Pro-Life Filmmakers Battle Gosnell Media Bias
If someone were to mention the name Kermit Gosnell, most people wouldn’t know who he was. Sadly, this is evidence of entirely how little media attention this horrific story has received. In 2013, a jury convicted former physician Kermit Gosnell of killing babies born alive at his abortion clinic in Philadelphia. He’s been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Remarkably, though, this story received little attention from the media, in comparison to the plethora of coverage that usually surrounds stories about convicted murderers, especially when the victims are children. However, the filmmaking team of Phelim McAleer, wife Ann McElhinney and their partner, Magdalena Segieda, who previously produced the incredibly successful FrackNation, are currently raising money to fund the movie Gosnell, which will focus on his crimes.
They had planned to use the popular crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to raise the money needed to produce this movie, just as they had done with FrackNation, until Kickstarter raised objections to the description of the movie campaign and asked McAleer to change the description or they would have the project removed. McAleer responded by moving the fundraising campaign to Indiegogo.com and speaking out against the censorship of Kickstarter.
In the campaign video, which can be viewed here, the filmmakers discuss some details of Gosnell’s story.
Gosnell ran an abortion clinic in a poor neighborhood of West Philadelphia for over 30 years, and his crimes were only discovered by accident when the FBI executed a drug raid on his facility due to his prolific prescriptions of the highly abused narcotic Oxycontin. There, authorities discovered abortion practices that the 2011 grand jury report described as “a house of horrors.”
In the end, Gosnell was convicted of murder and manslaughter, as well as performing illegal late-term abortions. These convictions include killing babies that were born alive by severing their spinal cords and injecting one woman with a lethal dose of anesthesia.
In a media culture that’s normally obsessed with the stories of both fictional and real murderers, from shows such as Hannibal and The Following to John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, it’s surprising, if not infuriating, that this story was given so little attention. Many in the media have said that left-wing bias and a desire by media contributors to keep negative publicity from surrounding the topic of abortion was the reason behind such minimal coverage.
Now McAleer, McElhinney and Segieda are seeking to remedy that.
McElhinney says, “Hollywood and the mainstream media have been very reluctant to cover this serial killer, but we think it’s time Gosnell’s story was told.”
The trio has so far received commitments for a little more than $262,000, which is just under 12.5 percent of their $2.1 million goal. However, they only have 40 days left to raise the remainder of the funds. If successful, the Gosnell movie will be the largest crowd-funded movie ever produced, but it’s dependent on support and donations from the public.
Movieguide recently met with McAleer and McElhinney and found them to be extremely intelligent, passionate and talented. We highly commend their movie FrackNation, which exposes some of the lies left-wing environmentalists are spreading in the United States and around the world.
