Last week, a Philadelphia grand jury returned an indictment [PDF format] against Dr. Kermit Gosnell alleging he caused the death of a woman and murdered 7 babies at his abortion clinic.

From the indictment:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.

While the indictment indicates he caused the deaths of two women; thus far he’s only been charged with the death of one of them.

Gosnell is the direct result of abortion policy in this country. President Bill Clinton’s old “safe, legal, rare” slogan about abortion has never been about the first or third terms, but all about the second.

That’s been one of the dirty little secrets of the pro-abortion lobby for nearly four decades now; anything that could possibly limit or inconvenience a woman (or girl) seeking an abortion is unacceptable. That’s why they’ve fought so hard against parental notification, mandatory ultrasounds, 24- or 72-hour waiting periods. That’s also why the Pennsylvania Department of Health had failed to inspect Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society” since 1993. If the government can inspect an abortion clinic for health code violations or medical malpractice, then that implies they have a duty to shut such facilities down when they fail those inspections.

Imagine the headlines and denunciations when that happens! “Women can’t get family planning assistance after government shuts down only clinic for X miles.”

Mexican restaurants ending in “-berto’s” receive far more government scrutiny than this “medical center” ever did.

And it wasn’t just the government, the indictment notes numerous cases of doctors and hospitals failing to report Gosnell as his patients repeatedly showed up in emergency rooms—or morgues.

The pro-abortion left hail abortion providers as brave souls who do what’s right in the face of hatred and danger. That may be how some of them describe themselves. (It’s not how I would describe them.) However, there are many of them who are also interested in little more than the millions of dollars they can make annually do this “brave” thing. Gosnell certainly was.

As for the children murdered by Dr. Gosnell, Kevin McCullough is right when he asks: “Why the shock? Why the outrage?”

It was as I was reading the details of the procedures he seemed to prefer to perform that I was suddenly struck by an overwhelming question that has not yet gone from my mind.

Why are we so outraged now?

The truth is, the procedure Gosnell preferred is not new. Third term, especially "late term," abortions are performed the same way in overwhelming numbers.

Commonly referred to as "partial birth abortions" the procedure begins the same was as the "Gosnell abortion." Inducing labor and beginning the delivery of the child is where most of the children are lost in both procedures. As many as 75% of the children lose their lives in the process of early induced labor. Leaving roughly 25% of the children involved to have their lives terminated through an additional step.

In partial birth abortion, the child is delivered to within two inches of being free of the birth canal. In the "Gosnell" he delivered the child completely.

McCullough also reminds those of you who need to be reminded, that this is the preferred abortion policy of President Barack Obama.

It was State Senator Obama just a few years previous who had also called for votes on three occasions, in a committee that he chaired, in meetings that he had called, in which the life of a born child was in equal jeopardy to the ones Gosnell delivered.

The issue was a debate over whether or not Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois (a hospital operated by the denomination of Obama's church) could continue a practice in which a woman's labor could be induced weeks ahead of delivery. Roughly 75% of the children would die in the process, leaving roughly 25% who survived.

Instead of snipping spinal cords, the hospital would leave the children in the now infamous "soiled utility closet" to perish from exposure and neglect. Sometimes these children would expire in 45 minutes. Many times the children would struggle for life for the full 8 hours of a nurse's shift. And on multiple occasions the children would live for nearly a day.

Jill Stanek, one of the pediatric nurses who worked in the department while this practice was on going later testified before Obama's committee.

Obama's response? (According to Stanek?)

Roughly paraphrased: If a woman entered the hospital with the intent of seeking an abortion, then it was the woman's choice to allow that child to live or die. (Should it survive the induced labor.)

In Barack Obama’s America, the only crime here was the murder of one woman—the born, alive babies got what they had coming to them. Infanticide is not a crime when the mother never wanted the child in the first place.