The story of Kermit Gosnell is, perhaps, one that even well-meaning people would prefer to block out of their minds. After all, as a Philadelphia grand jury report put it, to talk of Gosnell is to talk of “a doctor who killed babies and endangered women.” Recall this most sickening habit of his: Gosnell would purposely induce the premature births of babies and then “snip” the spines of those premature — but living, breathing, viable — little persons to, as he put it, “ensure fetal demise.” In four decades, Gosnell killed hundreds and hundreds of babies in this way, collecting their severed feet in jars as evidence of his evil.

Gosnell was chiefly responsible for the wickedness perpetrated in his abortion shop of horrors, but he didn’t operate alone. As Michelle Malkin put it, Gosnell was helped in his hideous enterprise by “a crew of unlicensed, untrained butchers masquerading as noble providers of women’s ‘choice.'”

Among them: his wife, Pearl Gosnell, who has now pleaded guilty to assisting at the corrupt abortion clinic — a clinic that the grand jury described as “a filthy fraud in which [Gosnell] overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”

According to LifeNews.com, Pearl was charged with participating in an illegal late-term abortion, conspiracy and being part of a corrupt organization. Previously, she had considered “a plea deal similar to the one several of Gosnell’s former abortion center employees have made [in which] they have pleaded guilty to receive a lesser sentence in exchange for testifying against Gosnell.” But it appears Pearl — who by law cannot be made to speak out against her husband — has opted simply to plead guilty and remain silent during his trial. That means, I’m assuming, she’ll likely accept a longer sentence than she would if she’d testify.

Silence was a necessary condition for Gosnell’s death mill to flourish. As has been well documented, state governmental failure was and is an ominous element of the Gosnell story. Gosnell’s practice was about criminal activity, yes, but, whatever folks might say to the contrary, it was also about abortion. Put simply: Gosnell was more easily able to perpetrate his crimes because of an abortion-accepting “culture of death” that has inured officials to the need to vigilantly protect life.