Dr. Kermit Gosnell, M.D.

[dgs49]

This ongoing criminal trial in Pennsylvania exposes the sordid underbelly of the so-called, “Pro Choice” movement.

Dr. Gosnell for many years ran an abortion clinic in Philadelphia specializing in “later term” abortions. He was known in the community as one who could solve the dilemma of an “unborn child” who was further along than Pennsylvania’s statutory deadline of 26 weeks gestation. The fee for his abortions ramped upward, depending on the relative development of the baby, but for those in the target situation, he was the solution of last resort. It has been proven at trial that Gosnell is responsible (whether criminally or not I will not speculate) for the deaths of at least one woman and several live, delivered babies, who were grotesquely killed in his clinic as a matter of normal (if relatively rare) procedure. Vivid eye-witness testimony indicates that living babies - kicking, screaming, gasping for life – had their skulls pierced and brains destroyed in a manner that would be too horrific to show in a late-night TV horror movie.

One might recall that under the sacred guidelines of “Roe v. Wade,” a baby becomes human for Constitutional purposes at the point of viability – that is to say, when it could arguably survive outside the womb. Medical progress with respect to the survival rate of premature babies has – one would hope – given some distress to the Pro-Choice camp. One might also recall – hopefully with some revulsion – that Our Beloved President once described the law prohibiting “partial-birth abortions” as an unacceptable assault on the rights of women, and an attempt to roll back the “progress” of women in the area of “reproductive freedom.”

Thus, it is indisputable that the position of the Democrat party right now is that abortion should be legal right up to and including the moment immediately before natural childbirth. And if one ignores Pennsylvania law (which Liberals consider unconstitutional), there is absolutely no doubt that Dr. Gosnell is being prosecuted for practices that the national Democrat party considers proper, constitutional, and uncontroversial.

Is it any wonder that our Left-leaning MSM has largely ignored this trial?

[Guinevere]

Which is why the NYTimes has been covering it, and why they printed a long article about the case today.
The doctor is no better than a back alley butcher, but that's what happens when you harass physicians out of existence, for performing a legal medical procedure. There is no place for desperate people to turn and they end up in the hands of butchers. It's happened before, it should never happen again.

BTW, pregnancy is 40 weeks. 92% of all abortions are done prior to 14 weeks, only 1% done after 20 weeks.

[dgs49]

The Times ignored it for months, and only came on board when it became an embarrassment.

Do you deny that Gosnell is being prosecuted for procedures that the Democrat Party considers legal (ignoring PA law) and acceptable?

Are you fine with 8% of abortions killing fully formed babies with all parts intact and beating hearts?

I'm not surprised.

[rubato]

I am fine with the std used by the RC church for 1,800 years. Life begins at 'quickening' ca 20 weeks. After that the rights of both lives matter, before that there is only one.

yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

[quoteThus, it is indisputable that the position of the Democrat party right now is that abortion should be legal right up to and including the moment immediately before natural childbirth.][/quote]

Indisputable? Please offer me one mainstream dem that has ever said anything like that. Waiting.....

[Guinevere]

[quoteThus, it is indisputable that the position of the Democrat party right now is that abortion should be legal right up to and including the moment immediately before natural childbirth.]

Indisputable? Please offer me one mainstream dem that has ever said anything like that. Waiting.....[/quote]

Exactly, BigRR. Never said it and that's patently not the position of any Dem I know (and certainly not my position), but Dave can only get people to listen to his views on the issue by spreading lies and fear, not by relying on actual fact or law.

[Lord Jim]

Dave makes a very legitimate point about the lack of publicity this story has gotten....

I'm pretty plugged in to a wide range of news sources, and I heard about this case for the first time about a week and a half ago...

And it's not like it isn't newsworthy; an abortion doctor being tried on multiple homicide charges, ( and not in some "Bible belt" state that has re-defined "homicide" in abortion cases; legitimate, old fashioned homicide charges in a liberal Eastern city) should have been big news from the get go...

Compare the press coverage of this story to the coverage of the abortion doctor who was murdered a couple of years ago...there is no comparison; the coverage was "wall to wall"...

I'm not trying to trivialize or minimize what happened in that case...it was reprehensible, and I'm on the record as supporting the death penalty for the guy who did it...but this story was every bit as newsworthy, and it hasn't gotten anywhere near the same kind of coverage...

Now the story is finally getting a fair amount of press attention, and all the liberal commentators are making basically exactly the same argument Guin made...(almost word for word...Guin, you must have gotten the talking points email.... ):

The doctor is no better than a back alley butcher, but that's what happens when you harass physicians out of existence, for performing a legal medical procedure. There is no place for desperate people to turn and they end up in the hands of butchers.

There's a big problem with that argument....

Philadelphia is not North Dakota, or Alabama, or Kansas, or any other red state location where an effort is being made to harass and/or legislate abortion services out of existence....

A quick Google search reveals that in Philadelphia:

Planned Parenthood has three clinics:



Including one that provides abortion services:

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health ... e=abortion

And there are other options:

http://www.bergerbenjamin.com/

http://www.philadelphiawomenscenter.com/

http://www.americanwomensservices.com/

In other words, Pennsylvania in general, and Philadelphia in particular, is not wanting for clean, reputable, low cost access to these services. Whatever efforts may be going on in some parts of the country to eliminate access to these services, there is no evidence that this is happening in Philadelphia, where these crimes occurred, and this trial is taking place.

So attempting to apply those arguments (which I will concede have legitimacy in some parts of the country) to this particular case just doesn't hold water...

The fault for what happened here lies not with an effort to over regulate, but a clear failure to regulate sufficiently....

Gosnell was able to ply his trade, openly, and fully licensed....In fact, this guy has quite a history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell

The problem here wasn't women turning to some "back alley butcher" for want of better alternatives; the problem here was the failure of the state of Pennsylvania and the city of Philadelphia to investigate this guy and his clinic and shut him down.

[Guinevere]

From everything I've read this guy was clearly targeting low income, underprivileged women. He is the definition of a back alley butcher, just read the descriptions of the conditions at his "clinic." And no, I didn't ready any "talking points" my comments were my own (obvious) synthesis.

[Lord Jim]

From everything I've read this guy was clearly targeting low income, underprivileged women.

I don't doubt that....

My point is that in Philadelphia, you don't have a situation where there aren't better options available to women in that group. (Maybe the organizations providing these services could have done a better job of outreach.)

just read the descriptions of the conditions at his "clinic."

I have...

Which is why it is quite clear to me that the state and the city failed in their responsibility by allowing this guy to stay in business.

Did they never carry out an inspection of his facility?

[Grim Reaper]

Indisputable? Please offer me one mainstream dem that has ever said anything like that. Waiting.....

From his ass, just like most of his "liberal facts".

[Grim Reaper]

In other words, Pennsylvania in general, and Philadelphia in particular, is not wanting for clean, reputable, low cost access to these services. Whatever efforts may be going on in some parts of the country to eliminate access to these services, there is no evidence that this is happening in Philadelphia, where these crimes occurred, and this trial is taking place.

I would make a guess that the Planned Parenthood clinics are bigger targets for picketers, which would deter some women from seeking safer alternatives for abortions.

[Sue U]

Is it any wonder that our Left-leaning MSM has largely ignored this trial?

I don't know what's been published/broadcast in the rest of the country, but it's been on the front page of the (liberal) Philadelphia Inquirer (and its online affiliate, philly.com) for all of the last two years, as well as the local news segments of the regional NPR affiliates and every other TV and radio outlet in the Delaware Valley. (A search of philly.com for "gosnell" just now turned up 1060 items.) It is after all a local news story, so I wouldn't expect national coverage (except maybe from Nancy Grace), but it hasn't been "largely ignored" by any stretch of the imagination.

My point is that in Philadelphia, you don't have a situation where there aren't better options available to women in that group.

West Philly is a world away from Center City, to say nothing of the Far Northeast. (And yes, the PP facility in Center City -- the Elizabeth Blackwell Center -- is the frequent target of particularly obnoxious street protests, including harassment and even physical assault of PP patients and staff.)

In Philadelphia, many (if not most) doctors are not located in gleaming medical office centers -- especially the neighborhood providers in poorer communities. And rich or poor, most people go to a local doctor. Furthermore, Gosnell was providing abortions at substantially lower cost than other facilities, and was one of very few doctors in all of the Northeast who would even do a second-trimester abortion. If you are poor and have a low-cost abortion provider in your neighborhood, why would you take a bus (with a transfer) across town just to pay more at the place where the white ladies go? It's not like you're checking in to a spa for the weekend.

[Lord Jim]

None of which explains why this guy's facility was never inspected and shut down.

[Sue U]

None of which explains why this guy's facility was never inspected and shut down.

That is a different issue entirely. I don't know what inspections or standards there are -- if any -- but in fact, the facility was shut down more than two years ago, when these issues first came to light. (How do you shut down a doctor's office before you know there is a problem?)

[oldr_n_wsr]

Aren't doctors offices subject to periodical inspections/reviews much like resturants.

[Sue U]

From the unapologetically leftist The Nation:

Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Horror Show

Katha Pollitt January 27, 2011 | This article appeared in the February 14, 2011 edition of The Nation.

Blood-spattered floors. Cat feces. Broken equipment. A 15-year-old giving anesthesia. Two women dead, countless more maimed and injured. Third-trimester fetuses delivered alive whose spines were then severed by the doctor. This was the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia. This is what illegal abortion looks like.

That’s right. Illegal abortion. A great deal has been written about Dr. Kermit Gosnell and the shocking conditions and practices at his facility, which was closed last March after a drug raid, and is back in the news because a grand jury has indicted him and nine employees for murder in the deaths of one woman and seven infants. There have been many calls for further restrictions on abortion, much revulsion expressed at post-viability abortions, much blame cast on prochoicers for supposedly doing nothing to stop him. But it has not been pointed out often enough that what Dr. Gosnell was doing was illegal in Pennsylvania. It is not legal to perform abortions after twenty-four weeks. It is not legal to slit the necks of born-alive fetuses at any age, much less at thirty weeks or even more. It is not legal for untrained, unlicensed employees to perform medical procedures.

Now prochoicers are being blamed for this rogue operator. The grand jury report suggests that Tom Ridge, Republican governor from 1995 to 2001, discontinued inspections because prochoicers claimed they were too burdensome. The ones I talked to were skeptical. “We never lobbied against inspection,” Carol Tracy of the Women’s Law Project, which represents clinics in Pennsylvania, told me by phone. She pointed out that under Ridge’s Democratic predecessor, Bob Casey, who was famously opposed to legal abortion, Gosnell’s clinic was inspected three times, and each time serious problems were found. Nothing was done. Perhaps it’s relevant that Gosnell’s patients were poor, many of them immigrants—like 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar from Nepal, with whose murder Gosnell has been charged—who may not even have known that safe and legal abortion is available here.

On Slate, William Saletan agreed with the grand jury’s criticism of the National Abortion Federation, which rejected Gosnell’s 2009 application for membership, for failing to alert state authorities to the terrible conditions at his facility. In her organization’s defense, NAF head Vicki Saporta says, “What we saw didn’t meet our standards, but they’d cleaned the place up and hired an RN for our visit. We only saw first-trimester procedures.” Others did alert authorities about problems at the facility, though. A doctor from the Children’s Hospital hand-delivered a complaint to the Health Department after numerous patients returned from Gosnell’s facility with venereal disease from unsterilized instruments. The department never responded. As the grand jury report noted, the department was also alerted by the medical examiner of Delaware County that Gosnell had performed an illegal abortion on a 14-year-old who was thirty weeks pregnant. And the department was informed of Mongar’s death at Gosnell’s hands. Brenda Green, executive director of CHOICE, a nonprofit that connects the underinsured and uninsured with health services, told me it tried to report complaints from clients, but the department wouldn’t accept them from a third party. Instead, the patients had to fill out a daunting five-page form, available only in English, that required them to reveal their identities upfront and be available to testify in Harrisburg. Even with CHOICE staffers there to help, only two women agreed to fill out the form, and both decided not to submit it. The Department of State and the Philadelphia Public Health Department also had ample warning of dire conditions and took no action.

It might seem odd that Pennsylvania, where antichoice legislators have laden abortion with restrictions, should have been so uninterested in the Women’s Medical Society. But actually it makes perfect sense. As Carol Tracy put it, “The problem here was that Pennsylvania has always focused on eliminating abortion, not on abortion as healthcare.” In fact, as she points out, the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, the primary vehicle for regulating abortion, is part of the criminal code. “Since abortion isn’t seen as medical care, they didn’t have the appropriate locus for oversight.”

What fueled Gosnell’s business were the very restrictions the legislature was so keen on passing—parental notification, waiting periods, biased counseling and, most important, a ban on state funding for abortion for low-income women. Would women have gone to the Women’s Medical Society if Pennsylvania paid for abortion with Medicaid funds? Would they have had late procedures if they could have afforded earlier ones? Maybe some underage girls went to him to avoid the parental notification rules that supposedly protected them. Only women who felt they had no better alternative would have accepted such dangerous, degrading and frightening treatment. In a way, that’s the saddest part—that women didn’t feel they could turn around and leave.

Will Pennsylvania learn anything from this experience? No, says Brenda Green. As I write, the state legislature has fast-tracked a bill that will ban any insurance plan that covers abortion from insurance exchanges set up under healthcare reform. That means more women forced to pay for abortion out of pocket—and more customers for unscrupulous providers. “That Gosnell was able to get away with his horrific practice does not prove new regulations are needed,” says Susan Schewel, executive director of the Women’s Medical Fund, which helps low-income women pay for their abortions. “It shows we need to enforce the laws we have.”

[Econoline]

Aren't doctors offices subject to periodical inspections/reviews much like resturants

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/gru ... r-17-years

Note that the above story is from over 2 years ago, when the indictment of Gosnell came down. (So much for the canard that this case wasn't covered in the news media until recently.)

[rubato]

From the unapologetically leftist The Nation:

It might seem odd that Pennsylvania, where antichoice legislators have laden abortion with restrictions, should have been so uninterested in the Women’s Medical Society. But actually it makes perfect sense. As Carol Tracy put it, “The problem here was that Pennsylvania has always focused on eliminating abortion, not on abortion as healthcare.” In fact, as she points out, the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act, the primary vehicle for regulating abortion, is part of the criminal code. “Since abortion isn’t seen as medical care, they didn’t have the appropriate locus for oversight.”

... "

The anti-choice groups who appear to dominate the Penn. legislature hate women and only wish that they should be killed or punished for having sex. That is why they did nothing for patient safety while trying to criminalize legal medical practice.


yrs,
rubato

[Liberty1]

Aren't doctors offices subject to periodical inspections/reviews much like resturants.

Reports state that state officials have failed to visit or inspect Gosnell's practices since 1993.

[rubato]

Regulation of medical practice is by the states. The Penn. legislature was too busy trying to bring back septic abortion wards to bother to do their jobs re: regulation of medical practice.



yrs,
rubato