I’ll never forget the first time I saw him: the notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell. He was on trial for murdering babies born alive during abortion, and I was covering it. As court officials and a few reporters gathered in a Philadelphia courtroom in 2013, Gosnell’s eyes met mine. Then, he smiled.
Until that moment, I felt like I knew him — or at least his case. I had read the scathing grand jury report condemning his bloodstained clinic littered with cat feces. I knew about the baby remains stored in milk jugs and orange juice cartons. I saw the tiny, severed feet collected in jars. I learned about his practice of “snipping” the spinal cords of moving, breathing babies. I heard how their bodies clogged the toilets. I read about their heads suctioned out and skulls crushed.
I expected to hear about all of this. I didn’t expect the man at the center of it would smile.
Gosnell’s case and legal abortions
The news of Gosnell’s death in prison broke in late March — more than a decade after he was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive, involuntary manslaughter in one woman’s death and 21 illegal late-term abortions, among other things. His case blurred the distinction between the unborn and the newborn. It posed the question: What is the difference between ending a baby’s life inside the womb and murdering her outside of it?
As news of Gosnell’s death spread, two major reports documented a continued increase in U.S. abortions since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 2022 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide. One showed an increase in the number of abortions by Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, in 2024.
Another, a report from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive research institution that supports abortion, estimated that U.S. clinicians provided an estimated 1,126,000 abortions in 2025. That’s the highest number of abortions since 2009.
For the pro-life movement, even one abortion — the intentional destruction of an innocent human person in the womb — is too many. To visualize 1 million abortions is to visualize 1 million deaths. A million people means roughly twice the population of cities like Miami or Minneapolis. A million people is more than the number of those who die annually from heart disease, the leading listed cause of death in the United States.
More hopeful numbers
At the same time, there’s another, live-saving increase happening. Pregnancy centers that offer life-affirming care to pregnant and parenting women in need served more than 1 million new clients in 2024, according to a 2025 report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. Around 2,775 centers provided more than $452 million in medical care, support and education services and material goods. The report found that the number of new clients served and services provided has been increasing since 2017.
There’s hope, and every person is called to be a part of it. Just as one person has the ability to end life, one person has the extraordinary potential to save life.
A recent news report tells the story of an unborn baby in Michigan diagnosed with a life-threatening birth defect. When local doctors told the mother and father that their baby would not survive, the parents traveled to California to seek alternative care. There, they met with Dr. Hanmin Lee, surgeon-in-chief at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. He agreed to perform a complex, two-part surgery in the womb.
Today, the baby Dr. Lee once operated on is a thriving teenager named Mason Ellinger. Ellinger, who is preparing to graduate from high school, recently returned to California to thank the doctor who saved his life before he was even born.
“We talked in the womb,” Ellinger told the local ABC affiliate during a video interview. Dr. Lee agreed: “It’s true. I said, ‘You get better.'”
They both smiled. And, this time, I could too.
Katie Yoder writes for OSV News from Maryland.
