In recent weeks, the case was cited in Congress to support restricting abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, and it was invoked by an anti-abortion political action committee in radio ads to attack the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe.

Although the trial has not brought new issues or tactics to America’s long-running abortion wars, it provided an emotional jolt through five weeks of graphic testimony and an earlier grand jury report.

“This is a visual argument that no one would ever want to have,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect women opposed to abortion. “But if we’re going to have it, let’s go ahead and have it. What are the limits? What are we as a society willing to forbear?”

She and others predicted greater support for laws banning abortions past 20 weeks, which have been adopted in several states in recent years, on the disputed theory that fetuses of that age feel pain. Dr. Gosnell was found guilty of 24 counts of performing an abortion beyond 24 weeks, the limit in Pennsylvania.

Opponents of the restrictions argue that later abortions are very rare: fewer than 1.3 percent are past 20 weeks of gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Abortion rights activists say restrictions before fetal viability, generally 24 weeks, violate the constitutional protections of Roe v. Wade.

Nonetheless, “the imagery” of later abortion “is very powerful,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion access. “In 2010 Nebraska banned abortion at 20 weeks post-fertilization,” she said. “That bill was seen as the type of bill that was going to catch fire across the country. It did.”