Kermit Gosnell's West Philly abortion clinic could be bought by anti-abortion group
Feature for WHYY’s PlanPhilly, September 13 2019
Once or twice a month, John and Loida McKeever visit the gravesite. At first, it wasn’t easy to find. Take a left at the entrance to Laurel Hill Cemetery, then another left, down a hill, by a tree, cemetery employees told the couple.
“They said teddy bears, you’ll see teddy bears,” said Loida.
On their second attempt, the McKeevers found it: a dying patch of grass, a molting pile of stuffed animals, their fur matted from the elements. There is no headstone.
So earlier this year, the McKeevers installed a modest memorial: a small statue of an angel, with a sign around its neck. “In memory of the babies that were lost at 3801 Lancaster Avenue,” it read.
This is the burial site of the so-called “Gosnell babies,” the cremated remains of 47 fetuses and infants found in Kermit Gosnell’s West Philadelphia abortion clinic.
The doctor, who had been operating on Lancaster Avenue since the 1970s, was sentenced to life in prison in 2013. He was convicted of first-degree murder for cutting the spinal cords of multiple babies born alive during botched or illegal abortion procedures, and with manslaughter for the death of a woman in his care.
After the trial, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office buried the remains in Laurel Hill, with the rest of the city’s unclaimed remains. The grave of Gosnell’s victims is unmarked, like the graves of all unclaimed dead.
To the anti-abortion McKeevers, who live in Abington and work in nursing, this is unacceptable. But their requests to erect a gravestone have been denied by Laurel Hill and the Medical Examiner’s Office. Their angel statue is still there, but the placard, with its reference to Gosnell, has been removed.
“Forgotten in life, forgotten in death,” said John.
So the McKeevers, and others in the anti-abortion movement, are trying to make sure people remember. This weekend, on September 14, they will gather at Laurel Hill as part of the 7th annual “National Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children.” Father Frank Pavone, the leader of the national group Priests for Life, will give a blessing.
The McKeevers say it’s a spiritual event without political implications. “You want people to see it, but at the same time it could become a big huge propaganda circus, and we don’t want that,” said John. “It doesn’t have to be huge, doesn’t have to be over the top, but just so people know it’s here.”
But any mention of abortion is unavoidably political. And six years after Gosnell’s conviction, a thorny question remains: how to memorialize the victims of his crimes, both at the gravesite and especially at his now-abandoned clinic at 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue?
Do neighbors want to keep being reminded what happened here?
Photos by Kimberly Paynter