The question that should haunt us now is not how many victims Gosnell killed, which we will never know, but how many more Gosnells there are in our country. My National Review colleague Jillian Kay Melchior uncovered evidence that a few are in Florida. In a 2006 case, prosecutors were apparently unwilling to seek justice for a murdered infant left in a trash bag to die because she had been delivered at 22 weeks gestation.

The theory that infants delivered that early have no rights — that protecting them would conflict with Roe v. Wade — is mistaken: The Supreme Court has never held any such thing. It may nonetheless be a widespread view. President Barack Obama, when he was a state senator, opposed legislation to protect such infants because he feared it would undermine Roe. The court has made clear, however, that as soon as a fetus makes it even partway out of the womb it becomes a baby that the law can protect. …

Gosnell’s case ought to spur reform — in states, which ought to make sure their abortion clinics aren’t going even further than the law allows; in Congress, which ought to determine if the civil rights of infants are being adequately protected; and in the Supreme Court, which ought to revisit an abortion jurisprudence that is more extreme than is typically understood.