Dr Kermit Gosnell began as a pillar of his community. Now, he's a national disgrace.

For years, officials knew of problems at his clinic but did nothing about them. Some say a new law passed in response to the scandal is putting patients at further risk.

Dr Kermit Gosnell is no longer a danger to others. He spends his days writing poetry, learning Spanish and jogging on the spot. At 72, he keeps active. But he's disappointed. He really thought he could beat the murder charges.

"He still believes, despite what the jury found, that he never killed a live baby," says his lawyer, Jack McMahon.

Gosnell performed some 16,000 abortions over 31 years at his clinic in west Philadelphia - a poor neighbourhood in one of the poorest big cities in the United States.

According to those responsible for regulating abortion clinics, his practice was fine. But they hadn't checked. Or listened to complaints from doctors and other professionals. Or done anything after two women died from treatment there. Continue reading the main story Start Quote Seth Williams

Children were being born alive... they breathed and moved, they cried, and he severed their spinal cords and murdered them

District Attorney Seth Williams

Gosnell was only stopped in 2010, when police executing a drug warrant entered the clinic and found feet in jars, bones in drains and foetuses stored in freezers above refrigerators that held workers' lunches.

The gruesome details - including the dangerous, even lethal practice of using untrained staff to sedate women - are catalogued in the grand jury report. Last month a judge sentenced

Gosnell to three consecutive life sentences for killing three newborns by snipping their spinal cords at the neck.

Jack McMahon says in 35 years as an attorney, he's never seen such a backlash against a client, who was widely termed a "monster". His own cousin told him, "I love you, but I hope you don't win," McMahon says.

That strength of feeling is now driving the debate about abortion in the United States.

Kermit Gosnell is the son of a prominent African-American family in west Philadelphia. He attended one of the city's top high schools before going on to study medicine locally at Thomas Jefferson University.

"He was probably at that time the only African-American medical student there," says Joe Slobodzian, who has covered Gosnell for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "And from every indication, he excelled." Kermit Gosnell's clinic, The Women's Medical Society Several former clinic employees pleaded guilty to murder

In 1979, Gosnell opened the Women's Medical Society in his old neighbourhood, at 3801 Lancaster Avenue. Pete Wilson, a local political activist with an office just up the road, says people used to look up to him.

"I guess he did the best he could for the community he lived in. Initially, he thought he was helping people, 13, 14, 15-year-old girls that had made mistakes, their parents bought them in."

Wilson says the rooms inside were small and dimly lit. "It just didn't seem like it was the kind of medical situation you would want to be in - not unless you were desperate. Because the abortions weren't expensive. He was cheap. So that brought people who couldn't afford to go anywhere but to him."