Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the former Philadelphia abortion clinic doctor serving a life sentence for killing babies who were delivered alive, died March 1 at a Pennsylvania hospital, prison officials said March 23. Gosnell was 85. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Maria Bivens, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said Gosnell died at a hospital outside the prison system. She said he was most recently incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution-Smithfield, about 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) south of Pittsburgh. Prison officials did not provide additional details about the circumstances of his death.
Gosnell was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted in 2013, including on three counts of first-degree murder tied to babies prosecutors said were delivered alive. The reporting of the case also included convictions for multiple other crimes, including violations of Pennsylvania’s abortion laws.
The case drew national attention in part because of how Gosnell’s clinic, described by former employees and investigators, operated outside the limits imposed by state law. In testimony and investigative reporting that followed, the clinic was characterized as routinely conducting illegal procedures past Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit, and as dispatching newborns after they were delivered alive, according to accounts described during the case.
The conditions at Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic became known after a 2010 investigation that also focused on prescription drug trafficking. Investigators described a foul-smelling setting with bags and bottles of fetuses, jars of body parts, bloodstained furniture, and dirty medical instruments. In the period leading up to that raid, state authorities failed to conduct routine inspections of all abortion clinics for 15 years, according to the reporting around the scandal.
After the scandal’s exposure, Pennsylvania fired two top state health officials and imposed tougher rules for abortion clinics. Those changes followed scrutiny of oversight failures that left clinics operating without routine inspections for years.
Gosnell did not testify at his 2013 trial, according to the account reported. His defense attorney argued at trial that none of the fetuses was born alive and that any movements were posthumous twitching or spasms.