the court of common pleas in pennsylvania goes back all the way to 1776. but you have to wonder if they have 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 allegations against gosnell on page 1 paragraph

one. over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. but no one put a stop to it. >> dr. gosnell, your reaction to the verdict? >> on monday, a philadelphia jury finally did. it found gosnell guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive in his clinic. >> an explosive decision that could change the national abortion debate. something a young kermit gosnell tried to do a half century ago. kermit gosnell was born in fail famous music in 1941. raised in a working class black neighborhood, he was a striver. from his humble beginnings he would ultimately go on to graduate from philadelphia's jefferson medical college in 1966. the '60s and early '70s were heady days and kermit gosnell

md fit right in says author and fox news executive editor peter boyle. >> he was the ultimate expression you could argue o the ground offer the civil rights movement but also on the edge of an almost radical vein of thought when it came to women's health issues which became a euphemism for human rights issues. >> one about proabortion women's health group climb up an outrageous piece of political theater her and reached out to kermit gosnell who had trained at a clinic before returning to philadelphia. >> he became ultimately involved in one of the weirdest and darkest episodes in the abortion rights movement.

>> bret: an episode that would ultimately become the subject of a u.s. senate hearing on human experimentation. the story begins in chicago where abortion was illegal. the women's group chartered a bus to drive 15 poor pregnant women in their second trimess terrorist attack to philadelphia wher to philadelphia. the television footage is lost. only news paper accounts survived. they report that gosnell was using something called a supercoil. >> it was an experimental medical device meant to be inserted into the uterus of a woman who is pregnant and graded wall wally gradually it would expand and start lass rating, tearing, cutting, causing bleeding.

>> bret: dr. sidney wolf was appalled by the stunt. >> they were never told this is an experiment. they were never told some of the known dangers about it. dr. gosnell's license should have been yanked then. >> bret: nine of 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 gosnell issued a defiant 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 of performing them, even though he was never certified as an obstetrician or gynecologist. >> kermit gosnell was a failed

physician. >> dr. mark siegel of the fox medical a team. >> he didn't make it through a residency. what do i do? you find a role and if it works for are you, you keep doing it. >> bret: it worked. before the '70s were over he opened the women's medical society at 38th street and lancaster avenue in west philadelphia complete with a silhouette of a couple swinging a child between them. >> the communities around the clinic loved dr. gosnell and they said he was a resented upstanding member of their community and was known for his reputation in the community. >> documentarian jen thompson made a short film about gosnell called "3801 lancaster." >> if they had a problem dr. goss was the one to go to. >> bret: the clinic operated on the shady side from the

beginning suggests fail famous music district attorney seth williams. >> they used the name of another physician who was board certified to open the clinic. >> bret: government health officials, however, didn't seem to care. >> 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 set foot in the clinic and no one did any annual inspections and no one went out for any complaints. >> the grand jury would learn one reason why that happened. politics. syndicated col upist and fox kirstentributor kyrste i can e

powers. >> under the new governor they decided they did not want to inspect the abortion clinics because it would be putting up a barrier of access of abortions to women. governor ridge's administration was concerned if they did routine 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 are for professionals. he had them doing ultrasounds. >> there was a 15-year-old hired to work at the clinic, dr. gosnell gave here a science textbook which she read for 20 minutes and she became an on

anesthesiologist. >> there was a doctor who had gone to the school in grenada and after the clinic was closed he became a telemarketer. >> dr. gosnell wasn't even there during the day. he would have the untrained unlicensed staff monitoring these women and he would come there at 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 at night and he would have these abortions performed throughout the night until in the morning. >> and that is just the beginning. according to prosecutors in their case against gosnell his women's medical society was much worse than an incompetently run clinic. it was a home to butchery and murder, plain and simple, after the break.

>> bret: was kermit gosnell a courageous crusader who helped women exercise their reproductive rights or an

incompetent unethical doctor who found a niche providing apportions to poor desperate women with no where else to turn? >> that was the place to go for your are abortions and you can go without your parents consent and if you got pregnant again within two or three months you could go right back. you were going there to take care of business, to handle the situation. >> bret: taisha hudson says she learnd that when she got pregnant at 17 back in the 1990s. she didn't immediately decide to get an abortion but when her mother found out she convinced her. >> that was the answer was to terminate the pregnancy. >> bret: she took more time to research her options. she said most clinics told her that an abortion at her stage would be too painful to endure without anesthesia. >> if you are past that 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 can be over a certain amount of weeks and still get the abortion done. >> bret: then hudson had 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 sonogram and he was like you about are a little over 12 weeks. i was like that was like almost 18 weeks. and they prepped me, no counseling or anything. >> bret: as soon as the per are 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 like ripping inside of me. >> that is like torture. >> bret: dr. manny alvarez is a a respected og-gyn and a member of the fox news medical a-team. >> 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 that 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. >> 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 being inserted from one woman to the next and therefore the possibility of infection was uncontrollable. >> bret: pennsylvania health officials received this complaint and dozens of others through the decades. complaints filed by patients gosnell harmed because again the prosecutors say no state inspectors set foot in his clinic for years. if state officials had done their job, would have young mother of two, her name shamika shaw, still be alive? according to the grand jury report shaw died dow you 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. >> margot davidson is shamika's cousin and a pennsylvania state representative.

after her cousins took her home, her condition worsened. >> he told her and other fellow cousins in the 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. finally her mother came home and took her to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. >> bret: shaw's family sued and said they were stonewalled by state officials. >> the attorney asked the department of health please give us anything that you can about this facility. and the reply this time was not that we can't give it to you, there are no complaints. the. >> the department of health top attorney the 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 cousin. >> bret: the shaws settled their lawsuit for $900,000. one of at least five gosnell malpractice cases resulting in $1.7 million in payoffs. in 2001, one of gosnell's staffers tried to blow the whistle on him by calling the pennsylvania secretary of state. prosecutor mariana sorenson. >> she was one of the unlicensed workers who was treated like a doctor. she was put in charge of doing ultrasounds. anesthesiaizeing the patients. she was is nervous she was going to 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 state prosecutor saying prosecution not war ranted. >> bret: but the word about gosnell was 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 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 are complicated and dangerous. >> many things can go wrong. the chances of bleeding are tremendous. the other complication is the mechanics of removing a fetus at 24 weeks. you run the chance of

perforating the uterus. you have issues of inflection. you have to have -- infection. you have to have the skills. you 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, it is really -- there is no words to describe the crime. >> bret: unlike the ala carte pricing for anesthesia in short-term abortions gosnell insistd that late term patients be heavily is a dadeed according to grand jury testimony. >> he didn't like anybody who was loud because he didn't want to attract the police. he would tell these women to med 'em up. med-em-up. med emup. four months earlier she had moved to virginia from nepal. she wanted to end her pregnancy. three local clinics would not perform the abortion but one

referred her to the women's medical society. on november 18 her friend and her daughter drove her to gosnell's clinic. >> supposed to be given once every three hours and this was give karnamaya mongar. she was given demerol dose after demerol dose after demerol dose. >> mongar was a small one but two helpers who would later be charged with murder did not adjust the medication to mongar's size. >> she lost all of her vital signs. she stopped breathing. >> according to the grand jury testimony when gosnell could not revive her he went into coverup 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

gosnell couldn't find the keys to the padlocked emergency exit. >> and ms. mongar's survival chances slim as they were were severely hampered by the fact it took the paramedics 20 minutes getting the door open. >> bret: mongar was pronounced dead at the hospital. are even after all that the health department didn't send an investigator to the clinic. if they had they might have found evidence of the most horrifying practice of all. >> he wasn't even performing abortion procedures. these babies were born and they were born alive and they were killed. >> bret: when fox news reporting continues, after the break. constipation, miralax or metamucil may take days to work. or faster relief, try dulcolax laxative tablets. dulcolax provides gentle relief overnight unlike miralax and metamucil that can take up to 3 days.

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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 fetuses.

>> the witnesses testified the means by which the babies lives were taken wasn't a traditional type of abortion procedure. they were drugged up, birth would be induced and once the baby left the mother's body taking its first breath at that point that is who you 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 the 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 was 46 lawsuits and he was paying out money for women who were mameed and mute tated and it was easier to deliver a baby rather than go in there and extract it

himself. >> bret: the grand jury heard about that from steve masoff, a grenada med school grad who worked as gosnell's $300 a week unlicensed medical assistant. >> the fee fuss would precipitate. >> what do you mean? >> come right out. i would have to tend to the patient. >> what would you do? >> i would make sure that when the and he couldn't snip babies necks any more so gosnell tried

injecting a drawing called digoxin into the fetus heart to kill in in the womb but gosnell couldn't do it cite cross testify. >> he tried to do the need until the stomach and that was supposed to have killed the baby before the baby came out. if it didn't he will say oh, well, the law says that i can do it, i can still slit the neck because it didn't work, 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 the womb or outside the womb. it was clear in the late term abortions he was using medications to dope up the patient and try to get the baby out and then kill it outside the womb.

>> bret: the babies allegedly born alive never got names. the grand jury would refer to some by letters starting with baby boy a. >> baby boy a is born and they are so alarmed at the size and the 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 sonogram records say the mother was 29.4 weeks pregnant. well, beyond the legal limit for an abortion in pennsylvania. a prosecution expert determined that baby boy a was at least weeks in the womb. >> i have delivered babies of 24 weeks and now they come and see me and they are high school

students, you know, so 30 weeks, come on. >> bret: corcorrine said that y boy a was breathing when she saw dr. gosnell "just slit its neck and then put the body in a shoe box too small to hold him." the most horrifying testimony was that the doctor stated that this baby boy was big enough to take him and walk him to the bus stop. >> baby boy b was 28 weeks old at an age when baby can feel found frozen in a water bottle with the evidence of the spine being snipped from behind, the vertebrae penetrated. something that would cause great pain. >> there was only one thing the medical examiner testified out of this beautiful baby boy you

saw you there in the photo and 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 another unlicensed gosnell assistant murder a baby, baby c who had been breathing and moving for 20 minutes. >> williams called cross over to take a look at the baby and when ms. cross was asked why do you think ms. williams killed this baby that was alive, that was breathing that was moving for 20 minutes 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 the later stages of pregnancy, the only thing holding the baby in place is often a tighte tight cervix. but you cytotec relaxes the cervix so a woman could be literally sitting in the bathroom and deliver a baby. that is a live birth. >> when baby d was delivered in the toilet. in on took over. >> moton reached in to this will little baby trying to swim for its life and get out of the toilet and grabbed the baby and slit its neck. >> moton has admitted to killing live babies "a good ten times." ' cording to testimony, others just watched and did nothing. >> baby e is a baby that one of the witnesses testified that she saw in the procedure room. she heard the baby whining

making crying noises. when the doctor came out of the room the baby was dead. she saw the baby thrown in the trash like garbage by dr. gosnell. >> masoff testified he slit the necks of babies. baby g is the last murder victim named by the grand jury but the panel believes gosnell killed many more babies outside the sight of his compliant staff. >> we know that dr. gosnell would perform the latest of late term abortions on sundays when none of his other staff members were present. omero honly he and his wife woe into the clinic so 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: despite gosnell's alleged steps to avoid detection, it is 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.

>> bret: the truth is it wasn't the abortions that finished dr. kermit gosnell's career. it was the drugs. his clinic was an abortion mill at night but authorities say dr. gosnell 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 are powerful pain killers and other medicines. >> the search for the culmination of an investigation into a massive illegal drug selling operation involving prescriptions for oxycontin and other narcotics.

>> bret: the fbi and 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 for so many people to get illegal prescriptions for nascar cot ecks. narcotics. what this he discovered was a horrific almost out of one of the worst horror movies or novels you can imagine. >> bret: officials from the department of health and department of state came along. according to the grand jury report it was their first visit to the clinic in more than 15 years. >> instead of just seeing pills they saw you blood. blood stained walls. urine on the walls. feces. infestation. >> medical waste bags strewn everywhere in the clinic and found a refrigerator where the employees kept their lunch that

also had bags filled with fetal remains. they found jar after jar after jar filled with fetal remains and specifically severed feet in jars. >> it just completely overwhelming. you don't know how to process something like that. >> bret: in 2009, at age 16, desiree manning went to the abortion clinic. 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 21 weeks and tour days and already considered the best possibility -- that there is a possibility that he snipped my kid. >> bret: investigators recovered the remains of 45 fetuses and gosnell admitted to a detective that 10 to 20% were probably older than 24 weeks,

the legal cutoff. baby boy b was one of two the prosecution claims were medically confirmed to have been -- >> they also found women. dazed women. >> these women were jam inside a room where they were all there together. some of them were bleeding. and so the department of health they called and told the detectives to 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 gosnell's 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 the the grand jury. for more than six months it

reviewed thousands of pieces of evidence and heard testimony from 58 witnesses before releasing its 281-page report. >> the presentment charges one count of third murder against gosnell and his associates for killing karnamaya mongar and 7 counts of first-degree murder for the intentional killing of viable babies born alive. >> bret: in the allegations of the grand jury are true he could be guilty of hundreds of premeditated killings. more than any american mass murderer or killer. the prosecution filed notice that it might seek the death penalty. >> i haven't seen a great deal of the publicity because i lived through negative

publicity before. >> bret: gosnell insisted he was innocent of any crimes. >> in you are not making mess takes you are not really attempting to do something. i think that my patients are aware that i do my very best. >> it was as if he was saying that is my job, you know, i'm in charge of killing these babies, that is why they he came to me. >> bret: nine of gosnell's employees were also charged. three pleaded guilty of assorted crimes. sherry west pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the death of karamaya mongar. three others pleaded guilty to the deaths of babies born alive. steven masoff admitted to snipping the deaths of babies born alive. he pleaded guilty to, among

other charges, third-degree murder. len da also pleaded guilty to third-degree murder. adrian moton pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and other are 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 are alleged but admitted. actual people that worked under the employ of dr. kermit gosnell admitd that they murdered babies as part of the regular routine practice of what was going on in that shop of horrors. this isn't speculation. this isn't a theory by the prosecution. this is real and it is murder.

>> the remaining question was is 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 infanticide, conspiracy. his employee would stand trial with him on charges of theft by deception and racketeering. in early march a 17 member jury was impanelled including alternates. 8 men and 9 women. in the opening argument gosnell's attorney told them the case was a prosecutorial lynching and referring to gosnell "this black man is being taken because of who he is and where he works." mcmahon said gosnell pass clinic had a lower than average complication rate and repeat business as well. and he said the prosecution was elite heist.

", 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.

>> bret: returning to our story. the jury has heard lou the lawyers 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 to the who are horrifying dimensions of the grand jury report. >> the first employees to testify was adrian mot testimony o. 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 did was that murder did you consider it wrong. she said at first i didn't. >> bret: the testimony captured for boyer with the german philosopher talking about the holocaust called the benality of evil. >> another are woman who gave testimony, a young woman named linda williams. she talked about the snipping of the spinal cord and she was asked did you have any aware eps that this was murder and she -- awareness that that was murder and she told the jury i

only do what i'm told to do and what i was told to do was snip their neck. >> this is some of the most horrifying testimony i have ever sat through in a courtroom. >> i'm wondering how the jurors will ever be able to get this out of their head. the photos blown up. big full term almost essentially babies and you see life there. >> gosnell's lawyer jack mcmahon tried to undermine the prosecution case count by count. he painted some witnesses as disgruntled employees and suggested the prosecution used threats of the death penalty and long protesters i so prisot clinic workers to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit. he said all of the babies were already dead or at left doomed because he had injected them with a drug to stop their hearts. ashley baldwin testified she

heard baby e wine but no one testified to actually seeing gosnell kill the baby and he scored his biggest point during the testimony about baby boy b. baby the prosecution alleges who was born alive at 28 weeks and then killed by gosnell and placed in his is 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 ed, that he had seen the photos, too, and he questioned the chief medical examiner and asked him can you say with a reasonable degree of medical 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 didn't explain his

ruling, but fox news medical expert dr. mark siegel says the judge is wrong if he based it on the fact that the the babies had been observed moving but not necessarily breathing. >> there might be some debate about whether life begins at conception. what there is no debate about, if a baby is born and you need to use a respirator to get the baby breathing that is life. 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 session that morning, another bomb shell. 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 argue arement that would reignite the explosive charges made at the outset of the trial that his client was the victim of a racest elitist prosecutor who refused to acknowledge the realities of abortion in america. after the break. alec, for this mission i upgraded your smart phone. ♪ right. but the most important feature of all is... the capital one purchase eraser. i can redeem the double miles i earned with my venture card to erase recent travel purchases. d with a few clicks, this mission never happened. uh, what's this button do? [ electricity zaps ] ♪ you requested backup? yes. yes i did. what's in your wallet?

>> bret: and now the conclusion to our story. it has been more 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 are 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. happen.precise didn'ter ice, the seats reserved for the media were empty. >> we have media that likes to cover any issues related to reproductive rights or abortion thoroughly but this trial was ignored. >> kirsten powers was appalled and wrote a usa today piece

saying so. >> you would have had to be following activist blogs on the retort left or the local philadelphia news if you wanted to know anything about this. are in the same way that there are serious policy implications when there is a mass shooting like what we saw in newtown there are serious implications about what happened at this abortion clinic. >> bret: antiabortion leaders say if americans know what happened in gosnell's clinic many more would oppose legalized abortio abortion. but some prochoicers see just the opposite. >> i think because of what i think it teaches us about where america is and how much harm our policies are doing to women. >> bret: pennsylvania state senator daylan leach thinks if americans know what happened they will support policies that will give poor women more access to better abortion services. >> no one is defending what he

did or his practices or conduct. >> but. >> bret: but gosnell lawyers would offer a defense of what they say their client really did in his clinic and the jury would hear it during the trial's closing argument. the media would hear it, too. for it is worth noting that 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, it was an elitist and racist prosecution. he said that h his client had been singled out because he was an african american providing abortion services in an urban community. >> bret: he reminded the jurors of the weakness in the prosecution case and addressed the issue of abortion h head on. >> he told the jury are you are not here to decide whether or not abortion is pretty. it is not pretty. it is bloody. it is real. in a way it was almost like the

jack nicholson in a few good men. >> the prosecution pain stakingly went through its case against gosnell, more than 250 counts one more time. the jury deliberated ten days. monday, may 13. >> murder in the first-degree baby a, guilty. murder in the fidel, baby c, guilty. murder in the first-degree of baby d, guilty. >> bret: also found guilty of 2 counts of late term abortions. one count of racketeering and 211 counts of failing to counsel patients a day in advance in accordance with pennsylvania law. he was found not guilty of the murder of baby e, and guilty of only involuntary manslaughter in the death of mongar.

but gosnell still faced the death penalty. he cut a deal. giving up his right to appeal in exchange for life in prison without the chance for parole. >> he believes that what he did will not -- >> he sat there for the past eight weeks smirking. >> jurors had no doubt that the clinic had become a murder factory. >> just like a machine. damiano in and gave them the service, pay me and women were gone. >> bret: across the nation prochoice and prolife groups alike praised the verdict but sometimes with strikely different emphasis. prolife groups said it was a a measure of justice for the murdered babies, planned parenthood statements mentioned only the women gosnell victimized. "this case made clear we must reject misguided laws that would limit women's options and force them to seek treatment

from criminals like kermit gosnell. the statement raises the question are there more kermit gosnell's out there. me abortionists who embrace his business model deciding it is easier to murder born alive babies than to abort late term pregnancy. within hours of the sentencing a shocking announcement out of texas. prosecutors say they are investigating a houston doctor after his former employees came forward with their own gosnellesque tales of horror. a development that suggests that the kermit gosnell case may be just the first chapter in a story to be continued. that is our show for tonight. i'm bret baier. thanks for watching. fox news reporting.