Who reports unscrupulous abortion providers? Not the pro-choice abortion lobby!
Here we go again- the pro-choice “ABORTION ON DEMAND WITHOUT APOLOGY” crowd attempting to say they monitor the industry of “ROGUE” Abortionists is attempting to convince the world that they spoke out against Kermit Gosnell and most recently abortionist Stephen Chase Brigham.
New Jersey abortionist Steven Chase Brigham, recently opened an abortion clinic in Philadelphia despite having been ordered by the state never to do so. The new abortion clinic, Integrity Family Health, located at 9622 Bustleton Avenue in Philadelphia, was discovered by the staff of another area abortion clinic when a patient mentioned it to them. During a quick Internet search, they discovered the connections to Brigham and reported the clinic to the authorities, who are now investigating it.
The pro-life group, Operation Rescue said that Brigham, has attempted to conceal his involvement in the Philadelphia abortion business and has learned his lesson from past lapses in that cloak of secrecy. For instance, the Integrity Family Health clinic is not listed on his American Women’s Services website as other dubious clinics have been in the past. Two Pennsylvania locations that are currently listed deceptively note that his clinics in Allentown and Pittsburgh are “temporarily closed.” In fact, both were permanently closed by the state in April 2013. The Allentown location has been taken over by CareNet and is now a pro-life office saving babies from abortion.
Operation rescue has detailed information about about abortionist Brigham on their website here .
The pro-choice blog, RH Reality Blog posted an article they titled, “New Pennsylvania Clinic May Have Ties to Rogue Abortion Provider”. Prey tell what does the ABORTION ON DEMAND WITHOUT APOLOGY crowd which fights every known protection for women law on abortion define as ROGUE?
Author Tara Murtha, writes, “once again, it’s legitimate providers tipping off the Department of Health about a possibly dangerous situation. What is now a state investigation started with one patient’s phone call. On October 21, the Philadelphia Women’s Center received a “strange call” from a woman who reported that she had received what sounded like “substandard care” at Integrity Family Health, according to Jen Boulanger, communications director for the Women’s Centers. (Boulanger “spent years amassing complaints about Brigham and his associates” while in her former role as executive director of Allentown Women’s Center.) As first reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer Wednesday morning, Boulanger and staff began searching online after not recognizing the clinic by name. The name popped up in an article about Steven Brigham.”
Just how is the pro-choice abortion crowd stopping Brigham? It may be true that organizations such as the National Abortion Federation have criticized Brigham, it is also true that Brigham attended NAF Conferences and used the same verbiage we hear today from the highly unregulated profitable abortion industry.
In an interview at such a conference, Brigham told the media, “We believe women deserve the best medical care. We want to provide the best quality of care in a non-judgmental atmosphere”
For the abortion lobby which is fighting legislation requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges and clinics that perform abortions to be subject to the same standards as surgical centers, as well as favoring non-physician abortions in places like California, I find it a stretch that they would claim to be speaking out on Rogue doctors.
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, writing for the Daily Caller, agrees, she points out that, “Last year Tonya Reaves died from a botched abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago. She bled to death. In 2002 Diana Lopez died from a botched abortion in a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood clinic. She bled to death too. The facts of these cases are disputed by the abortion lobby, but nobody denies that these young ladies went into Planned Parenthood clinics alive, and came out dead. Holly Patterson went into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Hayward, California in 2003 and died a week later from a severe bacterial infection caused by an incomplete abortion. Hospital admitting privileges make sense. When pro-choice people are talking to each other, they admit it. One abortion advocacy site says: “It of course would be great if all abortion providers can have admitting privileges. We need some regulation because we don’t want unsafe conditions.”
But when talking to the public, the hospital provision is just more evidence of the Republican War on Women. How so? Because it will force the closure of clinics that provide contraception. This is not a serious argument.”
A pro-choice author writer William Saletan exposed the abortion and the pro-choice communities’ hypocrisy, and detailed several examples of the silence the abortion industry has when it comes to the protection of women.
When an abortionist was caught molesting young women , the Boston Globe found that pro-choice supporters had known of his sexual misconduct, as well as his generally bad reputation, but had kept it secret. “The question was: “Who was going to tell?” an anonymous source in the pro-choice community told the Globe. “Do we go public with it and hurt the whole movement or do we keep quiet and deny women the chance to make an informed choice about who does their abortion?”
On January 19, 1993, a 28-year-old woman went to an abortion clinic in Santa Ana, California that catered to illegal immigrants. Angela Sanchez was in her first trimester of pregnancy and she brought two of her four children to the clinic with her. The clinic’s owner, Alicia Ruiz Hanna, was trying to save money so she decided to do Angela’s abortion herself, despite the fact that she had very limited medical training. She took Angela into a procedure room, gave her a valium and an injection of an unknown drug, and left the room, hoping that the drug would cause Angela to miscarry. Angela died during this waiting period. When Hanna returned to the room and found Angela dead, she panicked and decided to try and hide the body. She told Angela’s children, who were at the clinic, that their mom had already left. The kids went home but returned later with other relatives. They found Hanna trying to stuff Angela’s body into the trunk of a car.
Of course, as soon as the media reported that this happened, Kathryn Kolbert, VP for the pro-choice Center for Reproductive Law and policy blamed this abortion clinic owner’s actions on pro-lifers saying, “You’ve got such a degree of harassment and intimidation that physicians who used to perform these services as part of their general practice of obstetrics and gynecology have moved away from that. As a result, there’s a window for unscrupulous providers.”
What did the abortion lobby do to close that supposed “Window” – NOTHING! They went back to Business as Usual.
The State of Florida: Division of Administrative Hearings, case # 0098363, and the Miami Herald: 4/24/1988 among other print and television news sources, reveal that in 1988, abortionist Theodore Lehrer was arrested after he performed an abortion on his wife in their home allegedly against her will.
NAF abortion doctor Theodore Lehrer’s wife accused him of raping her in her home after tying her up and then forcing an abortion on her. She told police that when he arrived home he requested to have sex with her. She denied him sex stating that she was not feeling well, due to her pregnancy. Lehrer’s wife reported that he then handcuffed her and strapped her to a table in their home, and had sex with her anyway. Then his wife alleged that he performed an abortion on her without her permission. Local news papers reported that she told authorities he was going to give her an injection to numb the pain, only she felt no injection-just excruciating pain. Police along with the State’s Medical Board took action immediately but dismissed all the charges because Lehrer’s wife was too ill to testify against her husband in the case. Lehrer shows having a current and active license with the state of Florida and Lehrer continues to perform abortions at the All Women’s Center abortion clinic. His website shows that he is a member of the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, and the National Abortion Federation and other medical organizations.
In 1994, abortion patient Pamela Colson believed the lie that abortions were safe until she bled to death as she left a Pensacola abortion clinic. The clinic botched her abortion so bad and then sent her on the way- to die on her car as she drove home.
After Colson’s unfortunate death National Abortion Federation President, Sylvia Stengle ( Who, in 2012, was reportedly board president of the Allentown Women’s Center) published a letter in the Pensacola News Journal stating that abortion clinic providers were “deeply grieved” over the “death of a women following an abortion.” But downplayed the event calling it “isolated” and warning that one must not “compound this tragedy by allowing abortion opponents to turn this death into a rallying cry to attack a safe and necessary health care service.”
Another NAF president Barbara Radford gave a similar response following the death of an abortion patient Raleigh North Carolina. She told the media, “There are doctors who do abortions who don’t do them as well as they should , just as there are doctors doing tonsillectomies, who don’t do them as they should.”
The family of the abortion victim in this case, Mary Ann Dancy says the abortionist doctor lacerated the woman’s cervix during a procedure, then refused to return telephone calls later in the evening. Dancy was 32. Dr. Clarence J. Washington, the doctor named in the suit, went to work at Carolina Women’s Clinic in Fayetteville with no outcry from NAF or the abortion lobby. An autopsy showed that Dancy died because of a “cervical laceration,” the suit says. At the time of her death, she was the mother of five children, who ranged in age from two to 17.
And an “unscrupulous” abortion doctor in Maryland, left abortion patient, Susanne Logan paralyzed, NAF President, BARBARA RADFORD admitted to 60 Minutes in an interview where she stated, “Well, I think your first reaction from us was “This is the last thing we need.” We had hoped that it wouldn’t get national publicity because of the political nature of all of this.”
The medical board had this to say about Logan’s abortionist, “The Board had previously sanctioned Dr. Gideon Kioko after the deaths of two other female patients who died as a result of anesthesia complications during abortion procedures that he performed. After briefing and oral argument in July, 2007, the circuit court affirmed the Board’s decision.”
Logan’s abortion was performed at the Hillview Women’s Medical Surgical abortion clinic in Suitland Maryland and the news broke, the abortion clinic’s administrator Barbara Lofton told the Washington Post, in an article entitled, 2 Tragedies Raise Doubts About Suitland Clinic;Abortion Patient, Left Paralyzed, Files Suit:8-13-1990 , “If you provide a certain number [of abortions], no matter how good you are, no matter what the qualifications are, there are sometimes circumstances. There are probably no facilities without some complications.”
And in response to accusations that the clinic did not know how to handle an emergency situation-she had this to say, “Obviously, the report from the paramedics was written by a pro-life person. There were many fabrications in the report.”
The 60 Minutes reporter said that, “ As a reporter, I found that many pro-choice leaders knew about problems at Hillview, but didn’t want them publicized. National Abortion Federation head Barbara Radford [sp?] admitted she was just hoping we would go away.”
60 minutes summarized the motivation of why the abortion lobby will not drive out unscrupulous provers this way, “Pro-choice activists worry that clinics like Hillview will be used against them in the bitter political battle over abortion. They fear bad publicity will prompt state legislators to start regulating clinics and that pro-lifers will then use those regulations as a backdoor way to stop abortions. So even though those laws could make clinics safer, they usually fight them.”
When pro-lifers called for criminal prosecution of a Severna Park abortion doctor Romeo A. Ferrer, facing disciplinary action for a 2006 abortion that led to the death of a woman, the media reported that calls to Ferrer’s office were referred to the communications office at the National Abortion Federation in Washington, D.C. Spokeswoman Melissa Fowler said abortion is one of the “safest and most commonly provided medical procedures” and that credit for its safety record can be attributed to the “specialized quality care provided by clinics like Gynecare Center,” where Ferrer had an office.
On Feb. 3, 2006, a 21-year-old woman went to Ferrer’s office at the Gynecare Center in Severna Park seeking an abortion. The unidentified Baltimore woman was 16 weeks pregnant, had a 3-year-old. The patient signed a form authorizing an abortion procedure that used anesthesia and medication as necessary, but Ferrer, according to the board complaint, advised the staff that general anesthesia is not used at the clinic. The facility uses “conscious sedation,” referred to as “twilight sleep.” The abortion was completed by 1:45 p.m., but a surgical assistant later noticed that the patient’s fingernail beds appeared blue. The staff was unable to get the patient’s blood pressure or pulse and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. They called 911 shortly before 2 p.m. The woman was taken to Anne Arundel Medical Center in Parole, where she was pronounced dead by 2:57 p.m.
ABORTIONIST BENJAMIN GRABER THWARTS ABORTION REGULATIONS
From William Saletan’s the Sisterhood of Silence:
On Sept. 13, 1989, a month after Pennsylvania’s health department conducted its next-to-last inspection of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic, the Florida House Health Care Committee met to prepare for an upcoming special session on abortion. Gov. Bob Martinez had called the session to enact several anti-abortion bills, including tighter regulation of clinic safety. Testifying before the committee, abortion clinic owner Patricia Windle condemned legislation that would give state inspectors broad access to abortion facilities. She declared, “Regulation is a euphemism for an excuse to interfere and opportunity to burden.”
William Saletan writes, “Beneath that hard line, there were signs of trouble. The president of the Florida Obstetric and Gynecological Society testified that physicians in the abortion field were “usually residents or somebody in training,” if not from out of town. A representative from the Florida Department of Professional Regulation confirmed this problem: “There appears to be a trend among the physicians who perform terminations of pregnancy on a regular basis. They don’t have admitting privileges to hospitals themselves. Frequently, they have informal arrangements to admit their patients. The result has been in several cases that when things went bad, they didn’t have the ability to promptly admit a patient. … [T]hey go in for a short period of time to work there full-time to get enough money to go into another field, some of them.”
One member of the committee, Democratic state Rep. Ben Graber, knew of these shortcomings firsthand. Graber was an OB-GYN. He performed about 15 or 20 abortions per month. “The reason I became involved in abortion is the inadequacy of abortion services,” Graber told a reporter in August, a month before the hearings began. “These lay people are opening clinics and hiring half-trained doctors to do them.” The problem, he explained, was systemic: “[T]he clinics are a result of the issue being so controversial that doctors shied away from it.”
But when the discussion turned from his role as physician to his role as lawmaker, Graber clammed up. On Sept. 14, the director of the Florida Catholic Conference told the committee that a licensed doctor had lethally botched abortions at “the Dadeland abortion clinic” near Miami. Graber and the committee chairwoman cut off the speaker and dismissed his story. Two days later, Voice for Choice, a coalition of abortion rights advocates, mass-mailed a “Dear Colleagues” letter, signed by Graber on his private-practice stationery, asking doctors to contribute $250 to the pro-choice lobby to block “new areas of physician liability” and “unwarranted state intrusion” in their profession.
The next morning, the Sunday Miami Herald landed with a thud on doorsteps across Florida. Its weekly magazine, Tropic, featured an exposé of the clinic to which the committee’s witness had alluded. Owners of the clinic, formerly known as the Dadeland Family Planning Center, had “lured clients with misleading ads, listing the clinic under more than three dozen names in the phone book,” reporter Deborah Sontag wrote. And its record was awful:
“In the last 10 years, the clinic and its doctors have been sued 15 times. … One doctor who worked at the Dadeland clinic was a convicted sex offender. Another was reprimanded by his state licensing board for “gross malpractice.” A third was responsible for more than $500,000 in out-of-court settlements on abortions gone awry. Year after year, there were ruptured uteruses, perforated colons and emergency hysterectomies. … Finally, one woman, the unluckiest of all, died.”
Sixteen years after Roe, Sontag wrote, “the back alley persists—on a commercial street, in a medical building, with a front door, and sometimes even with a state license.”
Abortionist Ben Graber had other issues, when in 1988 he examined a 10-year-old girl whose father brought her in pregnant.
Graber performed an abortion on the child and returned her to the father who was later accused of raping her.
Despite mandatory reporting laws in the state of Florida, Graber did not inform the state of the possibility of incest at the time of the abortion, according to news reports.
Officials were never notified of the suspicion of abuse by Graber but found out only when hospital ER physicians examined the sister of the 10-year-old that Graber aborted who was taken to the emergency room for medical care.
By the time child protective services reached the children ( ages: 12,10,8 and 7 ) news reports indicated that the father had allegedly molested most of them.
This was two-years after the father brought the pregnant 10-year-old to Graber, for the abortion. It was not the abortion lobby who was outraged, it was the pro-life community who called for his resignation from office and for the case to be investigated.
Joanne Richter, executive director of the Broward County Sexual Assault Treatment Center stated to the press that Graber should have been aware of the possibility of sexual abuse and called authorities.
Graber never faced any charges for failing to report the sexual abuse of this child. Some believe that his connections as a Florida State House Representative at the time played a role in the decision to not prosecute.
But- hey- not to worry….these are “only children” and we know the abortion industry would never protect rape victims!
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SILENCE FROM PRO-CHOICE CROWD EVEN WHEN ABORTION PROVIDERS ASSAULT THEIR ABORTION PATIENTS:
One of the most recent examples of pro-choice silence in unscrupulous abortion providers was a Florida abortion doctor who slapped a patient in the face – there was zero coverage on the media and SILENCE from groups like NOW, NARAL, and Planned Parenthood:
The Florida Board of Medicine has given a “slap on the wrist” to Randall Whitney, an abortionist who was arrested in 2011 and charged with aggravated battery for slapping a pregnant woman across the face prior to an attempted abortion procedure at Orlando Women’s Center.
As reported when the arrest occurred by this blog:
Long-time Volusia County, Florida abortionist Randall B. Whitney was arrested by Orlando Police inside the Orlando Women’s Center after he slapped a woman patient while preparing her for an abortion procedure.
Below is a transcript of Orlando Police arresting officer J. Hughley ( patient’s last name is removed):
I,officer Hughley was sitting inside the office when I heard a OWC [Orlando Woman’s Center] patient run out of one of the rooms screaming advising the doctor has slapped her. I followed the patient outside and she advised in a sworn written statement: she went into the exam room to get an abortion procedure and the doctor was trying to find a vein to give some valium. She Amanda ______ advised the doctor had poked her three times trying to get the needle in the vein. She told him the needle was not in the vein and it started to burn. Amanda advised she started screaming. The doctor took the needle out and told her to shut up because she was scaring other patients. Amanda advised she got up and told the doctor she wanted to leave, so she stood up and the doctor slapped her on the left side of the face. Amanda advised that’s when she left. She also advised she did not give the doctor permission to slap her and wishes to press charges. Due to the needle or medicine Amanda’s fingers began to turn blue, so OFD (Orlando Fire Department) was notified. When I (officer Hughley) went back inside the building, the doctor (Dr Whitney) was sitting in the front office and he advised he did slap Amanda because she was being very uncooperative and he was trying to calm her down. Assistant Sonia Merced was inside the room with Dr. Whitney, but refuse to say what happened, nor did she want to write a statement. Dr Whitney refused to write a statement also. Amanda’s face was red on the left side of the face. Whitney was arrested and transported to central booking for aggravated battery.
Whitney was arrested and taken to jail and later released on bond.
Florida Case#: 2010-CF-004271-A-O
According to Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics, Inc. which investigates the abortion industry, “This of course, is exactly the kind of behavior we’ve come to expect from the washouts and losers who work in abortion clinics.”
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PRO-CHOICERS ARE EMBRACING UNSCRUPULOUS ABORTION PROVIDERS:
A few weeks ago, after the Maryland Board of Physicians decided not to take action against late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart for the death of Jennifer Morbelli, a 29-year old woman who suffered fatal complications from a very late 33-week abortion. There was silence from the abortion lobby.
The original complaint was not filed by the National Abortion Federation or friends of RH Reality Blog, but by the pro-life group, Operation Rescue after it received detailed information about the patient death on February 7, 2013. The claimed that after Morbelli’s abortion, while still appearing “weak and pale” according to witnesses, Carhart released her to return to her hotel. He then left town. As Morbelli’s condition worsened, in the ensuing hours, Carhart could not be reached by family members or later by hospital emergency room staff.
When did the abortion and pro-choice lobby speak out? When they hailed Carhart a Hero.
Prochoicers singing Carhart’s praise !
BUT THE MOST CURRENT ATTEMPT AT LYING THAT THE ABORTION LOBBY AND PRO-CHOICERS WANT TO GET RID OF UNSCRUPULOUS ABORTIONS PROVIDERS IS THIS:
Fox News Contributor Sally Kohn posted a speech she gave to NARAL, an abortion rights group, on the Daily Beast. In the speech, Kohn completely misleads her audience and rewrites the history of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
Kohn writes, “West Philadelphia is where Kermit Gosnell ran an underground, illegal abortion clinic. Thankfully, Gosnell was exposed because of abortion activists, and Gosnell was tried and convicted of three counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life without parole for each of the three murders. And, as a side note, I feel deeply conflicted about our system of aggressive prosecution and incarceration in America—but I don’t for a second feel conflicted about a Gosnell being locked up forever for his crimes.
“Reading about the atrocities in Gosnell’s clinic—it takes your breath away. What he did was monstrous. Monstrous. And thanks to repeated exposure by reproductive justice activists and feminist journalists, Gosnell was exposed and arrested and tried and convicted for his crimes. What Gosnell did wasn’t medical treatment. It was illegal, unethical and criminal. Period.”
Kohn’s words are pure unadulterated SPIN at the very best, if not outright lies.
Let’s break this down.
First Kohn lies when she claims that Gosnell ran an underground/illegal abortion clinic.
UNDERGROUND? Hardly – from the Associated Press
Women went to Dr. Kermit Gosnell to end their pregnancies. Many came away with life-threatening infections and punctured organs; some still had fetal parts inside them when they arrived at nearby hospitals in dire need of emergency care.
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which operates two hospitals within a mile of Gosnell’s squalid abortion clinic in West Philadelphia, saw at least six of these patients — two of whom died. But they largely failed in their legal and ethical duties to report their peer’s incompetence, according to a grand jury report.
“We are very troubled that almost all of the doctors who treated these women routinely failed to report a fellow physician who was so obviously endangering his patients,” wrote the Philadelphia grand jurors, who recommended a slew of charges against Gosnell and his staff in January.
The health system — in apparent contradiction of the grand jury report — released a statement saying that it had “provided reports to the authorities regarding patients of Dr. Gosnell who sought additional care at our hospitals” starting in 1999.
But the system’s attorneys could produce only a single report for the grand jury. That involved 22-year-old Semika Shaw, who died at the university hospital of internal bleeding and sepsis after a botched abortion in 2000. Gosnell’s insurers ultimately paid out a $900,000 settlement in that case.
Health system spokeswoman Susan Phillips later clarified the statement, saying “we have staff who specifically recall making oral reports” to state officials about Gosnell.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to find additional written reports from these past years,” she wrote in an email.
A Philadelphia doctor and suburban medical examiner who did blow the whistle said they never heard back from state officials, whose repeated lapses helped Gosnell to operate unchecked for years.
Latosha Lewis, a Gosnell employee, testified that emergency room staff at the university hospital told her they treated many Gosnell patients, the report said.
ILLEGAL? Hardly- Gosnell was licensed and approved by the state:
Gosnell opened his Women’s Medical Society at 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue in 1979.
The Department of Health first granted approval for the Women’s Medical Center to provide abortions at 3801 Lancaster Avenue on December 20, 1979. The approval followed an on-site review and was good for 12 months. The DOH “site review” at the time identified a certified obstetrician/gynecologist, Joni Magee, as the medical director, with Gosnell listed as a staff physician. The report noted that a registered nurse worked two days a week, four hours a day, and that lab work was sent out to an outside laboratory.
FIRST INSPECTION – The Pennsylvania Department of Health had contact with the Women’s Medical Society dating back to 1979, when it first issued approval to open an abortion clinic. 1979- Pennsylvania Department of Health approval to do abortions at his clinic in 1979, after an on-site inspection.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health did not conduct another site review until 1989, ten years later. Numerous violations were already apparent, but Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them.
In 1992, The Pennsylvania Department of Health Site reviews in 1992 and 1993 also noted various violations, but again failed to ensure they were corrected. Sometime after 1993, the department of health instituted a policy of inspecting abortion clinics only when there was a complaint, but the grand jury found that it didn’t even do that.
After Gov. Tom Ridge, who supported abortion, was elected, the state Department of Health stopped inspecting abortion clinics. That practice continued under Gov. Mark Schweiker and Gov. Ed Rendell. It was not until after a drug raid in February 2010 at Gosnell’s clinic that the Health Department resumed regular abortion clinic inspections, according to The Associated Press. Since then 14 of the state’s 22 freestanding abortion clinics have been ordered to remedy problems
Gosnell has hardly been an underground nor illegal abortion clinic, Gosnell was allowed to stay in business as pro-abortion regulators turned a blind eye.
In fact, almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile
conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street. Department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell.
The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records. Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed. Shortly thereafter the department received an even more disturbing report – about a woman, years before Karnamaya Mongar, who died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus. The woman was 22 years old. A civil suit against Gosnell was settled for almost a million dollars, and the insurance company forwarded the information to the department. That report should have been all the confirmation needed for the complaint from the former employee that was already in the department’s possession. Instead, the department attorneys dismissed this complaint too. They concluded that death was just an “inherent” risk, not something that should jeopardize a doctor’s medical license.
Between 2002 and 2009, the grand jury learned, attorneys for the state’s medical licensing board reviewed five cases against Gosnell. They closed three without investigation. The last two were investigated and closed without action -including the death of a 22-year-old whose family sued Gosnell and received a $400,000 settlement.
Between 2002 and 2009, Board of Medicine attorneys reviewed five cases involving malpractice and other complaints against Gosnell. (The Grand Jury also received records of three older complaints – from 1983, 1990, and 1992 – one of which resulted in a reprimand.) None of the assigned attorneys, or their supervisors, suggested that the Board take action against the deviant doctor. In fact, despite serious allegations, three of the cases were closed without any investigation. The other two were investigated and then closed – without any action being taken.
Then, in In January 2002, an attorney representing Semika Shaw, a 22-year-old woman who had died following an abortion at Gosnell’s clinic, wrote to authorties requesting copies of inspection reports for any on-site inspections of the clinic conducted by DOH. Staloski wrote to the attorney that no inspections had been conducted since 1993 because DOH had received no complaints about the clinic in that time.…In other words, Gosnell was fully licensed yet UNREGULATED !
Years earlier, in August 2003, another branch of the city’s health department had received an anonymous complaint about Women’s Medical Society. Mandi Davis, a sanitation specialist in the environmental engineering section, wrote a memo to a colleague at the department, Ken Gruen, with a copy to then-Assistant Health Commissioner Izzat Melhem. She informed them that she had received a “rather disturbing” complaint of aborted fetuses stored in paper bags in an employee refrigerator
at Gosnell’s clinic. Davis requested that a site visit be conducted to assure that proper infectiouswaste handling and disposal practices were in place. Davis further instructed Gruen: “I am not expecting a ‘wild goose chase’ for aborted fetuses.” Current Philadelphia Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz testified that notations on the memo seem to indicate that a site visit was, in fact, made. The city health department, however, could not produce any report of that site visit. Nor is there evidence that the department took any action against Gosnell for his dangerous handling of medical waste, or for his failure to have an approved infectious waste plan, as is required by the city Health Code.
On May 7, 2004, a city health department inspector was sent to the clinic. His report stated that proper labels were missing from areas where waste was stored; that red bag containers for infectious waste were not lidded; that marked boxes of infectious waste were sitting on the basement floor – not raised as they should be; that red bags for pick-up were not properly stored in the basement; and that the clinic did not provide a contract with a disposal company. Gosnell subsequently produced some more paperwork, including a copy of a contract for disposal. However, he never paid his fee. The city never approved his medical waste plan. And he never cleaned up the infectious waste. Yet five years later, he was still operating.
In 2008, a City of Philadelphia employee, a registered nurse named Lori Matijkiw, did notice and report the abysmal conditions she observed at Gosnell’s clinic. Matijkiw conducted what the Health Department calls an “AFIX” visit, or vaccine inspection, in July 2008. On July 16, 2008, at 1:30 p.m., Matijkiw made a vaccine inspection visit to Gosnell’s clinic. Unlike the inspectors before her, she did not simply stick to her narrow, assigned task of inspecting vaccines and their storage units. She took seriously her broader duty to protect public health. Following her visit to Gosnell’s facility, she reported on a multitude of deficiencies she found.
She noted that the office was “not clean at all, and many areas of the office smell like urine.” She reported a “dark layer of dust” on the baseboards and described the “enormous” fish tanks, filled with murky water. In the refrigerator, she found expired vaccines – one with an expiration date of March 2006, another 2005. The temperature log, which was supposed to record the refrigerator temperature every day, had not been marked since the second day of June – a month and a half earlier. On top of the refrigerator, she found a stack of temperature logs, already filled out, showing readings twice a day, with no initials, time, or month.
On October 7, 2009, Matijkiw returned to the clinic. Again she wrote a scathing report, addressed, again, to her supervisor, Lisa Morgan. In it Matijkiw described a two hour meeting with “(Dr.) O’Neill” (the parentheses were in her original email). During the visit, Matijkiw learned that O’Neill had no understanding of the vaccine program. O’Neill reportedly believed that the free children’s vaccines could be given to adult patients and to those with private insurance. Matijkiw noticed that one of the free vaccines was given to Gosnell’s daughter. A month after Matijkiw’s second visit to the clinic, Mrs. Mongar died. A month after that, in December 2009, a notation in Philadelphia Department of Public Health records stated: “Site will not be enrolled in [the Vaccine for Children program] after Matijkiw’s visits. We will pick up any wasted vaccines in January. Jim is reporting Dr. to state licensing.”
Meanwhile, Gosnell submitted an application to become a National Abortion Federation (NAF) member astonishingly, the day after Karnamaya Mongar died, following her abortion at the clinic. Even on a day when the place had been scrubbed and spiffed up for the visit, the NAF investigator found it disgusting and rejected Gosnell’s application for membership. But despite noting many outright illegalities, including a padlocked emergency exit in a part of the clinic where women were left alone overnight, the grand jury report notes that the NAF inspector did not report any of these violations to authorities:
According to the Grand Jury Report, report, Gosnell, in addition to operating his own clinic in Pennsylvania, worked one day a week at Atlantic Women’s Medical Services in Wilmington, Delaware.
Atlantic was a NAF accredited abortion clinic, so Gosnell was hardly UNDERGROUND like Kohn, suggested. The grand jury report found that he routinely referred women who were too far along in their pregnancy to get an abortion under Delaware law to his West Philadelphia clinic.
Finally, in 2010, Federal drug agents raided Gosnell’s abortion clinic. And it was that raid, which triggered another inspection by health investigators four days later.
They found Gosnell’s abortion clinic was filthy, with fetal remains filling a freezer and clogging drains. He allowed unlicensed employees to give anesthesia, often leaving patients unattended, the report said.
That last inspection triggered the events that led to Gosnell’s arrest:
February 18 raid – RAID
February 22, 2010, the Pennsylvania Board of Medicine suspended Gosnell’s medical license, citing “an immediate and clear danger to the public health and safety.”
March 12, 2010 the state Department of Health filed papers to begin the process of shutting down the clinic.
MAY 4, 2010 The Philadelphia District Attorney submitted this case, pertaining to criminal wrongdoing at Gosnell’s clinic, to the Grand Jury on May 4, 2010
No where in the Grand Jury Report, nor Court Documents does it indicate that “Reproductive Rights” activists, as Kohn wrongly asserts ever reported ANYTHING to authorities to force the closure of Gosnell’s abortion clinic.
In fact, there appears to be evidence that in addition to NAF knowing the clinic’s conditions, Planned Parenthood did as well.
Kohn is wrong again when she claims there were repeated exposure by reproductive justice activists and feminist journalists who exposed Gosnell.
Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America told the media, “The American people join me and my organization in being outraged that this man was able to operate for years, preying on poor women who desperately needed safe and clean medical services but were unable to get it because of the restrictions that drove credible and reputable providers and doctors out of business in Pennsylvania and we were the first out of the gate to call attention to this case. And you know why?… It’s because unfortunately as the anti-choicers try and restrict more and more doctors out of business, they are the ones keeping the Kermit Gosnells operating.”
Erik Wemple at the Washington Post must think they are, he responded, “Having done precisely 3,454 Nexis and Internet search on the Gosnell case, we missed the part where NARAL had led a charge to highlight the alleged atrocities in West Philadelphia. So we Nexised again, checking on NARAL’s footprint around the time that Gosnell was indicted in January 2011. Not much there. When asked to provide news releases or other evidence of activism around that time, NARAL didn’t provide anything.”
In February of 2010 WHYY reported that Dayle Steinberg is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania denied knowing of any of the horrific conditions at Gosnells’ abortion clinic. They wrote:
Steinberg: We do anticipate that women who might have scheduled appointments for abortion procedures at the Women’s Medical Society will be calling Planned Parenthood.
and then reported, “Steinberg says she knows that Gosnell has provided abortions in Philadelphia for many years, but says she hadn’t heard of any problems at clinic until the allegations surfaced in recent days.”
Dayle Steinberg is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Steinberg began her association with Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania (PPSP) in 1978 as a graduate intern, joined the full-time staff in 1981, served as director of surgical services from 1986-1992, then served for eight years as senior vice president, and was appointed president and CEO in 2001.
But later, according to Philly.com : Steinberg said this about Gosnell at a public fundraiser:
“Steinberg said that when Gosnell was in practice, women would sometimes come to Planned Parenthood for services after first visiting Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, and would complain to staff about the conditions there.
“’We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health,’ Steinberg said as she sat with Steinem before Tuesday’s events.”
Next time NAF, NARAL or Planned Parenthood send their spinners like fake “journalist” Sally Kohn to say that Gosnell ran an illegal abortion clinic and it was the abortion rights promoters who screamed for him to be shut down- tell them they are LIARS – because the FACT do not add up to their abortion spin !!!
Lest you think that Sally Kohn’s attempt is the first and only attempt at spinning horrific legal abortion clinic conditions read Pro-choice Wall of Silence or complicity in the War on Women – when abortion injures and kills the women they claim to protect.
August 29, 2014 at 3:45 pm
[…] I have blogged before and William Saletan says best there is a,”sisterhood of silence” among pro-choice […]
August 29, 2014 at 3:47 pm
[…] I have blogged before and William Saletan says best there is a,”sisterhood of silence” among pro-choice […]
July 16, 2015 at 9:59 pm
[…] like with Gosnell – years of practicing and doing illegal activities, the truth finally came […]
July 20, 2015 at 2:20 pm
[…] the infamous Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist from Philadelphia who was convicted of three counts of 1st degree murder for […]
April 26, 2016 at 5:48 pm
[…] Blatant disregard for the health of women is common in an industry that kills preborn children and clearly does not have the highest ethical standards. But those who are charged with oversight of these “professionals” are also at fault when they ignore reports of illegal and dangerous activity. Case in point is the way the medical board of Pennsylvania ignored Gosnell’s actions. Gosnell was arrested and charged with the murder of several babies whose spines were “snipped” with scissors after birth as well as the murder of patient Karnamaya Mongar. According to the Grand Jury report, several agencies ignored his actions for years. One of those agencies was the state’s medical licensing board: […]
April 28, 2016 at 12:00 pm
[…] Blatant disregard for the health of women is common in an industry that kills preborn children and clearly does not have the highest ethical standards. But those who are charged with oversight of these “professionals” are also at fault when they ignore reports of illegal and dangerous activity. Case in point is the way the medical board of Pennsylvania ignored Gosnell’s actions. Gosnell was arrested and charged with the murder of several babies whose spines were “snipped” with scissors after birth as well as the murder of patient Karnamaya Mongar. According to the Grand Jury report, several agencies ignored his actions for years. One of those agencies was the state’s medical licensing board: […]