Anne McElhinney talks about the Kermit Gosnell trial and the horrific crimes he committed in the womb, and how he was able to get away with it. She also discusses the new movie, Baby A Boynell, and her new book about the case.
00:00:04.000The problem is exactly the point that Kirsten Powers made the point of.
00:00:08.000If you think that's disgusting what he did, if you think it's disgusting, well then why is it that you don't think it's disgusting when it happens inside the woman?
00:00:14.000Because by the way, it's completely legal what he did if he had done it in the womb.
00:00:22.000Back with our lovely guest, Anne McElhinney.
00:00:25.000I have to say it in a stereotypical Irish way, because otherwise I can't say it very well with my mealy-mouthed Canadian-slash-Midwestern accent.
00:01:47.000And I found that really helpful with Gosnell because dealing with the people, all of the people that knew what was going on, Doctors, nurses, people in beautiful offices in Harrisburg, unbelievable numbers of people knew and did nothing.
00:02:03.000And you have to ask yourself, where was humanity?
00:02:08.000And the scenes that happened on a daily basis in his clinic...
00:02:15.000Nothing anyone has ever seen in a horror movie can compare.
00:02:18.000I mean, today I was just reading Steve Massoff was one of the doctors.
00:02:22.000He had two fake doctors who worked with him, Eileen O'Neill and Steve Massoff.
00:02:25.000But Steve Massoff is in a category of his own.
00:02:27.000He had done a medical school training in the West Indies, was unable to get a residency, worked in a bar and then accidentally met Gosnell and got a job.
00:02:38.000His testimony, I have never read anything like the testimony he gave on the stand.
00:02:42.000Gosnell never defended himself, and he never took the stand.
00:02:55.000He ran because there were just so many of them, so many of these fetuses that were alive, these babies that were alive.
00:03:01.000And he ran with the scissors, and he said the walls.
00:03:05.000He said the walls, he said the blood flowed down the walls.
00:03:09.000He said that under oath, under pain of perjury, that's what he said.
00:03:13.000And you read it and you think, well, I read it and every day I read it and I have to leave the computer and I have to walk out on the beach because I'm thinking...
00:03:21.000Because it's chilling to think that humanity can get that low.
00:03:36.000There was babies arriving in toilets, swimming for their lives, swimming.
00:03:40.000And I'm trying to, in the book that I'm writing, I'm trying to give every baby that I can a story about To try to tell the little story they had.
00:03:49.000Because they really did live, you know, and they tried in their own way to make a statement.
00:03:56.000And I'm going to chronicle the statements.
00:04:00.000Baby Boy A, the one that anyone listening right now can look up and look at his photograph, that beautiful boy.
00:04:05.000If you put into Google Baby Boy A and Gosnell, you'll see that baby.
00:04:10.000Born at 30 weeks and 3 days and He curled himself up and Karima Cross, who took to the stand, they said to her, can you stand up?
00:05:48.000And you say that, and your husband says that.
00:05:52.000And you're the ones who are hateful and anti-woman.
00:05:57.000And that's one of the saddest – that's one of the saddest stories I've ever heard.
00:06:01.000I mean it's one of the most touching stories I've ever heard.
00:06:03.000And then when you see the fallout of it, just today we saw this quote from Elizabeth Warren saying the government shouldn't have any involvement to Rand Paul, saying, well, what do you say?
00:06:26.000Well, my producer here is a Christian and pro-life.
00:06:30.000And when I told him about the Barack Obama situation in Illinois, basically was faced with a bill in Illinois where babies like this were surviving abortions and being thrown in basically garbage bins alive.
00:06:43.000And I think every single person in the state legislature said, OK, we have to protect these babies, including Democrats.
00:06:48.000The only person who said no was Barack Obama.
00:06:52.000His justification was there was already a law in the books.
00:06:55.000Well, if that's the case, this never even needed to come to the floor.
00:07:01.000So obviously the laws weren't working.
00:07:02.000And also he could have just voted present like he did on hundreds of other opportunities.
00:07:07.000But in this one, he was passionate enough to say no.
00:07:10.000These babies surviving abortions do not deserve to be saved.
00:07:14.000And that's where I say, you know, most people I believe are ideologues, never chalk up to evil what you can probably chalk up to incompetence.
00:07:20.000But this is one of those situations where even if you don't believe it's a life in the womb, it's very clear at this point that it is.
00:07:28.000And people who still line up with, ah, the mom can do whatever they want, I say that's as close to evil as you can get.
00:07:43.000Yeah, it certainly made me start to think about the nature of good and evil and where does evil come from and all of that.
00:07:49.000I mean, it does bring up all those issues.
00:07:51.000But for me, it's almost like the people who had had all the advantages in life, you know, the people with the beautiful jobs in Harrisburg, the doctors in hospitals.
00:08:02.000I mean, by the way, there were lots of heroes, by the way, lots of heroes who are going to be very much to the forefront in our film.
00:08:09.000Who were paid to protect the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and who shirked those duties and moved paper around and were filing papers and moving papers and putting faxes here and passing things on to their superior.
00:08:23.000And when they were spoken to by the grand jury, said things like, well, it wasn't my job.
00:08:27.000And I gave it to Jim and Jim gave it to John and John gave it to the lawyers.
00:09:02.000And we just feel that this is why the movie is so important and why anyone who's out there that's listening to us, just give us one dollar.
00:09:10.000We have 27,000 people have given us money for this film.
00:12:45.000Just one more minute, because the thing that I think is extraordinary is a lot of the people who are in favor of all these laws, who are in favor of no limits on abortion, are the same people who, when they have decided to have a baby themselves, are playing Mozart.
00:12:57.000I know people myself who think abortion is a great idea.
00:13:16.000You can't think it's okay that you need to have Mozart played to your baby and that it's okay so that that baby has that humanity that will really love that music, will love all those stories being told.
00:13:27.000And yet, on the other hand, you're holding the same opinion that it's okay to cut the inside of that head of that baby inside the womb and then suck out its brains with a vacuum cleaner.
00:13:38.000I think it's one of the things we're going to do with this film.
00:13:40.000I don't think it's ever been done in a movie before.
00:13:43.000We're going to put on the stand, because it happened in the trial, an abortion doctor to explain how it's done.