Actress in “Gosnell” Film Faced Similar Real-Life Situation

Hearing Baby's Heartbeat Stopped Her From Aborting Her Unborn Son

Tessya Whatley

By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life

One of my favorite actors, Nick Searcy, a the lead role in “Gosnell: The Movie,” which finally opens this October reportedly in over 700 theatres. The film is one of the largest crowd-sourced movies of all time.

For that tiny handful of pro-lifers who might not know, Kermit Gosnell, who operated the notorious “House of Horrors,” was a West Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, one count of involuntary manslaughter, and a bevy of other lesser charges. Over the decades Gosnell delivered hundreds of very late-term babies alive and then murdered them by slicing their spinal cords.

Mr. Searcy appeared at NRLC’s 2018 annual convention, along with Executive Producer John Sullivan. The year before, Ann McElhinney, the producer of Gosnell the Movie and co-author of the New York Times Best Seller Gosnell: The Untold Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, was a featured speaker.

Ann told us an incredibly true-life story about the making of the film which I failed to pass along but which critic Christian Toto wrote about this week.

Tessya Whatley plays Viola Brown in the film. Viola considers an abortion but eventually chooses to give her baby life. “It’s a similar situation to what Whatley went through several years ago,” Toto writes. Whatley’s own son is now 6.

“I also was young and pregnant once,” she told the Daily Wire in an exclusive interview. “I went to actually abort my baby, and the nurse had let me hear my son’s heartbeat.”

As Whatley lay on the surgical table listening to her baby’s heartbeat while the nurse was out of the room, “I just started crying and decided it was something I couldn’t do, I couldn’t kill my baby,” she said.

“So I put my clothes on, I went out to my grandpa, I told him I couldn’t do it, he said, ‘let’s go,’” Whatley explained.

We [National Right to Life] will keep you updated as the movie locations are released.

Website: National Right to Life

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