Editor’s note. By now all of you know that a Philadelphia Grand Jury Grand Jury Report culminated with abortionist Kermit Gosnell and some of his staff being charged with eight counts of murder. To give the reader some sense of the full horror of what took place in that West Philadelphia abortion clinic, I am running a daily excerpt from the 261-page report.

Several of the clinic’s former staff told the Grand Jury that Gosnell performed many, many abortions beyond the legal limit in Pennsylvania – a gestational age of 24 weeks. Their testimony is confirmed by clinic files, by fetal remains found at the facility, by photographs of babies that Gosnell delivered and then killed, and by a 30-plus-weeks baby girl found dead at a hospital after Gosnell had inserted laminaria to begin a third-trimester abortion.

Steven Massof [one of Gosnell’s employees] estimated that 40 percent of the second-trimester abortions performed by Gosnell, the fetuses were beyond 24 weeks gestational age. Latosha Lewis [another Gosnell employee] testified that Gosnell performed procedures over 24 weeks “too much to count,” and ones up to 26 weeks “very often.” When Lewis started working at the clinic, 20 first-trimester abortions and five or six second-trimester abortions typically were performed per night. But in the last few years, she testified, Gosnell increasingly saw out-of-state referrals, which were all second-trimester, or beyond.

By these estimates, Gosnell performed at least four or five illegal abortions every week. When a detective asked the doctor what percentage of the fetuses – including the first-and second-trimester fetuses – found at the facility during the February 2010 raid were beyond 24 weeks, Gosnell himself estimated “ten or twenty percent at the most.” The Philadelphia medical examiner analyzed the remains of 45 fetuses seized from the clinic. Of these, 16 were first-trimester; 25 were second-trimester, ranging from 12 to 21 weeks; 2 were 22 weeks; 1 was 26 weeks; and 1 was 28 weeks. The raid took place on a Thursday, so the clinic’s busiest day for late-term abortions – Saturday – was not included.

Gosnell’s former employees testified that they knew many abortions were performed beyond 24 weeks because they had performed ultrasounds that established gestational ages greater than the 24-week legal limit.

When this happened, they would tell Gosnell, and he would often redo the ultrasound, or staff members would be ordered to do so, to produce a different gestational age to record in the patient’s file. Gosnell taught his employees how to manipulate the ultrasound machine to get a false reading- one that would make the fetus appear to be smaller, and younger, than it actually was.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha