A defense lawyer asked a jury on Monday to transcend both the politics and unpleasant reality of abortion when it weighs murder charges against a doctor charged with killing a patient and four babies.
Dr Kermit Gosnell, 72, is accused of killing babies by 'snipping' their spines after they were allegedly born alive during late-term abortions.
'This case is not about abortion,' lawyer Jack McMahon argued in closing remarks on Gosnell's behalf. 'This case has brought out many pro-life people, many pro-choice people ... but it's not a referendum on abortion.'
Charged: Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor, is accused of killing 4 babies allegedly born alive
Instead, McMahon insisted, the government has ridden 'a tsunami' of emotion and fear surrounding the case to manipulate eight former employees into pleading guilty and testifying against Gosnell.
Four have pleaded guilty to third-degree murder.
Yet he said none of their testimony offered definitive proof that any viable babies were born alive and then killed at Gosnell's busy West Philadelphia clinic.
Instead, he argued that the lone movement, breath or cry observed in each baby was an involuntary, post-mortem 'spasm'.
Former staff member Lynda Williams, though, has said one baby was alive for as long as 20 minutes before she snipped its spine, as she said Gosnell taught her to do.
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And another testified that Gosnell 'snipped' babies whether they were alive or not, or moving or not.
Prosecutors were set to give their closing remarks later Monday afternoon.
They describe Gosnell's clinic as a 'house of horrors', where untrained, unlicensed staff over medicated women before abortions performed in dirty surgical rooms.
And Gosnell earned millions over the years doing so, preying on people desperate for either work, however unseemly, or late-term abortions, they said.
Tragic: He faces a murder charge in the overdose death of Karnamaya Mongar, left, who died in 2009
Scene: A police car is seen outside the the Women's Medical Society in 2011 following Gosnell's arrest
McMahon conceded on Monday that the images jurors have seen in the past six weeks, including disturbing photographs of aborted fetuses, were unsettling.
'Abortion — as is any surgical procedure — isn't pretty,' McMahon said. 'It's bloody. It's real. But you have to transcend that.'
And he refused to back down from aggressive opening remarks in which he called prosecutors 'elitist' and 'racist' for pursuing his client, who is black and served mostly poor, minority women.
'We know why he was targeted,' McMahon said. 'If you don't see that reality ... you're living in some sort of la-la land.'
He accused the prosecution of twisting and manipulating the information.
'They want to manipulate you. They are guilty of an irresponsible use of power and rhetoric,' he said. 'Look at what they’ve done. They brought this chair, this furniture out of storage and put it in here for the court to see. They brought the oldest ones, not the newer ones.
'Then they showed us photos of cats, bloody instruments, and bloody sheets. They didn’t show you the clean ones. Why? Because they wanted to manipulate you.'
Prosecutors say Gosnell killed viable babies born alive after putting a steady stream of women through labor and delivery.
Former employees have testified that Gosnell taught them to cut the babies' necks after they were delivered to 'ensure fetal demise'.
'Why would you cut a baby in the back of the neck unless you were killing them?' Assistant District Attorney Ed Cameron argued last week, as he asked a judge to send all seven first-degree murder charges to the jury.
Discarded: Bags stashed with body parts, pictured, were also found in the Philadelphia clinic
House of horror: A grand jury photograph shows what police say are plastic bags hiding body parts in a refrigerator inside the Philadelphia practice
Operating table: Women were often given such high doses of drugs that they gave birth in the toilet
Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart, though, threw out three of those counts for lack of evidence they were viable, born alive and then killed.
Gosnell is also charged in the overdose death of a patient, 41-year-old refugee Karnamaya Mongar, of Woodbridge, Virginia. He called the death 'a tragedy', but one caused by medical complications.
The jury must now weigh the five murder counts, along with lesser charges that include racketeering, performing illegal abortions after 24 weeks, failing to observe the 24-hour waiting period and endangering a child's welfare for employing a 15-year-old in the procedure area.
McMahon has argued that there were no live births at the clinic. And he said that only two of 47 fetuses found stored in freezers at the clinic during a 2010 FBI raid were arguably past the state's 24-week limit.
Williams, Adrianne Moton and Sherry West, all untrained clinic workers, and unlicensed doctor Stephen Massof have each pleaded guilty to third-degree murder charges and testified against Gosnell.
And four others have pleaded guilty to lesser charges, including Gosnell's wife, Pearl.
Gosnell did not testify, but could take the stand in the penalty phase if he is convicted of first-degree murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Also on trial is former clinic employee Eileen O'Neill, 56, of Phoenixville. She is charged with theft for allegedly practicing medicine without a license.