A former abortion clinic worker capped the five-week murder trial of her former boss with powerful testimony that she saw more than 10 babies breathe before they were killed.
'I thought they were breathing,' Kareema Cross testified on Thursday in Philadelphia, explaining that she saw their chests go up and down. 'He would say they're not really breathing.'
Cross, 28, is the final prosecution witness in the capital murder case against Dr Kermit Gosnell. He is charged in the deaths of a patient and seven babies allegedly born alive.
Charged: Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor, is accused of killing seven babies that were born alive
Cross also described seeing three babies move, one after being born in a toilet, and heard a fourth give a 'soft whine.'
Cross, who worked at the clinic from 2005 to 2009, was so disturbed by its operation that she took photos and called authorities, although she gave a relative's name.
In 2007, Cross herself became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion but decided to not have the procedure at the clinic, citing the unsanitary conditions.
Then she began pregnant in 2009 and decided to have the baby. She left the clinic once she decided to carry the child to term.
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Cross said Gosnell wrote her to encourage her to abort the child, telling her it was inappropriate for a pregnant woman to work in an abortion clinic.
'I was very offended,' Cross said.
A 2011 grand jury report blasts state and city officials for failing to inspect or shutter Gosnell's busy clinic in West Philadelphia. A 2010 FBI raid over Gosnell's separate pain management practice ultimately led to its closure.
The defense has denied that babies were born alive, and Cross is sure to face strenuous questioning Thursday afternoon from Gosnell's lawyer, Jack McMahon.
The doctor: Kermit Gosnell
Charged: Pearl Gosnell
Employee: Elizabeth Hampton
Arrested: Tina Baldwin
Assistant: Lynda Williams
Worker: Adrine Moton
Accomplice: Eileen O'Neil
Mugshot: Sherry West
Held: Maddline Joe
Gosnell, 72, is on trial for seven counts of first-degree murder for the seven infants who were allegedly born alive during abortions and killed.
He could face the death penalty if he is found guilty.
He is also charged with a count of third-degree murder in the death 2009 death of Karnamaya Mongar, a Nepalese refugee who allegedly died from an overdose of the pain medication Demerol that was prescribed by Gosnell and administered by Gosnell's untrained staff.
Her direct testimony encompassed many of the charges against Gosnell and nine co-defendants.
House of horror: A grand jury photograph shows what police say are plastic bags hiding body parts in a refrigerator inside the Philadelphia practice
She admitted that she studied only to be a medical assistant, but performed ultrasounds, gave anesthesia drugs and helped perform abortions.
She starting working Gosnell through an internship and then began working for the doctor full-time in August 2005 at $10 an hour.
She said she routinely saw Gosnell abort babies who were past the state's 24-week abortion limit.
Additionally, she said the clinic violated Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act, which mandates that an abortion doctor must wait 24-hours after a pregnant women's first appointment before conducting an abortion.
'Filthy': Investigators say Gosnell's clinic, the Women's Medical Society, catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women. It was also allegedly the site of unimaginable filth
She said staff left late-term patients alone on the second floor after they'd been given painkillers and potent drugs to induce labor, and said some even stayed overnight unattended in a makeshift bedroom.
She said Gosnell and others snipped the backs of the babies' necks after they were born, and sometimes removed the brain through the opening. And she described the clinic as filthy and the equipment as outdated.
'It was literally a beheading,' unlicensed medical-school graduate Stephen Massof, who worked at Gosnell’s clinic, testified earlier this month, according to NBC News.
'It is separating the brain from the body.'
One of her photographs, shown to jurors on a large screen, shows the fetal feet Gosnell kept in specimen jars, allegedly for DNA purposes.
Another photograph, taken by a co-worker, showed 'the largest baby she had ever seen' aborted at the clinic.
Scene: A police car is seen outside the the Women's Medical Society in 2011 following Gosnell's arrest
The jury has seen the disturbing picture before, and heard from the boy's then-teenage mother. The baby's gestational age has been estimated by some to be nearly 30 weeks.
The teen mother was asleep when the baby came out, and Gosnell put the body in a container the size of a shoe box, Cross testified.
The baby drew in its arms and legs and curled up inside in a fetal position, she said.
In a line the jury has also heard before, she recalled Gosnell saying, 'The baby's big enough that it could walk to the store, walk to the bus.'
Cross has pleaded guilty to federal drug charges for administering medications at the clinic, and hopes to get probation for her cooperation.
On Wednesday, Latosha Lewis, 31, a medical assistant who worked for Gosnell for almost ten years testified about her time working for Gosnell at his clinic.
She described how Gosnell’s equipment was outdated and never underwent inspected, and also said how he often reused disposable curettes, the sharp-ended tube that enters the womb in abortion procedures and applies suction for the removal of the pre-born baby and other tissues and fluids.
She said that instead of disposing of the items they were washed, dried and placed in an antiseptic solution, then reused.
She said that many of the women who had undergone the procedure when the doctor used the recycled curettes began returning to the clinic suffering from sexually transmitted diseases.
An expert had previously testified that plastic curettes are only intended for single use because they are porous.
In opening statements for the trial, Gosnell's defense attorney Jack McMahon insisted that his client did not do anything but abort fetuses.
McMahon said that Gosnell's operation was a high-volume clinic, that offered vital medical attention to an underprivileged community.
'Just because the place was less than state-of-the-art doesn't make him a murderer,' the defense lawyer told the jury.
The 300-page grand jury report, that initially laid out the charges against Gosnell, details the appalling conditions of the West Philadelphia clinic the doctor operated.
It was described as reeking of cat urine, with walls splattered with blood and patient rooms filled with unsanitary instruments and broken- down equipment.
The tiny fetuses and many of their bodyparts were piled high throughout Gosnell’s clinic in cabinets and freezers, in plastic bags, bottles, even cat-food containers.
Jars with severed feet lined shelves, prosecutors said. 'It was a baby charnel house,' the grand jury reported said.