There’s plenty of blame to go around in the case of the West Philadelphia House-of-Horrors abortion clinic, but Pennsylvania’s Department of Health deserves the lion’s share for refusing to inspect abortion clinics for political reasons.
CNSNews.com is reporting that the PA Department of Health conducted only sporadic and mostly inadequate inspections of the state’s abortion clinics while Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was running a sub-standard facility in West Philadelphia that left scores of infants and at least one woman dead.
According to a grand jury report, when pro-abortion Governor Tom Ridge was elected in 1995, all clinic inspections ceased out of a fear that they would “put up a barrier” to women seeking abortion.
“The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro-,” the report said. “With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.”
Even more infuriating is the fact that the state knew there were serious problems with Gosnell’s clinic.
“Numerous violations were already apparent [in 1989], but Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them,” the grand jury report said. “Site reviews in 1992 and 1993 also noted various violations, but again failed to ensure they were corrected.”
The complaints continued. One of them included a report on the death of 22 year-old Semika Shaw who died as a result of botched abortion in 2000. In 2002, when attorneys for her family demanded to see the state’s inspection reports, they were told by the Department that there were none because they had not received any complaints about Gosnell since 1993.
Evidence shows there were complaints given to the Department of Health during that time frame but were never acted upon. For instance, Dr. Donald Schwarz, a pediatrician and former head of adolescent services at the prestigious Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia used to refer patients to Gosnell’s clinic for abortions until he and his partners noticed that many of the patients he referred would return with a sexually transmitted parasite known as trichomoniasis. Schwarz sent a social worker to the clinic and, based on what was found, stopped referring patients there and hand delivered a letter of complaint to the office of the state’s Secretary of Health. It was never acted upon.
Janice Staloski, who was the director of home health for the PA Department of Health during the 2010 grand jury investigation of Gosnell, blamed the decision to abandon inspections of abortion clinics on lawyers at the Department of Health.
The report states: “Under Governor Robert Casey, she [Staloski] said, the department inspected abortion facilities annually. Yet, when Governor Tom Ridge came in, the attorneys interpreted the same regulations that had permitted annual inspections for years to no longer authorize those inspections. Then, only complaint driven inspections supposedly were authorized. Staloski said that DOH’s policy during Governor Ridge’s administration was motivated by a desire not to be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions.”
When testifying for the grand jury, the department’s senior counsel, Kenneth Brody, backed her up.
“He described a meeting of high-level government officials in 1999 at which a decision was made not to accept a recommendation to reinstitute regular inspections of abortion clinics,” the grand jury report said.
“The reasoning, as Brody recalled, was: ‘there was a concern that if they did routine inspections, that they may find a lot of these facilities didn’t meet [the standards for getting patients out by stretcher or wheelchair in an emergency], and then there would be less abortion facilities, less access to women to have an abortion.”
This prediction was accurate. After the Gosnell clinic was raided in 2010, the state cracked down on abortion clinics and enacted a law requiring them to meet the same standards as any other surgical center. Only one of the state’s 22 clinics met the new standards which required common-sense safety features such installing modern sterilization equipment, washable ceilings and floors and widening hallways and doorways to accommodate ambulance stretchers when needed. All but five of the clinics were able to make the changes.
The House-of-Horrors has also inspired many other states to demand higher standards in abortion clinics, efforts that have infuriated the leaders of the multi-billion dollar U.S. abortion industry. They refer to the new laws as TRAP – Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers – and claim, much like Gov. Ridge once did, that forcing clinics to meet modern health standards will prevent women from having access to abortion. Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers continue to do everything in their power to prevent the passage of stricter clinic regulations.
To date, six state officials have been fired for their role in allowing Gosnell’s clinic to operate unchecked for 17 years.
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