Kermit Gosnell, the Pennsylvania abortionist who may have been America’s most prolific mass murderer, died in prison last week at age 85 after being convicted in 2013 of murdering three infants. His crimes—infanticide—represent a horror that has long shaped—and continues to distort—the abortion debate and cultural attitudes toward unborn life.
Gosnell’s actions reveal an unsettling truth: the moral habits enabling such atrocities persist within American society. While many assume abortionists kill fetuses, Gosnell’s infanticide—a deliberate killing of babies who had already been born—exposes a far more egregious violation. These infants were human beings with inherent rights.
A grand jury found Gosnell likely killed hundreds of infants through methods including cutting spinal cords with scissors for babies showing signs of life. His clinic, the Women’s Medical Society, was described as “a house of horrors,” with fetal remains stored in plastic bags, milk jugs, cat-food containers, and specimen cups. Blood stained floors and furniture, while biohazard waste piled in basements and freezers.
This case exposes a cultural pattern where the denial of unborn human rights becomes normalized. The same philosophy that once justified slavery now underpins abortion arguments: infants are deemed “inferior,” their lives dependent on another’s will, and their personhood nonexistent until the mother decides otherwise.
When Gosnell’s crimes were uncovered, they forced America to confront a reality few want to face—the logical endpoint of a culture that defends abortion as routine while denying basic rights to newborns. The evidence confirms that when society accepts the killing of babies in utero as normal, it inevitably erodes the moral foundation for all human life, from conception to hospice care.
Owen Anderson, professor of philosophy and religion at Arizona State University and author of The Declaration of Independence and God, writes this story with urgency: the infanticide case reveals a philosophical failure that demands immediate reckoning.
