Abortion Doc's Lawyer: Murder Trial Is a Racist Lynching

The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell—the Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of killing viable fetuses with scissors, among other grisly crimes—was always going to be a charged affair, but Gosnell's lawyer upped the ante yesterday by immediately bringing race into the discussion. "It's an elitist, racist prosecution," attorney Jack McMahon said in his opening statement. "This black man is being taken because of who he is and where he works." He also called the trial a "prosecutorial lynching," the New York Times reports.

Gosnell's murder trial began yesterday with prosecutors accusing the doctor of terminating seven viable fetuses after Pennsylvania's legal 24.5-week limit in painful fashion. "If the baby is alive and you don’t want it to be, that doesn’t mean you have the right to take a pair of scissors and plunge it into the baby’s neck," one prosecutor said. They also said Gosnell had kept fetal remains throughout the clinic, including 20-30 jars of feet—"Was he keeping trophies?"—and that at least one woman had died in his care.