Gosnell: America’s Biggest Serial Killer is quickly becoming the film that everyone is talking about.
The independent true-crime drama about notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell made it into the Top 10 movies at the box office this past weekend, in spite of its limited release and the mainstream media’s attempts to have it blacklisted.
Days later, Gosnell continues to perform well--according to Box Office Mojo, the movie climbed even higher, reaching number 9 this week.
Not bad for a film with a small budget, and no small number of enemies.
But in spite of the crowd-funded film’s strong success with audiences around the country, a prominent abortionist is sounding the alarm about Gosnell, calling the movie a “safety risk” for abortion doctors like himself.
In a scathing Wednesday op-ed for the Huffington Post, titled “Anti-Choice Activists Want You to Hate Abortion Providers Like Me,” abortionist Willie J. Parker called the film “a ripe opportunity for anti-choicers to peddle a familiar conspiracy theory about abortion clinics.”
“The movie’s title,” Dr. Parker wrote, “and the inflammatory and dehumanizing rhetoric of its promotional materials are disturbing. The film is deeply offensive and exploits the pain and suffering of women. The project seems designed to arouse outrage against doctors who provide safe and legal abortion care, and I believe it creates a safety risk for physicians, clinicians, clinic staff, clinic escorts and my patients.”
Gosnellof course tells the true story of the investigation and subsequent trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell, now serving a life prison sentence for the conviction of the murder of three infants born alive in his clinic, worked as an abortionist for 30 years prior to being charged in the gruesome killings.
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Far from being a propaganda piece, the film relies heavily upon actual trial transcripts and the 280-page grand jury report.There is no gore in the movie, either--viewers wanting a look at one of the grisly photos used as evidence in the trial will need to visit the film’s website to see it.
Gosnell’s co-producers--investigative journalists (and husband and wife) Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney teamed up first for the NYT-best selling book, and then for the film--have also consistently maintained that they did not consider themselves pro-life prior to taking on the project.
It was, in fact, the now-famous photo of “Baby Boy A”, available on the Gosnell website, that eventually changed their minds. That photo, along with the national media’s refusal to attend and report on the abortionist’s trial, compelled them to tell Gosnell’s story.
According to co-producer Ann McElhinney:
“The images shown in the courtroom were not from [pro-life] activists. They were from police detectives and medical examiners and workers at the 3801 Lancaster Ave. clinic. The expert testimony describing “good” abortions was from OB-GYNs who had been performing abortions for 30 years.”
But abortionist Dr. Parker, who is a self-proclaimed abortion activist and past winner of Planned Parenthood’s “Margaret Sanger Award”, appears to believe that those promoting the film are motivated by nothing more than a political agenda.
“Anti-abortion lawmakers are pushing abortion care into the shadows,” Parker wrote. “They’re doing it by inflicting more and more restrictions on clinics and doctors, by making abortion more expensive, by denying insurance coverage for reproductive health care, by closing clinics, by harassing those of us who provide care and those who seek it from us.”
“We in the reproductive health community were glad that he was convicted, given the danger his actions posed to vulnerable people seeking vital health care,” continued Parker, “but anti-choice opponents across the country have exploited the criminality of his actions to stigmatize abortion and intimidate abortion providers.”
The abortionist did not make it clear whether or not he himself had yet seen Gosnell.
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