Prosecutors have also accused nine of Dr. Gosnell’s staff members with violating abortion laws, perjury and other charges. All but one — including the doctor’s wife, Pearl Gosnell — have pleaded guilty.

Ms. Pescatore said that Dr. Gosnell had performed many abortions in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, including using unqualified assistants. She said that as a result of financial motivations, the clinic had taken in many women who were beyond the legal abortion limit in their pregnancy.

“If they were far along, that didn’t matter,” Ms. Pescatore said. “They made more money for him.”

Among the patients was Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old Bhutanese woman with three children, who had gone to Dr. Gosnell seeking an abortion in her 19th week of pregnancy, four months after arriving in the United States from a refugee camp in Nepal.

Dr. Gosnell’s staff gave Ms. Mongar a painkilling drug during her labor, Ms. Pescatore said, but the patient reacted badly and died after being taken to a nearby hospital. The prosecutor blamed the doctor for the death.

Mr. McMahon said the prosecution was trying to manipulate the jury’s emotions by leveling charges that he said would not be supported by the facts during the trial.

The defense lawyer said that there was scientific evidence on the viability of only two of the seven fetuses Dr. Gosnell is accused of killing, and that claims that the other five were viable were based on verbal reports by clinic staff members that the fetuses had been moving after they were aborted.

In fact, neither of the two fetuses was born alive, Mr. McMahon said. He promised jurors that assertion would be confirmed by the mother of “Baby A,” who is to testify during the trial. As for “Baby B,” he said, post-mortem tests on its lungs showed that they were never aerated, indicating that the child was born dead.

Rebutting prosecution claims that Dr. Gosnell was profiting from the desperation of poor women, Mr. McMahon said his client had passed up lucrative positions in obstetrics and gynecology so that he could provide an essential service in West Philadelphia, where he performed more than 16,000 abortions over 31 years.