Pedro Cortes
The same man who ignored complaints about the atrocities perpetuated by “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell has been nominated by the state’s new governor to serve once again as Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Writing for PennLive.com, Ted Meehan of the Pennsylvania Catholics Network is reporting on the controversial nomination of Pedro Cortes to serve once again as Secretary of the Commonwealth under the new Governor Tom Wolf (D). Cortes served in this position from 2003 to 2010 under former Governor Ed Rendell and was the person in charge during the tenure of abortionist Kermit Gosnell who is now serving three consecutive life sentences after being convicted in 2013 of three counts of first-degree murder of babies born alive after late-term abortions performed in his Women’s Medical Society Clinic in West Philadelphia.
During Cortes’ last term in office, while Gosnell was killing babies by snipping their spinal cords with a scissor, the doctor had also lost all admitting privileges at local hospitals due to the number of seriously injured women who were being sent there by him. He was a named defendant in 46 separate civil lawsuits and was suspected in causing the death of at least two women.
It was the responsibility of Cortes’ Department of State to investigate these charges, but they did nothing – for years.
As a grand jury later found: “The [Department of State] prosecutors…clearly had no interest in investigating Gosnell, much less holding him accountable for the crime spree that he called a medical practice.”
As Meehan reports, complaints against Gosnell remained unanswered for an average of three years each before being dismissed without action – not even a phone call.
“The only reasonable conclusion is that these atrocities were the result of an official ‘see no evil’ policy toward any complaints related to abortion,” Meehan states.
As a result, as Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams stated, there was greater scrutiny for nail salons than abortion clinics under Cortes’ watch.
Even worse, after Gosnell was caught and the Grand Jury began investigating, officials at the Department of State didn’t apologise for the deadly mess they allowed under their watch; instead they “lawyered up” costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend their negiligence.
Meehan goes on to ask the obvious question: “Why would Pennsylvania bring back the same man who had failed them so spectacularly before?”
Brandon McGinley, writing for The Federalist, isn’t surprised that Gov. Wolf could be this insensitive to the plight of women because “he may be the most Planned Parenthood-connected governor in American history. Wolf is the first governor in the country to have volunteered for Planned Parenthood as a ‘clinic escort’—a person who accompanies (encourages? convinces?) women potentially seeking an abortion past sidewalk protesters. They are the deal-closers of the abortion business.”
But this is far more than just a local story, he writes. “It is an issue of national importance.”
If Pennsylvania should backslide into the same nonchalance about illegal late-term abortions and the deplorable conditions in some of the nation’s abortion clinics, “it sends a message across the country that vulnerable women and their unborn children are expendable inconveniences.”
Click here to contact Pennsylvania Senators who are members of the State Committee who will vote to approve or disapprove Cortes’ nomination.
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