“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

PHILADELPHIA—Refreshingly, someone took the witness stand Wednesday in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial who had nothing to do with killing babies—neither in the West Philadelphia facility the media likes to call the “House of Horrors,” nor in the gleaming Abington Memorial Hospital abortion unit the media, well, does not.

PHILADELPHIA—If abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial were an old Perry Mason episode, yesterday would have been the day when the famous defender would make the courtroom gasp by showing that the kleptomaniac lady in the case of the shoplifter’s shoe could not possibly have killed her jeweler friend.

PHILADELPHIA—Last Thursday, during abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial, a man in an olive green prison jumpsuit occupied the witness stand all day. At least that’s the color I told the Philadelphia Magazine reporter who explained to me he was color-blind. The man in the witness stand, Steven Edward Massof, was employed at the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia from 2003 to 2008, first apprenticing in Gosnell’s family practice, and later—“out of curiosity”—moving into the abortion side of the business.

PHILADELPHIA—I am not saying a trial is a play, but there are aspects of it that are very much like a stage drama. The first thing one notices upon entering the courtroom of Judge Jeffrey Minehart is the display of hospital artifacts placed in the area between the bench and the attorneys’ tables.

PHILADELPHIA—In American jurisprudence a man is innocent until proven guilty. But in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial that began last week, neither side disputes the fact that the West Philadelphia abortionist killed babies: We are only dickering over whether he killed some inside the womb (permissible) or outside the womb (not permissible), and whether some victims were 24 weeks old (permissible) or 25 (not permissible).

Gianna Jessen’s 17-year-old mother decided to get an abortion when she was almost eight months pregnant. An abortionist injected her with a toxic saline solution, but Jessen was born alive 18 hours later. She was transferred to a hospital where doctors didn’t expect her to live, as the lack of oxygen in the womb led to cerebral palsy. But she did, and today, more than 30 years later, she dances, sings, and speaks out against abortion.