Pa. jurors turn to murder charges in abortion case

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Philadelphia jurors are debating murder charges against an abortion provider as they start their third full day of deliberations in his trial.

The jury asked for help Friday distinguishing among the four babies Dr. Kermit Gosnell is accused of killing. Staff members at Gosnell's clinic have testified that they saw each one move, breathe or whine outside the mother's body before they were allegedly killed.

The jury has also asked for a list of drugs found during a 2010 clinic raid. Prosecutors say the abortion drug Digoxin (di-JOCKS'-uhn) was not found — although Gosnell says he used it to stop the babies' hearts in utero during late-term abortions.

The jury has been weighing more than 250 counts against Gosnell and a codefendant since Tuesday.

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Jury in Philadelphia abortion doctor case deliberates for fourth day

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A Philadelphia jury began a fourth day of deliberations on Friday in the murder trial of a doctor accused of killing babies and a patient during late-term abortions at a clinic serving low-income women.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, who ran the now-shuttered Women's Medical Society Clinic, could face the death penalty if convicted by the jury, in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia.

The case focuses on whether the infants were born alive and then killed.

The seven-woman, five-man jury heard five weeks of testimony before starting the deliberation process on Tuesday.

Gosnell is charged with four counts of first-degree murder for delivering live babies during late-term abortions and then deliberately severing their spinal cords, prosecutors said.

The charges have fueled the debate in the United States about late-term abortions.

It is legal in Pennsylvania to abort a fetus up to 24 weeks into a pregnancy. Gosnell also faces charges that he performed 24 abortions beyond 24 weeks.

Nine states ban abortions after 20 weeks, according to the abortion rights group NARAL. Other states recently put new restrictions on abortions, with Arkansas banning them at 12 weeks and North Dakota at six weeks.

Most abortions, 92 percent, are performed before 14 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and 1.3 percent are performed beyond 20 weeks.

Judge Jeffrey Minehart told the jury that state law defines a live baby as one that is fully expelled from the mother and showing signs of life such as breathing, heart beat or movement.

If a baby shows those signs, he said, "That baby is a human being."

Gosnell's defense contends there is no evidence the babies were alive after they were aborted. In his closing argument, defense lawyer Jack McMahon cited the medical examiner's testimony that none of the 47 fetuses tested randomly from the clinic had been born alive.

Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron said in his closing argument that witnesses testified that one of the aborted babies was breathing before its neck was cut, another made a whining sound and another moved its arms and legs.

Testimony depicted a filthy clinic serving mostly low-income women in a largely black community. McMahon said Gosnell wanted to help the under-privileged community.

Gosnell is also charged with murdering Karnamaya Mongar, 41, of Virginia, who died from a drug overdose after going to him for an abortion, prosecutors said.

Gosnell, who has been in jail since his January 2011 arrest, is on trial with Eileen O'Neill, a medical school graduate accused of billing patients and insurance companies for clinic services as if she were a licensed doctor.

Eight other defendants have pleaded guilty to a variety of charges and are awaiting sentencing. They include Gosnell's wife, Pearl, a cosmetologist who helped perform abortions.

By Dave Warner Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst

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Jury set to resume work on abortion deaths verdict

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Philadelphia jury is set to return to weigh murder charges against a doctor charged with killing five people, including a patient and four viable babies allegedly born alive.

Kermit Gosnell, 72, faces the death penalty if convicted of killing babies at his clinic, where authorities say he routinely performed illegal, late-term abortions. A string of former clinic employees testified over the past two months, telling jurors that Gosnell cut live babies in the back of the neck to ensure they were dead.

Four of them have pleaded guilty to murder charges for the babies they say they killed, or for helping sedate a 41-year-old patient who died of an overdose. They accused Gosnell of killing two of the four babies, but he could be convicted in all four deaths if the jury deems him an accomplice or conspirator.

"He has to share the specific intent to kill," Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart explained as he instructed jurors, who began deliberating for about two hours Tuesday.

Under Pennsylvania law, Minehart explained to jurors, for babies to be born alive, they must be expelled or removed from the mother and show one of the following signs of life: brain activity, breathing, the definitive movement of a muscle or the pulsing of the umbilical cord.

Gosnell also is charged in the patient's 2009 death. By that point, state officials had not inspected Gosnell's clinic since the early 1990s, prosecutors said.

Former clinic employee Eileen O'Neill, 56, of Phoenixville, is also on trial, charged with six counts of theft for allegedly billing as a doctor when she was not licensed. O'Neill's lawyer has argued that O'Neill worked under Gosnell's supervision. The jury, asking its first question barely an hour into deliberations, had Minehart repeat that charge, suggesting they may be starting with O'Neill's case.

The defense argues that Gosnell helped desperate women who had no medical care and nowhere else to turn.

"He provided those desperate young girls with relief. He gave them a solution to their problems," defense lawyer Jack McMahon said in closing arguments Monday.

Gosnell faces 258 counts in all, including four first-degree murder counts, which could bring the death penalty.

Other charges against him include one count each of infanticide and racketeering, 24 counts of performing third-trimester abortions and 227 counts of failing to counsel patients a day in advance.

Gosnell performed thousands of abortions over a 30-year career, and authorities say he got rich doing so by charging nearly $3,000 cash from mostly poor women and teens for illegal, late-term abortions.

McMahon argued that prosecutors who blasted the clinic as a filthy, flea-infested "house of horrors" in a 2011 grand jury report sensationalized the case to make headlines.

"This isn't a perfect place by any stretch of the imagination — but it isn't what they say it is," McMahon argued.

Cameron called Gosnell's operation an assembly line for a stream of poor, mostly minority women and teens, including Karnamaya Mongar, who came from Virginia for an abortion after she was turned away at three other clinics, starting when she was 15 weeks pregnant. Gosnell is charged with third-degree murder in her overdose death.

The doctor sat calmly at the defense table, as he has throughout the often graphic six-week trial.

Gosnell did not testify but might take the stand if he is convicted and the trial moves to the penalty phase.

The jury resumes its deliberations on Wednesday.

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U.S. Ambassador to Resign After Criticism Over Focus on Abortion, Faith

Associated Press

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WASHINGTON -- The U.S. ambassador to Malta, an important Roman Catholic supporter of President Obama, said Sunday he would resign after a State Department report criticized him for spending too much time writing and speaking about his religious beliefs. 

In letters to Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Douglas Kmiec said he would step down Aug. 15. He told The Associated Press that no one pressured him to leave.
Kmiec was a well-known conservative law professor and commentator before being taking the job in 2009. But a report this month by the State Department's inspector general rebuked Kmiec for concentrating too much on issues such as abortion and his faith, while neglecting his ambassadorial duties 

"I doubt very much whether one could ever spend too much time on this subject," Kmiec wrote Obama in his resignation letter. 

The audit was the second critical assessment of a politically appointed ambassador this year and illustrates the pitfalls that presidents can face when they appoint noncareer diplomats to ambassadorships, often as a reward for their political support. 

A February report blasted the 14-month tenure of Cynthia Stroum, a big Obama donor who became ambassador to Luxembourg. It described her service as fraught with personality conflicts, verbal abuse and questionable expenditures on travel, wine and liquor. Things were so bad in the wealthy European nation that some staff requested transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan, the report said. Stroum resigned effective Jan. 31, just days before the scathing assessment was made public. 

The audit of the U.S. Embassy in Malta said Kmiec's "outside activities have detracted from his attention to core mission goals" in the Mediterranean island nation, such as promoting maritime security and American business. It acknowledged the wide respect for Kmiec in the conservative, Roman Catholic country of Malta, but said his articles distracted him and embassy officials by forcing them to carefully review his writing. They upset administration officials in Washington, too, it noted. 

Kmiec responded by describing the criticism of his religious views was "especially odd" because his friendship with Obama began out of a common view that "too much of politics had been used to divide us, sometimes by excluding people of faith." 

Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University and a lawyer in President Ronald Reagan's administration, was targeted by conservative Catholics and denied Communion by one priest for his support for Obama during the presidential campaign. 

In his letter to Clinton, Kmiec noted that he advised President George H.W. Bush in 1989 that government audits should focus on rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, and suggested that the criticism of his ambassadorship was in effect a "sting-back." He said inspectors use the audits to criticize support for Obama's policies such as his goal to promote interfaith dialogue. 

The State Department declined comment on Kmiec's announcement. 

The embassy in Malta has recently played an enhanced role as the nearest European country to Libya. More than 180 Americans were ferried to Malta when Muammar al-Qaddafi's forces violently cracked down on protesters seeking an end to his four-decade rule.

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For D.C., Budget Deal Revives School Voucher Program, Reinstates Ban on Abortion Funding

AP

Feb. 26: Washington Mayor Vincent Gray addresses the Democratic National Committee winter meeting in Washington.

The eleventh-hour budget deal to fund the federal government for the next five months includes two controversial policy riders that have infuriated Washington D.C. local leaders.

One bans Washington from spending its own money to provide abortions for low-income women and the other includes money to revive the city's school voucher program, which subsidizes private school tuition for needy students with federal funds.

In a Saturday morning tweet, Mayor Vincent Gray called both riders a "shameful violation of our right to govern ourselves."

"This is ludicrous," Gray said in statement."While one rider purports to provide educational aid to children in need, the other takes away desperately needed aid from poor women. Hypocrisy is alive and well in the United States Congress."

Gray called on all D.C. residents to voice their opposition to the "colonial status of the District of Columbia."

The GOP-led House voted to reinstate the program last month and passed a stopgap measure this week that included the abortion rider. But those bills had little chance to go any further with the Obama administration opposed to vouchers and the abortion rider. 

However, the Republicans were able to get those initiatives included in Friday night's deal that cut spending by $38.5 billion.

Congress eliminated the voucher program in 2009. Critics of vouchers, including teachers unions, say it draws money away from public schools.

Under the program, which began in 2004, more than 3,700 students, mostly black or Hispanic, have won scholarships which provide up to $7,500 in private-school tuition.

In 2009, the Obama administration lifted the ban on D.C. funding abortions. But earlier this year, House Republicans proposed reinstating the ban in a larger bill that would effectively make permanent a string of separate restrictions, including the so-called Hyde Amendment, which have to be renewed periodically by Congress.

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Sen. Reid: Abortion issue is preventing a budget deal

Reid: All comes down to 'women's health'STORY HIGHLIGHTSHarry Reid says the abortion issue is preventing a deal; John Boehner disagrees President Obama hopes for an agreement on Friday morningReid says he's not optimistic a deal will be reachedThursday night's White House meeting ended with no deal Washington (CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Friday morning that the abortion issue is the lone remaining stumbling block for negotiators trying to reach a budget agreement that would prevent a government shutdown.

"This all deals with women's health. Everything (else) has been resolved. Everything," Reid said. "It's an ideological battle. It has nothing to do with fiscal integrity in this country."

Republicans have been pushing to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood during the budget talks. They are also trying to get federal dollars now set aside for family planning and women's health turned into block grants for states, according to a Democratic source.

Such a move -- opposed by Democrats, according to the source -- would give governors and state legislatures more ability to cut funding for services opposed by conservatives.

Live blog: Latest developments on a possible shutdown

A spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, immediately disputed Reid's assertion that abortion is the key sticking point.

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More state bills are targeting abortion

By Doug Dreyer, AP

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a bill last month requiring a three-day waiting period and counseling for women seeking abortions.

EnlargeCloseBy Doug Dreyer, AP

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a bill last month requiring a three-day waiting period and counseling for women seeking abortions.

On Tuesday, Idaho's Legislature approved a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, last month signed a bill mandating a three-day waiting period for abortions and requiring women seeking abortions to get counseling at a pregnancy help center. Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer last month signed a bill making it a felony to perform or provide money for abortions sought because of the fetus's race or sex.

STATES: Fights brew on abortion rightsAbortion bills "are moving in states where they haven't before," says Mary Spaulding Balch, state legislation director for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion. Another surprise is "the speed at which these bills are going through," she says.

"What's different this year is that, as a result of the election, there are a lot more anti-abortion" state legislators, says Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, which supports abortion rights. Republican gains in the 2010 election gave them control of both chambers in 26 legislatures; Democrats control 15.

NARAL Pro-Choice America is monitoring 362 abortion bills in this legislative session; in 2010, 174 bills were tracked.

Some bills would block public or private insurance coverage for abortions, others would ban most abortions 20 weeks after conception, and others would require pregnant women to have ultrasounds before having abortions.

Some bills are moving quickly.

This week, a Florida Senate committee passed a bill that would require ultrasounds before abortions. Last week, an Ohio House committee approved a bill that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. The Kansas Legislature last week passed a bill banning most abortions after the 21st week of pregnancy.

Crane and Balch disagree on the message behind the spate of abortion legislation.

"We are absolutely certain that this is not what Americans voted for in November 2010," Crane says. In addition to a new crop of conservative legislators, she says, 29 governors are considered "anti-choice" by her organization.

Balch attributes the momentum to new legislators of both parties who share her organization's goal of providing "protection for the unborn child."

A Gallup Poll taken in May 2010 found that 24% of Americans believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances, 54% said it should be legal under certain circumstances and 19% said it should always be illegal.

Ian Bartrum, a constitutional law professor at Drake University Law School in Iowa, says the number of bills could speed a case to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling making abortion legal.

"The more places they have a law," he says, "the more likely they can get a challenge."

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