By Mark Morgenstein
(CNN) — The Hippocratic Oath, when properly translated, doesn’t actually say, “First, do no harm.” But since the time of the ancient Greeks, that’s become the mantra for every medical professional.
Not so with Dr. Kermit Gosnell, prosecutors contend.
The 72-year-old Philadephia physician is accused of running a “house of horrors” where he performed illegal abortions past the 24-week limit prescribed by law. He used scissors, authorities say, to sever the spinal cords of newborns who emerged from their mothers still alive.
On Monday, jury selection begins in Gosnell’s trial. If he’s convicted, prosecutors want him put to death.
“A doctor who cuts into the necks severing the spinal cords of living, breathing babies, who would survive with proper medical attention, is committing murder under the law,” Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said.
The charges
Gosnell faces eight counts of murder: for the deaths of seven babies, and in the case of a 41-year-old woman who died of an anesthetic overdose during a second-trimester abortion.
The babies were born alive in the sixth, seventh and eighth months of pregnancy — but their spinal cords were severed with scissors, Williams said.
“It was a house of horrors beyond any type of definition or explanation I can humbly try to give,” Williams told CNN in January 2011, shortly after Gosnell was charged.
“And it’s very sad for the women that were there, that were subjected to such horrific and barbaric — I would say medical treatment, but it wasn’t medical — treatment.”
Several other people who worked in the west Philadelphia medical office have already pleaded guilty to related charges.
A judge involved in the case said in 2011 that one of those employees was expected to testify against Gosnell.
Gosnell’s attorney said last year he hoped there wasn’t a “rush to judgment” in the case.
“Dr. Gosnell should enjoy the same presumption of innocence anyone in this country, you or me, should get if we were charged with a crime,” said attorney William J. Brennan.
The practice
The practice, called the Women’s Medical Society, served mostly low-income minority women for years. Gosnell is not a board-certified obstetrician or gynecologist, Williams said.
Originally, he said, the clinic used another doctor as a consultant so it could receive a license to perform abortions in 1979.
“The doctor gained a reputation. People far and wide knew that he performed abortions at any time,” Williams said
In a 2010 interview with the Philadelphia Daily News, Gosnell said he was “a positive force in the community.”
The reporter who interviewed him, David Gambacorta, told CNN that Gosnell believed he was helping an underserved population in his West Philadelphia neighborhood.
The scene
When authorities searched Gosnell’s office, they found bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses scattered throughout the building.
Jars containing the severed feet of babies lined a shelf. Furniture and equipment was blood-stained, dusty and broken.
“My grasp of the English language doesn’t really allow me to fully describe how horrific this clinic was — rotting bodies, fetal remains, the smell of urine throughout, blood-stained.”
Williams described one of the alleged infant deaths.
“The baby had been born and was on a cold steel table and murdered by using — there’s no medical basis for snipping or taking scissors and putting them into the neck and cutting, severing the spinal cord. It’s just homicide. It’s just murder,” Williams told CNN.
A grand jury investigation determined that health and licensing officials had received repeated reports about Gosnell’s practices for two decades, but had taken no action, Williams said.
According to Philly.Com, a joint website of the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Gosnell was back in court last Thursday, to mull a possible plea bargain.
It’s unclear what the outcome of the meeting was, because of a gag order imposed on attorneys and people involved in the case.
CNN’s Sarah Hoye and Mike Martinez contributed to this report.
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