0:00
(upbeat music)
0:02
- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:13
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:14
Let's get into it.
0:15
All right guys, today we're gonna be talking
0:17
about America's biggest and most prolific serial killer.
0:20
And unfortunately, most of you are not even gonna know
0:23
that this story even existed.
0:24
And that's part of the reason why we're doing this podcast today.
0:27
So this podcast is gonna be centering around a movie
0:29
that is coming out.
0:30
If you're listening to this at the time of release,
0:32
it's coming out tomorrow.
0:33
It is coming out Friday, October the 12th.
0:36
And the movie is called "Gosnell".
0:37
And so I'm gonna get into all the details
0:40
about this movie and how the movie came to be.
0:42
But this is a movie that was made around
0:44
who we should all consider to be the largest serial killer
0:48
in the history of the United States.
0:49
Now is Dr. Kermit, "Gosnell".
0:51
And so here's the thing, I'm gonna kind of give you
0:53
a little bit of a summary of the story.
0:55
But "Gosnell the Movie" is gonna be,
0:58
it was based on a book about "Gosnell".
1:01
And there's a whole lot of details in the movie
1:03
and just like scores and scores of details in the book
1:05
that led to the movie and all these different things.
1:07
I'm not gonna give you too much of the information
1:10
because obviously I'm gonna want you to see this movie
1:12
and we're gonna talk more about it, I promise.
1:14
And so I'm not gonna take too much of the sting
1:15
out of all of that.
1:16
But you know what happened in this case
1:18
is not the biggest spoiler in the world
1:20
because this case, you went down a few years ago.
1:23
Like I think a lot of people have been made aware of this,
1:26
but some of you, this is gonna be new news
1:28
to you.
1:29
So again, not gonna be going into all the different details
1:31
we'll save a little bit for you.
1:32
But anyway, this is about Dr. Kermit Gosnell
1:35
who was the owner and operator
1:37
of Women's Medical Society Clinic in Philadelphia.
1:40
And so this is a guy who had kind of a checkered past
1:43
and even how he got into the, got his doctorate
1:47
and you know, became a medical doctor
1:48
and those different things.
1:49
Like, but this was a guy that was basically owning
1:52
and operating an abortion clinic
1:54
in a, you know, rundown area of Philadelphia.
1:57
He almost exclusively did abortions.
1:59
So many of the abortions that Dr. Gosnell did
2:02
were late term abortions.
2:04
So third trimester abortions.
2:05
A lot of them were illegal.
2:07
You were not at that time in Philadelphia or in Pennsylvania
2:10
able to do abortions after the 24th week
2:12
as if there's something magical about life
2:15
at the 24th week, but we'll digress from that.
2:17
And many of the abortions that he did
2:20
were for lower class folks.
2:22
And so a lot of people that did not have a whole lot of money.
2:26
But this guy, in addition to making a killing
2:29
off of abortions, no pun intended there,
2:32
he also made a killing off of running a prescription drug ring.
2:36
So what he would essentially do is he would have
2:39
a bunch of different mules and a bunch of different people
2:41
that would come to his abortion clinic
2:43
and he would write them prescriptions
2:45
for Oxycontin and Oxycodone and Percocet
2:48
and all these other different opioids.
2:50
And those people would end up going out
2:52
to the streets and selling them.
2:53
These were obviously not people that needed them.
2:55
And to say that he was running a prescription drug ring,
2:58
that's exactly what it was.
2:59
This guy was basically a drug lord.
3:01
He was making 10 to $15,000 a night off of this stuff.
3:06
'Cause he had these people coming in
3:08
and essentially they were just constantly coming in.
3:11
He kept the doors open to his clinic seven days a week.
3:14
And so he was running this prescription drug stuff
3:16
all the time.
3:18
Well, if you do that for long enough
3:20
and you pretty much don't change your flow,
3:22
eventually it's gonna catch up to you.
3:23
So the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration
3:25
and also the Philadelphia Police, they caught wind of this.
3:28
And so they were able to build a case up enough
3:31
to where they could get a warrant
3:33
to go and search Dr. Gosnell's office
3:37
where he was basically doing the things at his clinic.
3:39
And so they were basically going to surprise him.
3:41
They were gonna show up and they were gonna raid the place
3:44
and they were expecting to see a drug paraphernalia
3:47
or maybe even dealers that were inside of there,
3:50
maybe backlogs of all this different information
3:53
of how he was getting the stuff out there.
3:55
Maybe there would be a lot of pills there.
3:56
Like they just didn't know exactly what they were going to see.
4:00
But the officers involved in this raid
4:02
that happened in early 2010,
4:05
they literally could never have imagined
4:09
what they were going to find.
4:10
And so obviously the Joint Task Force,
4:13
they bust in and immediately all of the officers
4:17
are struck by this unbelievably pungent and disgusting smell.
4:22
And it wasn't like it was just at the front door.
4:25
The clinic smelled.
4:27
It absolutely reaped.
4:29
And so I'll kind of just give you the details
4:31
that I can remember from reading the book and in the movie.
4:33
But there was trash all over the place inside this clinic.
4:38
A lot of the ladies that came in there
4:40
that were doing abortions,
4:42
they were given medication and basically put
4:44
on these dirty recliners.
4:45
Most of the recliners had blood on them, dried blood.
4:48
And they were basically left in that room to quote-unquote
4:51
recover or they were left in that room
4:53
before they went back for the procedure
4:55
before the murder in the womb.
4:58
But there was food wrappings everywhere.
5:01
There were cats that were just openly walking around
5:04
inside this medical facility.
5:05
You know, it reeked of cat [inaudible] and, you know,
5:07
cat crap and all these different things.
5:10
And so the place was just absolutely disheveled, right?
5:14
And so they're going through and they're taking care of things.
5:16
And I remember at one point when I was reading
5:19
a detective wood who was one of the main detectives
5:21
in the story, basically in the history of what happened here,
5:25
you know, he saw the state of the clinic.
5:28
It was absolutely horrifying how disgusting it was.
5:32
And they basically weren't going to stop Gosnell,
5:35
who was actually in the process of doing an abortion
5:37
in the back whenever they busted in.
5:39
They basically checked with the health department
5:40
or whoever they were checking with their superiors
5:42
and they said, no, no, no, let him go ahead
5:44
and do what he needs to do, which, you know,
5:46
caught detective wood off guard as with anybody it should.
5:50
But it was just an incredibly crazy
5:53
and crazy experience for most of these guys.
5:55
But then probably the most disgusting
5:57
and the most meaningful and impactful thing
6:00
that happened from this raid was not what they found
6:02
in terms of the drug ring.
6:03
It was found in terms of basically what they saw
6:06
about the abortions.
6:07
There were baby parts, right?
6:11
No other way to say it.
6:12
There were baby parts that were just in random places
6:15
all over the office.
6:16
So pretty much any time he would do an abortion,
6:20
he would just kind of chuck the baby to the side
6:23
or he would actually put it down the garbage disposal.
6:27
Yeah, that actually happened.
6:28
So just think through that and see how that makes you feel.
6:31
But there would be babies in, you know, milk cartons
6:34
that had the tops cut off.
6:36
Some were in bags that were just up against the wall.
6:39
Some were just placed in the freezer, right?
6:42
Like, so think you got a baby here
6:44
and it was just, you know, killed
6:45
and then chucked in the freezer, right?
6:47
And so they just found all these things
6:49
and it was just such a weird overwhelming thing
6:53
for the guys that were doing this raid,
6:54
but they also found these jars
6:57
that were stuffed with baby feet.
7:00
And so just to give you the picture,
7:03
imagine like a mason jar with a few dozen pairs
7:06
of, you know, babies' feet in there.
7:09
You know, Dr. Gosnell later said
7:10
that he was keeping those for research of some kind,
7:12
but essentially it's just because he was a lunatic
7:15
and he was evil and those types of things.
7:17
That's why he was keeping that.
7:18
But essentially this raid was the beginning of the end
7:21
for Dr. Gosnell.
7:22
They went in thinking it was going to be a drug charge
7:24
and it came out much, much different for Dr. Gosnell.
7:27
So he pretty much almost immediately had his license
7:30
suspended so he wasn't able to practice medicine.
7:33
But then the grand jury report came out in May of that year.
7:36
This raid took place in January, I believe.
7:39
His license was suspended in February
7:40
and then May of that year.
7:42
The grand jury report was released basically talking
7:44
about a lot of different things.
7:45
The first was the extent of his prescription drug pill
7:49
business, kind of all the people that were involved,
7:51
how they were involved, how they got their stuff,
7:53
how they got the mules, how they got the product
7:55
to the street, all of that.
7:57
But also there was a long history
7:59
of the reported health violations.
8:01
So as you can tell by how disgusting the clinic was,
8:03
there had to be health violations galore.
8:07
And they were able to find out through a lot of detective work
8:09
and interviews and things like that,
8:10
he had been reported over and over and over.
8:14
I mean, he was reported all the time for health violations.
8:17
I mean, he had untrained staff.
8:19
I mean, the staff basically had these color-coded sheets
8:22
that would tell them exactly how much of what drug
8:25
to give the women when they came in
8:27
so that they could do the abortion procedures.
8:28
These are not people with medical training.
8:30
These are people that just basically spent five minutes
8:32
or 10 minutes with Gosnell saying,
8:34
"Hey, you put this here and this is how much of that you give 'em."
8:36
And they just went on about their business.
8:38
There was a lot of broken equipment in the facility.
8:42
There was a lot of single-use equipment
8:43
that was used multiple times.
8:46
This was a guy that was obviously,
8:47
he was just seen as just a disgusting individual.
8:50
I mean, whenever the raiders kind of came in
8:53
and were going through the area,
8:54
you know, Gosnell was just, you know,
8:55
operating as he normally would.
8:57
So I told you he was doing an abortion in the back
8:59
whenever this was all going down.
9:00
So after he was done with the abortion,
9:02
he actually comes to, you know, some table
9:04
where he was gonna sit there and eat his dinner, right?
9:06
And so he pulls out teriyaki chicken
9:09
with the gloves that he had on
9:11
during the procedure that he was doing.
9:13
So he's got torn, you know, medical gloves
9:17
with blood all over it.
9:18
And here he is just pulling out boxes of Chinese food
9:20
and he's just going to town,
9:22
eating with bloody hands, right?
9:23
The dude was disgusting and obviously his practice
9:26
was very disgusting as well.
9:27
So again, just the long history reported health violations
9:31
that went, you know, basically unreported or unsubstantiated
9:34
or unfollowed up upon or whatever.
9:35
But then also just the shady circumstances
9:38
surrounding the abortion practices.
9:39
That was in the grand jury report as well.
9:42
They found that, you know,
9:43
there were plenty of late-term abortions that he did.
9:45
A lot of them were illegally after a certain date.
9:48
He was actually manipulating client files
9:52
and, you know, ultrasounds and things like that
9:54
to make the babies that he was killing appear smaller.
9:57
He was actually saving these ultrasound photos
10:01
that made the baby seem smaller
10:02
so that if anybody looked into it,
10:03
they wouldn't know that it was beyond that 24-week limit.
10:07
But one of the craziest things that they found out,
10:10
which shouldn't matter because as we know
10:13
and as I hope most of you would agree,
10:14
abortion is murder, doesn't matter at what point
10:17
during the process it happens.
10:19
But one thing that ended up sealing the fate
10:21
of Dr. Gosnell is that he had a very specific way
10:25
that he liked to do abortions.
10:27
If you're wondering about a lot of the different types
10:30
of abortions and how that happens,
10:31
go back to episode six of this podcast.
10:33
I go into a very, very graphic detail on purpose
10:37
as to the types of medical abortions that go on.
10:40
But what Dr. Gosnell would like to do
10:42
is he would like to actually induce birth.
10:45
So these people that were in their third trimester,
10:48
very, very super pregnant,
10:49
some of these women, you know,
10:50
going on nine months of being pregnant,
10:52
he would give them medication
10:54
or he would have his own trained staff
10:55
give them medication that would cause them
10:57
to give birth to the child.
10:59
So the baby would be born alive
11:01
and then Dr. Gosnell would take his scissors
11:04
and he would snip the backs of their necks.
11:07
So basically with scissors,
11:09
he was separating their spine from their skull,
11:12
from their head, right?
11:14
He was, he was separating them.
11:16
That's how he would kill these kids.
11:18
I mean, just let that sink in for a little bit.
11:21
I mean, what in the world?
11:23
Like at some point he was either taught this
11:26
or he came up with that, just, just insane.
11:29
So Gosnell was actually arrested in January of 2011.
11:33
So this was obviously on the heels of the grand jury report
11:36
and the grand jury report was released to the public.
11:38
It was close to 300 pages in January of 11
11:40
and he was charged with eight counts of murder.
11:43
And the prosecutors claimed that he killed seven babies
11:46
in the way that I just described,
11:47
that they were born alive,
11:49
but then he snipped their spines with scissors.
11:53
And the eighth count of murder was for Karamaya Monger
11:56
who was a 41 year old Bhutanese refugee,
11:59
that died on his watch.
12:00
He apparently came in for an abortion.
12:02
Things did not go well.
12:04
He did not show the requisite amount of concern for her
12:07
whenever the ambulance showed up to try and help
12:10
with the kind of the disheveled nature of the facility
12:13
and ended up not working out
12:14
and Monger actually passed away.
12:16
So again, I'm leaving out a lot of details here,
12:18
but I wanna talk to you a little bit about the trial
12:20
'cause there's plenty of information out there
12:22
about the trial, but when they went in,
12:25
before they even went into the trial,
12:28
the judge wanted to make sure that the prosecutors
12:30
didn't make this case about abortion.
12:33
Like they stressed that as much as they possibly could,
12:35
that this is not a case about abortion.
12:37
Like this is a case about murder.
12:39
But again, in this very liberal state,
12:42
in this very liberal city,
12:43
they didn't want to have an abortion doctor
12:45
be seen as a monster for doing abortions.
12:47
They wanted him to be seen as a monster
12:49
if he was killing babies after they were out of the womb,
12:52
again, as if that makes any damn difference.
12:55
But the defense attorneys basically tried
12:57
from the very beginning to make this about racism,
13:00
make this about abortion.
13:01
Like basically forced the prosecutors' hands and say,
13:03
"No, this is actually about abortion."
13:05
And that's essentially where they tried to go.
13:07
They took some pot shots about this.
13:09
They said, "Oh, you know, it's the Catholic prosecutors
13:12
"and the Catholic detective.
13:13
"Obviously you're just trying to prevent this doctor
13:16
"for providing healthcare for women and blah, blah,
13:18
"and all that nonsense."
13:20
But that's essentially what they did.
13:21
The prosecutors came in and tried to make the trial
13:23
about facts, which, you know, duh,
13:25
if you have facts on your side, it should work out.
13:27
I mean, go back to one podcast ago,
13:29
facts don't care about your feelings.
13:30
That's what all these should be like.
13:31
But again, you know, there's always gonna be some theatrics
13:34
with the defense attorneys and whatnot.
13:36
But during the entire trial,
13:38
this really should have been a gigantic national news story.
13:42
I mean, just think about in your community.
13:44
So whether you're listening to this
13:45
in a major metropolitan area or a tiny town
13:48
with one stoplight, right?
13:49
If somebody in your community had beheaded seven people,
13:55
right, or slit their throats.
13:58
Don't you think we would have heard about that?
14:01
I mean, think about the serial killers
14:02
that you know by name, right?
14:04
Ted Bundy, John Wayne, Gacy, like, you know,
14:07
Jeffrey Dahmer, like we just know these names
14:09
are synonymous with culture now.
14:11
But imagine if somebody went on a spree
14:13
where they were literally chopping heads off
14:15
or slitting throats in the United States, right?
14:17
If that happens over the Middle East,
14:18
we just kind of move on with our day, right?
14:20
But if it happened here, that would be major news, right?
14:23
Especially if someone did that in like a daycare,
14:26
you know, kill children that way.
14:28
It would be unbelievably heinous, right?
14:31
But essentially from the very, very beginning,
14:33
the media wanted nothing to do with this story.
14:36
Nothing at all.
14:37
So even the prosecutor's office, they were so prepared.
14:42
They were going out of their way to prepare the lawyers
14:45
for just the circus they thought it was gonna be
14:47
with the media.
14:48
Only to basically arrive the first day of the trial
14:52
and there was no media to be found.
14:54
And I mean, like none, right?
14:56
There was actually a picture that was made pretty famous.
14:59
It shouldn't have been taken,
14:59
but you know, there was someone who snapped a picture
15:02
of the rose of the courtroom that had been reserved
15:05
for the press and it wasn't even taken seriously.
15:08
By, I mean, nobody was there.
15:09
Like you could see every single one of the signs
15:11
'cause there wasn't a single person of the media
15:13
that was there, right?
15:14
So here's this gigantic story about this serial killer
15:18
and nobody knew about it.
15:19
So it was nothing short of media malpractice, right?
15:22
We can all kind of agree on that.
15:24
And again, without giving away too much
15:25
if you don't know about the story,
15:27
it basically took a little bit of prompting
15:29
and a little bit of grassroots outrage
15:32
for the media to all of a sudden be like,
15:33
oh, okay, well, I guess this is actually a story, right?
15:36
So a bit ridiculous, but the trial basically carried on.
15:40
Gosnell actually never took the stand.
15:42
He was apparently, he just smiled a lot
15:45
and talked a lot and greeted everybody.
15:47
And he just had this very, this warmth about him
15:49
the entire time.
15:50
And again, his defense attorneys were trying
15:52
to make this about abortion
15:53
and say that that's what this was going on.
15:55
But there were some very interesting things
15:57
that happened in the trial.
15:58
But and really, I think the movie does a fantastic job
16:01
of going into all that.
16:02
But I do want to point out one thing
16:05
that happened during this trial.
16:06
Now, the person that is depicted doing this in the movie
16:11
is not actually the person that did this in real life,
16:14
but you essentially get the same effect, right?
16:16
You know, a lot of the things in the movie
16:17
were for theatrical purposes.
16:19
But now I digress a just a little bit.
16:21
Essentially, there was an abortion doctor
16:23
that was brought on to, you know,
16:26
basically to up to testify about the process of abortion
16:29
and how they would normally do it
16:31
in those types of things.
16:32
And in the movie, I believe the number that was cited
16:35
is, you know, the defense attorney asked her,
16:36
how many abortions have you provided?
16:39
And this woman said like 40,000.
16:41
This is a single doctor, guys.
16:44
A single doctor said that she had performed 40,000 abortions.
16:49
And she just said it
16:50
as if she was giving you baseball statistics, right?
16:53
I mean, that was it, right?
16:55
Like she was telling me how many home runs
16:56
the team hit last year, right?
16:57
That was just kind of the thing that it was,
16:59
but it's in a chill through the courtroom.
17:04
You know, the jury was very uncomfortable with that number.
17:06
Even the people that were looking on,
17:09
they were very uncomfortable with that number.
17:11
Now, a lot of them probably couldn't tell you why,
17:14
but maybe it's because there was a little bit of reality
17:17
brought into a situation
17:18
that most people just basically use euphemisms with.
17:21
40,000, one person ended 40,000 lives.
17:26
And amazingly, this person wasn't on trial,
17:29
but again, I guess we'll have to digress from that
17:32
a little bit as well.
17:33
But to kind of fast forward you through a lot of the
17:35
theatrics and different things that had happened
17:37
during the trial, on May 13th of 2013,
17:41
the jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of murder,
17:45
one count of involuntary manslaughter,
17:47
and there were just a plethora of other lower counts
17:49
that he was convicted on.
17:50
One day later, May 14th,
17:52
he waived all future rights of appeal
17:55
so that he could avoid the death penalty.
17:57
And then one day later on May 15th,
17:59
he was sentenced to life in prison.
18:01
I think there were, you know, three counts of murder.
18:03
He got three life sentences
18:04
that were supposed to be served concurrently.
18:06
And so he is obviously, he's still in prison in Pennsylvania.
18:11
He is not really visited by his family.
18:14
He's kind of alone, but this is a guy
18:15
who really, even to this day, maintains his innocence.
18:19
He maintains that he was just helping out,
18:21
poor people in his community.
18:22
And he thinks that at some point in the future,
18:24
he will be vindicated,
18:26
that he will be able to rise above this oppression.
18:29
So now let's move on to the movie.
18:31
So the movie and how it came to be, it's a long story,
18:34
but I'll try to give you the high points of it.
18:36
Back in 2014, the filmmakers Anne McElaney,
18:39
Philom McAller, and Magdalena, I think it's Syguida.
18:43
Sorry, they announced that they'd be making a film
18:45
about Gosnell.
18:47
And so Nick Cersei would direct the film.
18:49
John Sullivan would be the executive producer
18:51
and Andrew Clavin, who you might know from the Daily Wire.
18:54
He would actually write the screenplay.
18:56
And so the interesting thing about a movie like this
18:58
is as you can imagine, no Hollywood studios
19:01
wanted to go anywhere near a movie
19:04
that depicted abortion in a negative light.
19:06
Obviously people that align with the political left
19:09
and elitists, you know, people that you would assume
19:11
would be in Hollywood.
19:12
They don't ever want to have any type
19:14
of even accidental pro-life message.
19:16
That would not be something that they would want to do.
19:18
It would cut against one of their favorite things,
19:20
which is apparently killing babies in the womb.
19:22
And so this movie had to be crowdfunded.
19:25
And with most crowdfunding or crowdsourcing campaigns,
19:28
it's kind of a crapshoot.
19:29
I mean, for every, you know, fun story
19:32
about how something was crowdsourced
19:34
and now a billion people own this particular product
19:36
or something, so forth, like there's always these stories
19:39
of people setting up this crowdfunding
19:41
and then they get like 17 cents, you know,
19:42
it's just like they got nothing.
19:44
And so, but this movie, I think it actually set the record.
19:47
I'm not exactly sure.
19:48
But crowdfunded $2.3 million to make this movie.
19:53
$2.3 million.
19:56
Now that's shoestring compared to what some big box office
19:59
Hollywood films are, but for an independent film,
20:02
that's a pretty substantial budget, right?
20:04
And so they were able to get Earl Billings
20:06
to star as Dr. Kermit Gosnell
20:09
and Dean Kane to play Detective James Wood
20:12
who plays a large role in the actual case,
20:14
but in the story as well.
20:15
And so to coincide with the movie,
20:17
the filmmakers wrote Gosnell,
20:19
the untold story of America's most prolific serial killer.
20:22
It was a book that was released in 2017
20:25
and it became a bestseller almost immediately.
20:28
I just finished it last night, the book.
20:30
So I was kind of reading this
20:31
as I was going through and researching.
20:33
I mean, it's some of the most horrifying stuff
20:35
you've ever seen, guys.
20:36
Like, you know, maybe someday on a different podcast,
20:38
I'll be able to get into some of the exact content
20:41
that was so important, but I mean, it's appalling.
20:45
It's absolutely appalling what this guy
20:47
was able to get away with for so long.
20:49
I mean, there's so much, so much detail in this book.
20:51
So obviously I want you to read that.
20:53
But it was announced in June of this year,
20:56
so June of 2018 that there would actually be
20:59
a distribution deal for this movie,
21:01
which was incredibly surprising.
21:03
Even the people that made the movie,
21:05
even the people that got a crowd funded,
21:07
you would think that they would have a really, really hard time
21:09
getting a distribution deal, which I'm sure they did,
21:12
but this is going to be released to 750 theaters.
21:15
Now, I don't know, I don't claim to know a whole lot
21:17
about the film industry, but obviously,
21:20
if it does incredibly well for the first weekend
21:22
at those 750 theaters, it's probably gonna expand from there.
21:26
There's probably gonna be even more theaters
21:27
that come on board because everybody wants to make money,
21:29
even if it's off of a film that they don't really agree with,
21:32
right?
21:32
But at the same token, if it's an absolute flop,
21:34
you can expect it to drop pretty precipitously
21:36
from that 750 theaters, right?
21:38
It may just be like a one weekend showing in some places,
21:41
but here's the thing about the movie
21:43
that I found really interesting is as soon as I found out
21:46
that this movie was gonna be made, I was excited about it.
21:48
This was before I even started reading the book.
21:50
And so I had been following their Facebook page
21:52
and following a lot of different details
21:54
about the movie, who was gonna be starring
21:56
and how it was gonna be released,
21:58
and all the trailer just came out and those types of things.
22:00
But I figured that I was just gonna have to try
22:03
to find the screening on my own, or hopefully,
22:06
'cause I'm in Oklahoma City, like hopefully, you know,
22:09
it would be shown here in my market
22:10
'cause I did know that there were large portions
22:13
of the movie that were shot in Oklahoma City in Guthrie,
22:15
which is a town literally 10 minutes north of my house, right?
22:19
And so I knew that and I knew that I had a buddy
22:22
that had a kid that was an extra in the movie
22:24
and I knew all this stuff, but I just assumed
22:26
I was gonna have to watch this movie on my own.
22:28
Now I'm driving out to go to a friend's house a few weeks ago
22:32
and I get a call from a buddy of mine.
22:33
It's just a random phone call from a good buddy of mine
22:36
from college named Matt Grasmire
22:37
and it was actually his baby that is one
22:39
of the extras in the film.
22:41
And he was just basically like, I didn't miss a text,
22:43
not a call, he just texted me, he was like,
22:44
hey, have you heard of this guy's now movie?
22:47
Like what are your thoughts on it?
22:47
I think it'd be a great podcast for you to do.
22:50
And he had probably assumed I had never heard of it,
22:52
but I had indeed heard of the movie
22:54
and I was excited for it and all those different things
22:56
and I was like, yeah, I've heard of it.
22:57
I would love to see it before it comes out
23:00
so I could help, but I don't really know a way to do it.
23:02
Well, lo and behold, this guy, you know,
23:05
having his baby be in the film and everything,
23:06
they had a connection with one of the producers
23:09
and so they ended up getting my wife and I a ticket
23:12
to a private screening that happened in Oklahoma City
23:15
a couple of weeks ago.
23:16
And so this was several weeks before the national release,
23:19
but I thought this was gonna be a great opportunity.
23:21
I was so excited.
23:22
So again, Matt Grasmire, shout out to you, man.
23:24
Thanks a whole lot.
23:25
I really, really appreciate you getting this connected for me.
23:27
But I really wanted to see how this independent film
23:30
would come through 'cause you guys know,
23:32
like especially if you've seen independent like Christian films,
23:35
which this is not, but if you've seen those things
23:37
like the acting is so bad,
23:39
they tried to do special effects,
23:41
but it's just goofy and terrible.
23:43
And you would just been like, man,
23:44
I would have much rather just read a book
23:46
instead of watch this terrible crappy movie.
23:48
But I gotta say, I was really blown away by this movie.
23:52
Again, there are certain parts of the film
23:55
where you're like, okay, that feels a little bit low budget,
23:58
but those were very, very few.
24:00
I had very few times where I was like,
24:02
ah, that was a little bit weird.
24:04
All right, that was a little bit of overacting.
24:06
And for the budget that they had
24:08
to produce the film that they did,
24:10
I felt like it was fairly substantial.
24:12
Again, like I said earlier,
24:13
they had changed some details
24:16
from what happened in the actual trial
24:18
and as shown in the book
24:19
to make it a little bit more palatable for the screen.
24:22
So as a, for instance,
24:24
the main prosecuting attorney in the film
24:27
it depicts one gal, but in real life,
24:29
there were basically three individuals
24:31
that were all kind of doing it at the same time,
24:33
which, you know, not a huge deal for theatrical purposes.
24:36
It made sense for them to do that.
24:38
But guys, it was a very moving
24:40
and very, very powerfully done movie.
24:42
'Cause here's the thing is when you know the ending,
24:44
it's kind of hard to move people emotionally, right?
24:47
And I won't really give you the portion of the movie
24:52
'cause I think you'll get it whenever you watch it.
24:55
But, you know, I'll go and describe it to you.
24:57
So there's a point in the trial
24:59
where they actually show the jurors
25:01
a picture of one of the babies that was murdered.
25:03
So this was one of the babies
25:04
that they were bringing up on charges
25:06
for God's know of murder, right?
25:08
And this was referred to as baby A or baby boy A.
25:11
And so in the movie, they don't actually show the picture.
25:15
They don't actually show the picture of baby boy A,
25:18
but I had seen the picture
25:20
before I went and saw this movie.
25:22
And it is terrifying.
25:25
And as you could probably expect, yes,
25:27
I'm gonna give you a link to some of these pictures
25:29
'cause I don't wanna sterilize what you're gonna see.
25:32
I don't wanna sterilize it in your imagination
25:34
because even in your imagination,
25:36
it's far, far worse with the reality was.
25:38
And I remember being so consumed
25:43
during that portion of the movie
25:44
with righteous, indignant anger, just absolutely furious.
25:49
And it was even hard for me to kind of control my emotions.
25:53
I'm just sitting there in the theater and I'm just like,
25:55
ooh, like I was so fired up
25:58
because I had seen what Gosnell did to this boy
26:01
and how it was depicted in the film,
26:04
you're just waiting for the picture to show up on the screen,
26:06
but they didn't, they didn't do that.
26:09
But just yes, just a very, very powerful movie.
26:12
McElaney was there also the executive director,
26:14
John Sullivan was there.
26:16
And so they addressed the crowd, took some Q and A,
26:20
there was nothing really to report from the Q and A
26:21
after the film, but they stuck around later
26:24
and took pictures and shook hands and stuff like that.
26:27
But before I left, I made sure that I talked to John Sullivan,
26:30
the executive director,
26:32
and I told him that I was gonna be doing a podcast episode
26:34
about this and I just wanted to ask him,
26:36
you know, what would you want mentioned, right?
26:38
'Cause I'm gonna give my own opinions,
26:40
I'm not gonna let you just speak for me,
26:42
but what would you want me to make sure
26:43
I got across to my audience?
26:45
And this is what he told me.
26:46
He said, most people think this movie
26:48
is gonna be incredibly graphic.
26:50
And obviously you just watched this movie,
26:53
it's not incredibly graphic.
26:54
If you could make sure people know that this is,
26:57
you know, family friendly within reason,
26:59
it's about a very important and serious topic.
27:02
But as long as you can explain that,
27:05
you know, I think that that would be a good service to us.
27:06
And so that's what I wanted to pass on to y'all
27:08
from John Sullivan, that this is a movie
27:11
that you can take your kids to.
27:12
Now, you probably don't wanna take your six and seven-year-olds
27:14
to, it's gonna open you up to a lot of conversations
27:18
that you're perhaps not quite ready to have.
27:20
You might be, but perhaps not.
27:22
But it's certainly age-appropriate for, you know,
27:24
11, 12-year-olds, teenagers and things like that.
27:26
There's really no graphic,
27:30
there's really nothing graphic in this film whatsoever.
27:32
So I wanted to make sure to pass that on to you guys.
27:35
But when thinking through this book
27:38
and through this movie,
27:40
I just kept being struck with why this story is important.
27:44
And I came up with a few things
27:46
that I basically wanted to share with y'all.
27:47
And the first thing is that just most people
27:49
don't know about this story.
27:52
I mean, even think, you know, about 30 minutes ago
27:54
when you started this podcast,
27:55
did you know Kermit Gosnell?
27:58
If you say Gosnell, do people automatically react?
28:01
'Cause I gotta tell you, whenever I told people
28:02
I went and saw the screening of the movie Gosnell,
28:04
they're like, "What's that?"
28:06
Right, I mean, that's not exactly a common last name,
28:08
but no one really knew who I was talking about.
28:10
And then whenever I would describe it,
28:11
no one was like, "Oh yeah, I remember hearing about that
28:14
"a few years ago."
28:15
And there's really a good reason for us
28:17
'cause the media's kind of still covering it up.
28:20
I mean, there's a lot of media resources
28:22
and outlets that would love nothing more
28:24
for than this movie to just go away,
28:26
to just not be a part of the general discussion.
28:30
I mean, there were several stories
28:31
and I'll just give you a few of them.
28:33
Here recently, the Federalist reported
28:35
that Facebook was actually suppressing ads
28:38
that were being purchased by the Gosnell Movie Facebook page,
28:41
suppressing the ads.
28:43
Right, here we are, it's supposed to be worried
28:45
about Russian bots influencing the election.
28:47
And here we have a supposed neutral arbiter,
28:51
you know, a provider of a service
28:52
that is actually covering up these ads, right?
28:57
You may have heard the story about NPR.
28:58
NPR, the Gosnell Movie People wanted
29:01
to actually do a commercial on NPR
29:04
and they wanted to use the phraseology abortion doctor
29:08
in reference to Dr. Gosnell,
29:10
'cause that's exactly what he was.
29:11
And NPR would not accept the ad.
29:14
If it said abortion doctor,
29:15
they wanted it to say Philadelphia doctor,
29:18
as if that were specific enough, right?
29:20
Let's lump all the Philly doctors
29:21
into one little category, right?
29:23
But the NPR would not let them, you know,
29:26
come on with the ad that they wanted to put on there, right?
29:29
And there were no exceptions.
29:30
There was even a hotel that basically took
29:34
the Gosnell People's money
29:37
and didn't allow them to do a screening.
29:39
They were supposed to do a screening
29:40
on the same night of kind of this big gala event
29:43
by Planned Parenthood.
29:44
And Planned Parenthood being the angels that they are
29:47
through a major hissy fit
29:49
and ended up getting the hotel to cave,
29:51
which is kind of a new trend now
29:53
that if you're on the left and you complain enough
29:55
and you scream enough and you make a big enough ruckus,
29:58
people are just gonna be like,
29:59
okay, okay, we'll drop them as a sponsor.
30:02
Okay, okay, okay, okay, like we won't do that again.
30:04
We're so, so sorry.
30:05
And this hotel did that.
30:06
So they basically took the Gosnell People's money
30:08
and didn't allow them to do the screening
30:10
because of quote unquote security concerns.
30:12
So that's the first thing
30:13
is people don't know this is even happening.
30:15
And the media, if they had their way
30:16
in these social media companies, they would keep it that way.
30:18
But the second thing is,
30:19
is that most people don't understand
30:20
what abortion really is, y'all.
30:23
Like again, go back to episode six of this podcast.
30:25
If you haven't listened to that episode,
30:27
listen to it right after you listen to this one,
30:29
I go into strict detail.
30:30
Most people don't have the foggiest flippin clue
30:33
what happens during that procedure.
30:36
They've gotten so lost in, you know, their blue candidate
30:39
or their favorite person who just thinks
30:41
this should all be a choice
30:42
and that it somehow has been wrapped up
30:44
into women's healthcare while at the same time
30:47
not realizing that 50% of the people
30:50
killed during abortions are female, right?
30:53
They forget that part,
30:54
but they don't really understand what abortion is.
30:57
And it kind of leads me to my third point,
30:58
which is Gosnell is surely not the only Gosnell.
31:01
Like we can't assume that this is a one off,
31:06
like that there's one abortion doctor
31:08
in the entirety of the United States
31:10
since Roe v. Wade that has figured out,
31:12
hey, it's actually pretty easy if we just induce birth.
31:15
I mean, they're only gonna be alive for a second.
31:16
I'm just gonna snip their neck or whatever they do,
31:18
chop their head off completely, who knows, right?
31:21
I mean, he can't be the only one.
31:23
And guys, we need to snuff those other dudes out.
31:27
And I'm not telling you,
31:28
go get your pitchforks and your shotguns
31:29
and go bust into abortion clinics.
31:31
I am not saying to do that, not saying to do that.
31:34
But Gosnell surely could have been found out
31:38
well before he was.
31:40
Did it really take a prescription drug raid
31:43
to make this happen?
31:45
To figure out that this guy was doing that?
31:46
'Cause here's the thing,
31:47
is some people are only outraged at how he killed them.
31:51
Think about that.
31:52
You wanna talk about seared consciousness?
31:54
Like, had these babies been killed in the womb?
31:57
Pre-vaginal canal, right?
32:00
A lot of people would be like,
32:01
"Oh yeah, that's fine, it's fair."
32:02
Woman's right to choose, I guess.
32:05
But the fact is, is that the babies
32:07
were outside of the mother's womb.
32:08
They had passed the magical vaginal canal
32:11
and then they were killed
32:12
and all of a sudden it's like,
32:13
"Oh no, that's one step too far,"
32:16
as if it's different.
32:17
Most of these babies that Gosnell killed in late terms
32:20
could have obviously been alive
32:22
and been kept alive outside the womb.
32:24
Some of them wouldn't even require help
32:26
of like a NICU or anything like that.
32:28
So again, the story is incredibly important.
32:32
People don't know about it.
32:33
People don't understand abortion.
32:34
We think that Gosnell's just kind of this one off.
32:36
I hope we continue to find out about these guys
32:39
so we can stamp them out and get them eradicated.
32:42
And guys, this leads me into some big asks
32:44
that I have for you.
32:46
And the first ask is, "Go see this movie."
32:48
And I mean, see it this weekend.
32:50
I really, really hope and pray
32:52
that there are guys listening to this podcast on time.
32:54
I know that some guys, you know,
32:55
there are a few weeks behind or something like that.
32:57
I'm gonna do everything I can
32:59
to get you guys to listen to this one on time
33:01
because it is imperative that you go
33:03
and listen to it this weekend.
33:04
You got, you got, or not listen to it,
33:06
but to go watch it this weekend.
33:08
Because if you go watch it, and if it does well,
33:10
it'll stay in the theaters.
33:12
If it stays in the theaters, more people will see it.
33:14
If more people see it, more people will understand the story.
33:17
This is easy, like this is easy math guys.
33:18
It's pretty linear at this point.
33:20
And the second thing is if you're gonna see it,
33:22
take people with you.
33:24
Don't be the solo movie guy.
33:26
I've been that guy, don't be that guy, right?
33:27
At least take your spouse, take your girlfriend,
33:29
take somebody, if you're a gal, take your boyfriend.
33:31
Who cares?
33:32
Take other families with you.
33:34
Take your Sunday school, take your home group.
33:36
Take your, your softball team.
33:37
Take people from work.
33:39
Take them to go see this movie.
33:40
Pay for their tickets.
33:41
Make them pay for their tickets.
33:42
Who gives a crap?
33:43
But take other people to this.
33:45
We gotta make this movie as successful as we possibly can.
33:47
The other thing is read the book.
33:49
I mean, I know for some of you guys, like, oh man,
33:51
but I mean, you've been listening this long enough.
33:53
You should know that I don't really take excuses
33:55
very easily, right?
33:57
Get this book and read it.
33:58
It's a very, very important book for you to read.
34:00
You've gotta understand really all the details.
34:03
And the book goes into a lot of detail
34:05
about what happened with this case
34:06
and how they found it and all the other different things
34:08
that I didn't even mention that were super evil
34:11
that Gosnell did.
34:12
And the last part is share the story.
34:14
Guys, share this story.
34:16
Share it on social media.
34:18
Share it with your friends.
34:19
Talk about it.
34:20
The next time you're teaching Sunday school,
34:21
just share this story.
34:23
People don't know about it.
34:25
People can pick Ted Bundy out of a lineup,
34:28
but they wouldn't even be able to identify Gosnell.
34:32
Like this guy, okay, he was convicted for three murders.
34:36
Realistically, he murdered tens of thousands.
34:39
That was a point that I didn't really make earlier.
34:41
These were not isolated incidents
34:44
where there were these seven children that were born
34:47
and then had their necks snipped.
34:49
He did this thousands and thousands and thousands of times.
34:53
Right?
34:54
This was his MO.
34:55
This is just how he did it, right?
34:58
So this story has to be told.
35:00
This can't be something that we just brushed under the rug
35:02
or go see the movie and be like,
35:03
"Oh, that was a good movie or all I liked it."
35:05
Or, yeah, I'd probably give it a thumbs up
35:07
on Rotten Tomato or give it something like that.
35:10
This has got to be something that changes in us.
35:12
We've got to share this thing around, guys.
35:14
All right, guys, for let you get out of here,
35:15
we're going to do a quick resilience boost.
35:17
As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry
35:19
and our mission is cultivating mainly resilience.
35:21
And specifically, we do that by providing content
35:23
that for just spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
35:27
Today, we are going to be talking about,
35:29
I guess we'll just call it mental resilience today
35:31
because I'm going to give you all a lot
35:32
of different categories of things to look at.
35:34
So what you'll find here in the links in order,
35:37
you're going to find the movie website
35:39
for the Gosnell movie.
35:40
So that is going to have the trailer.
35:41
It's going to have the theaters
35:43
that it's going to be running in.
35:44
It's going to have some of the press.
35:46
It's just basically a good center point for that.
35:48
And then I have a link to the YouTube
35:50
of the official Gosnell trailer
35:51
so you can share that around.
35:53
It's just an easier link for you to share.
35:54
Also, there's a link on Amazon to the Gosnell book.
35:57
Again, it's Gosnell, the untold story of America's
36:00
most prolific serial killer.
36:02
There's also a link that,
36:04
if you don't click on any of these other links,
36:05
I really want you to click on this one.
36:07
It's called Kermit Gosnell's House of Horrors Images.
36:10
So these are pictures from the inside
36:12
of basically when they did this raid.
36:15
The pictures are incredibly graphic
36:18
and don't be a pansy.
36:19
Look at these pictures.
36:21
Like preferably, I would like for you to look
36:22
at these pictures before you go and see the movie.
36:25
Like honestly, I would want you to have these images
36:28
in your head while you're seeing the depiction
36:30
of this guy on film.
36:32
I want you to be thinking about,
36:34
there was a human being that did this
36:35
and didn't do it a couple of times, did it thousands of times.
36:38
So don't skip out on that.
36:39
Also, I gave you a link to the Gosnell Facebook page.
36:42
A lot of their most recent updates
36:45
and their most timely updates are on that.
36:47
So if you're on Facebook,
36:48
I would get on there and give the film a thumbs up.
36:50
That'll certainly help them.
36:51
And then also an article called Facebook Stifles
36:54
ads for film on abortion monster Kermit Gosnell.
36:57
So this is that federalist thing I talked about earlier
36:59
that's telling you a little bit
37:00
of how they're trying to stamp all this out.
37:03
Guys, as always, thank you so much
37:04
for listening this far into the podcast.
37:06
We really do appreciate it.
37:07
If you would, please subscribe on iTunes,
37:09
SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your friends to listen
37:12
and share this on social media.
37:13
If you use the hashtag on Daunton Life,
37:15
we'll be sure to find your post and give it a thumbs up.
37:17
Guys, if we deserve a five star review,
37:19
please go ahead and leave us one.
37:20
We are still five star reviewed.
37:22
We really appreciate all the feedback.
37:23
So continue giving that to us.
37:25
I'm currently booking speaking engagements
37:26
for the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019.
37:30
So if you want me to come speak to your Sunday school,
37:32
to your team, to your event, whatever,
37:34
hit me up info@undaunted.life, info@undaunted.life.
37:38
The website is www.undaunted.life
37:41
and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter
37:43
at undauntedlife or facebook.com/undauntedlife.
37:47
Check out our free devotionals on the U-version Bible app.
37:49
Just search undaunted life under plans.
37:51
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red
37:53
for allowing us to use their entire music library
37:56
for our content.
37:57
The intro outro track on this podcast is our song,
37:59
"King of Sorrow," which is off their latest record
38:01
entitled "Phantom Anthem."
38:03
Links to all of this are in the description.
38:05
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
38:07
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
38:10
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness,
38:14
keep seeking the lion of Judah.
38:16
(upbeat music)
38:18
(upbeat music)