and emotional debate in recent american history. whether you are prolife, prochoice, or simply not sure, the case of kermit gosnell provides our society with a reality check. gosnell's abortion clinic did exist under the ba mea benign t of the authorities. how did this happen? how should we go forward. in this case won't be the end of the abortion debate but it may help clarify it. that is our show for tonight. i'm bret baier. thanks for watching. fox news reporting.

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jettonight,donaldtrump,steve for jettonight,donaldtrump,stevefor bes. first,jodiariasissheacoldbloodd killer or a victim of abuse? >> an arizona man in the shower stabbed 27 times shot in the the head and his throat slit from ear to ear. the accused killer h his former girlfriend who is now standing trial. she he claims at least now that she was forced to kill. >> i didn't kill travis. i did not take his life. >> this is not a case of who done it. the person who done it, the person who committed this killing sits in court today.