bonnie_the_book_lady 's review for:

Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer by Ann McElhinney, Phelim McAleer

3.0

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This book tells a terribly tragic true story. It graphically details evils carried out by Kermit Gosnell. It details partial birth abortions many times in bloody, gory, stomach turning visuals. It describes the filth and squalor that was the norm in Gosnell's clinic. It emphasizes that Gosnell seems to prefer to snip the baby's neck with scissors once outside its mother, rather that crushing its skull and then delivering the aborted fetus. All of these things make the reader hate Gosnell. As they should. Yet three fourths of the book isn't those things. Most of the book is written from a pro-life standpoint which goes on and on and on and on about how the press chose not to publicize the trial. It assumes all of the later term babies would have been able to survive and have productive lives had Gosnell allowed them to live, even as some of these mothers are drug addict, repeat abortion getters. The book would have been much more powerful for me had McElhinney left the politics out of the novel, and stuck with the crime, trial, and post incarceration interviews.