(May 3, 2013) — The media reports on most things that happen daily, however inconsequential they may be. But while Burger King deliveries and Twitter updates make front page stories, very few people have ever even heard of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his demented practice of killing perfectly viable babies. Women need reproductive rights; their lives should hold more value than the unborn child’s. This case, however, has nothing to do with reproductive rights and everything to do with a man taking advantage of women desperate beyond reason.

According to the Huffington Post, Gosnell’s clinic was run like something from a third-world country. Flea-ridden cats, bloody chairs, cluttered hallways, and dirty or altogether absent equipment was not even the worst of it. His practice of keeping babies and their body parts in water jugs or orange juice containers littered around the clinic seemed to hint at his idiosyncratic and possibly unhinged mental state. Technically speaking, Gosnell did not perform abortions.

He induced labor in the women who were in their third trimester of pregnancy, delivered the babies, (or left the unlicensed staff to half-heartedly deliver them) then severed their spinal cords, killing them.

In his care, hundreds of viable babies were killed and two women died, solely as a result of his negligence and malpractice.He overdosed one of the women, then failed to seek out emergency medical care in a timely manner. It is irritating that pro-life advocates may look upon this case and use it to further their arguments against abortion. It is unsettling that newspapers and news channels have covered this story much less than other less notable ones, presumably to maintain a good image of reproductive rights in the public eye.

The women who went to Gosnell may not have even known their fetuses were viable. They may have been threatened with abuse. They may have been desperate and alone and without any kind of support system. Gosnell took advantage of them in their vulnerable positions. If anything, this story exposes what may be the black market of medical clinics and would encourage women not to resort to desperate measures should they want an abortion. Gosnell is in the process of being tried for this crimes.

He faces capital punishment or life in prison. A man who ended the lives of so many babies after holding their crying forms in his hands should receive scant mercy, but one who then preserved their remains like something out of a science-fiction movie may bear enough psychological issues to warrant his own life being spared. Whatever the end of Gosnell’s trial may be, we should not let his case affect our views of reproductive rights. Murder is murder, and that’s what Gosnell performed, not abortions.