For most, the name Kermit Gosnell brings to mind unspeakable horror. The former abortionist was found to be operating a house of horrors in Philadelphia. Women were butchered and maimed. Babies were delivered alive, only for Gosnell and his staff to brutally kill them. Their body parts were kept on display in jars around the clinic, with corpses of his victims frozen in his freezer.
Gosnell was convicted in 2013 of three murders (all of infants who survived abortions he attempted to commit on them), and of the involuntary manslaughter of one of his patients who received a drug overdose in his clinic. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Now, Gosnell is making a shocking claim: that he delivered superstar Will Smith.
Gosnell sent a letter to Smith begging for his help, claiming that Smith owed Gosnell for all of his success and fortune. “I’m fond of asserting that there could never be a Men in Black if I had dropped you on your head,” Gosnell said in the letter.
Smith was born on September 25, 1968, long before Gosnell began his work at his own personal house of horrors. The Daily Mail reports that, at the time, Gosnell was a resident at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Smith’s grandmother, Caroline Bright, called Gosnell after Smith’s mother Caroline went into labor. Her doctor, Leopold Lowenberg, was “stuck in traffic and couldn’t make it to the hospital in time.” Bright worked with Gosnell, which is how she knew to call him. “She was a Licensed Practical Nurse — LPN — at Jefferson,” Gosnell said. “She and I were friendly as I was the first African-American resident in that department.”
The story of how Gosnell delivered Smith was first told to Phelim McAleer, co-author of the book, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer. Gosnell also told McAleer that he had tried to contact Smith, but there was no response by the time the book went to print. And McAleer believes the claim. “Everything he told us for the book checks out,” he said. “He has a huge memory for details.”
Perhaps most disturbingly, Gosnell claimed that Smith’s grandmother, who died in 1998, would still support him. “Mrs. Bright would have professed that I was a minority physician targeted for political gain, not a media monster. And you may have agreed with my perspective that there are underlying foundations beyond sanctity for life,” Gosnell wrote to Smith. “Progressives oppose the low wages of an underclass and are not threatened by the ‘Browning of America.'”
Of course, the reality is that Gosnell was not a physician merely targeted for his skin color, but someone who committed unspeakable crimes while authorities looked the other way. While Gosnell operated his house of horrors, Pennsylvania was one of the states that refused to inspect abortion clinics or provide any necessary oversight. (Many states, including the notable example of Colorado, still continue to behave as Pennsylvania did prior to Gosnell’s conviction, despite a recent report highlighting the violations of health and safety at abortion clinics around the nation.)
It’s strange to think, though, that Gosnell’s career started so differently: delivering babies, bringing life into the world, nurturing it. What happened that made him become the murderer he is today? And of all people, he may have been the doctor to deliver Will Smith, one of the country’s most beloved actors. What if Gosnell had done to Smith what he did to countless other babies — whose names will never be known, whose futures were stolen from them?
Years after Will Smith was born, babies born in Gosnell’s clinic would be murdered in a process Gosnell called “snipping.” He would cut their necks using scissors. (According to the Daily Mail, Gosnell “allegedly fed many of the remains to crabs off the waters of his home on the Jersey Shore.”) His clinic was kept in filthy, disgusting conditions, with blood on the floors, flea-infested cats roaming freely, and feces littered throughout. Multiple women claimed that they were forced into abortions. Others were rendered infertile or contracted sexually transmitted diseases at the clinic. At least two of Gosnell’s women patients died (many more of his infant patients did).
Gosnell’s trial and conviction was not some pro-life witch hunt because pro-lifers didn’t like that he was a black abortionist. Gosnell is an actual monster, but he’s hardly the only one out there.
