Make no mistake about it. Kermit Gosnell is a back alley abortionist and was performing illegal abortions. In fact, this blog put out a message about him at the time of his arrest. There is nothing redeeming about this man or his practice.
All the regulation in the world wouldn’t stop this criminal. Sean Carney is simply wrong about increased regulation. His smug look sickened me since I doubt he has ever sat up with a friend who agonized over the possibility of unwanted pregnancy or the possibility of an abortion.
It makes as much sense to act like over-regulation would have stopped Gosnell as it does to suggest that we should ask a thug with a stolen .38 special to show us his concealed weapon permit. Criminals don’t follow the rules.
Desperate women do not need to be put in the position of feeling like they need to go to places that practice bad medicine. Reproductive services should be available, safe, and affordable. That drives the Kermit Gosnells out of business. Restrictions and lack of available services guarantee that another Kermit Gosnell will pop up to prey on more desperate women.
Unfortunately, Karnamaya Mongar paid with her life. That is unacceptable in a country where legal, safe abortion is the law of the land.
You know Karnamaya Mongar wasn’t the only person this guy murdered. He was convicted on three counts of 1st degree murder for the three babies he murdered, and one count of 3rd degree murder for Karnamaya Mongar.
And yes, they were babies. They were born, then murdered by this baby killer. He’s been convicted and waived his right to appeal, so he’s not an alleged killer anymore. He’s just a baby killer.
As for regulation, abortion clinics should be subject to the same regulations as any other comparable medical facility. A panel of doctors should determine those standards. Virginia putting in extra requirements is wrong but so are all the states that don’t even inspect abortion clinics.
Supposedly these are licensced doctors, what more should be required? Here is the other problem, due to murders and bombings of clinic employees, the pool to “choose” from is quite limited. That is why a Gosnell was able to operate for so long, there aren’t alternatives. He is a despicable human being, but many on the anti choice side would say ALL doctors who provide abortions are despicable murderers.
The stigma of abortion has to end, the danger to providers must end. I find it so frustrating that the very means to help prevent unwanted pregnancies has so little support from the anti choice side. What has Virginia regulations done? closed the majority of clinics, many of whom also provide contraception and affordable well woman exams. Stupid is as stupid does……………
Why is it doctor’s office’s that do vasectomies aren’t regulated under the new TRAP laws? Doesn’t Cookinelli care about men’s testicles and the pre baby sperm contained within?
@Furby McPhee
Furby, I think all medical facilities should have to go by the same rules and I think you are correct about who should be deciding what those regulations are. Surely a panel of doctors and nurses would have the most insight.
How many cosmetic surgery facilities are inspected? Some of those places have been rife with injuries and accidental deaths. someone here brought up how many ‘incidents’ really happen during oral surgery.
Gosnell clearly violated abortion laws. I thought that was obvious. The video had a very graphic description of how he killed babies post birth. Did you think I was unaware of that gruesome fact?
I chose to highlight an immigrant woman who died for no reason. Sean Carney made an ignorant, absurd remark that needed to be addressed.
In an ideal world, especially in this country, contraception should make abortion totally unnecessary except in very rare instances. That continues to be the goal of the pro-choice community.
No one has ever said that the decision to have an abortion is an easy one. However at no point should women be forced to go to back alley butchers.
Perhaps some of this focus should be on why Karnamaya Mongar was seeking an abortion at 19 weeks. Did she not realize she was pregnant? Did she not have the money? Was she in the throes of menopause? Gosnell didn’t operate in a vacuum. There are reasons that a butcher like Gosnell is able to practice. That is what must be fixed. The problem won’t be fixed by artificial TRAP laws that regulate parking lots and architecture.
I just thought it was odd that the least serious of his charges (3rd degree murder of Karnamaya Mongar) was the only one that got mentioned. He murdered four people.
As for why vasectomies aren’t covered under the TRAP laws? Beats me. I’m not a doctor. Which was my point. Politicians should decide if abortions are allowed or not and up to what point in the pregnancy. That’s a legitimate public policy question and just like any other medical procedure. After that, though legal abortions should be treated like any other legal medical procedure and subject to whatever regulations the medical community determines is necessary for safety.
I don’t know much about this TRAP laws, but it doesn’t sound like something I’d support.
I am not so sure I approve of a politician deciding if I have an abortion or not.
Welcome to living in a democracy. Politicians get to decide what food you can eat, what type of jobs you can work, how much you can be paid, and what kinds of medical procedures are allowed. Politicians can even decide to conscript me into the army against my will. What is so special about abortion?
I’m obviously not talking about a panel of politicians that approve every individual abortion. I’m saying society, through it’s elected representatives, gets to determine if abortion is legal, and under what circumstances.
There are laws currently that determine legal abortions.
Curious Furby, where exactly do politicians tell you what medical procedures are allowed?
As far as a minimum wage being “what you are paid”, I am pretty sure most of us would balk at trying to survive on that non livable wage, where do they control how much you get paid, is there a ceiling, don’t think so, but there is a floor, and thank goodness for that at least!
Something which bothers me a great deal about the Gosnell case is that it seems like he was let loose to commit his crimes through deliberate inaction by those who support abortion rights. In 1993, according to testimony during the Gosnell grand jury proceedings, the State of Pennsylvania decided not to inspect abortion clinics because they feared too many would not meet basic medical standards and their closure would lessen the availability of abortions. So Gosnell for one was allowed to practice without any state or local supervison and, incidentally, to rip off insurance companies. This was reportedly started under pro-choice Repub Tom Ridge and continued under his Dem successors. What sense did that make? Maybe those who made such a decision should have been in the docket with Gosnell. It seems to me that they were enablers of Gosnell’s “House of Horrors.”.
And then there is the National Abortion Federation (NAF), a national organization of providers which touts itself as a guarantor of safe abortions. Gosnell applied for membership, was inspected by NAF in 2009, and was turned down. The NAF inspector, as stated by her before the grand jury, reported Gosnell’s clinic as being so bad that NAF deemed it “unredeemable” and refused to give Gosnell a second chance at membership. So, why in the heck didn’t NAF report this guy to the health authorities? What happened to the self-policing? If it had not been for a chance 2010 FBI raid on a prescription drug case, Gosnell might still be doing his mayhem.
In my former home state of Michigan, four or five abortion clinics have been closed in the past year for the same general reasons of low standards cited in the Gosnell case — minus the murder charges but not minus the suffering inflicted on many female patients. Once again, low quality or unqualified abortion doctors were allowed to operate sans inspections at either the local or state level. The clinic in my hometown, despite frequent complaints to the state medical board by legitimate ob/gyn doctors called upon to handle the aftermath from botched abortions, was not closed until after a police entry for an unrelated reason resulted in the discover of an unsanitary horror. These clinics had been pinpointed by pro-life groups some time back, and complaints were made. But the state and local governments took no initiatives, although the current state government has now begun addressing the issue. If pro-life groups and local ob/gyn doctors can sniff out these atrocities, where are the self-policers like NAF on the other side of the issue?
We don’t know that the NAF inspector didnt report the delporable conditions to someone. Most court cases aren’t the witnesses own narrative.
There is quite a bit of self policing within the abortion services community.
I can'[t speak to other states when I don’t know what their laws are.
OSHA is also involved and does inspections. Where were they?
Just out of curiosity, do you think if the clinics closed down, abortion would end? It wouldn’t. In the years before Roe v. Wade there were more abortions than there are today. Some were behind closed doors at local physicians’s offices. Others were back alley. Trnaslation: women of means had access to safer abortion than poor women.
Desperate women will always have abortions.
The NAF inspector did report Gosnell to someone: the NAF board, which made the decision to reject Gosnell’s application and not even give him the usual second chance to make the necessary changes. That must have been some lousy report on conditions chez Gosnell.
I am curious myself. If anyone here was in the shoes of that NAF inspector or the NAF board, would you have taken some action to try to put Gosnell out of business or simply filed the report and rejection?
@Wolverine
How do you know that other agencies weren’t contacted? Who exactly would you contact? What would the police do? Perhaps she did contact the health department. Was she asked?
I do know that NAF members and organizations in the pro choice community were warned and told not to refer anyone to that clinic.
The matter absolutely was not taken lightly.
There was another clinic in Maryland some years ago that the pro choice community was very concerned about.
Let me ask you a question. If you knew that there was a cosmetic surgeon in your town who was practicing bad medicine, what would you do about it? For better or worse, these are businesses. Even if you wanted to drag the doctor through the public square, you are somewhat limited without proof of criminal wrong-doing.
Where were the pro-life people? Usually they demonstrate and call attention to the slightest infraction, in their eyes. Did they not report this butcher? I would think Operation Rescue would have been all over this evil man.
I don’t know how he was allowed to operate for so long. My G-d, he hired a freakin’ high school student to do the anestheology (sp). How effed up is THAT?!
But I contend that there has been such a stigma placed on abortion providers, that at some point, back alley abortions will become the norm because legal clinics will no longer be able to exist for various reasons. And this just in, that WON’T stop abortion, it will just mean more dead women.
According to the official Gosnell grand jury report, the NAF quality assurance investigator, who had previously assessed hundreds of abortion clinics in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, testified that Gosnell was the first clinic operator in her experience who was rejected for membership outright by NAF without further appeal. What apparently astounded the grand jury was that NAF did nothing further to attempt to put Gosnell out of business. From the report: “She [the investigator] just never told anyone in authority about all the horribly dangerous things she had seen.”
I’m not sure what “anyone in authority” would entail in Pennsylvania. The grand jury testimony also showed that previous complaints against Gosnell were on file at the state health department. I would suppose that, if they were determined to do so, NAF, as a national organization, would have had some clout if they had made a big fuss about Gosnell. The grand jury report contained considerable detail from the investigator on what she had seen at the clinic, and it looked to me like she knew her business.
But, heck, don’t ask me how this country functions anymore. The doctor whose clinic was closed by state and local authorities in my hometown is reportedly now on the staff of another abortion clinic in Detroit. The pro-life people did go after this guy but never got any satisfaction. Neither did the complaining ob/gyn doctors who had to clean up the guy’s medical messes. Come to find out that the abortion doctor had been in prison over illegal prescription drugs . When he got out, a member of the state medical board allegedly helped him get his license reinstated. That same person later refused to sanction a state investigation after one of the ob/gyn doctors really screamed because he had to save the life of a woman butchered in one of the clinic’s abortion efforts. The state is now working on efforts to install a tougher inspection system.
It just seems to me that it would be in the best interests of NAF and its members to be pro-active in ferreting out and helping to get rid of the Gosnells of this world. And, yes, if I felt a medic was malpracticing, I would send a request to the state authorities to look into it, just as I would send something to the better Business Business Bureau if I felt any kind of business was not honest.
I would say that what you described is a failure on the part of the state to have the proper steps in place to take corrective action if any medical establishment is practicing bad medicine. It shouldn’t be just about abortion providers. It should be about all medical practice.
After looking at the “Grand Jury Report” I am shockedand ashamed for Pennsylvania. What an unprofessional document! It is written like a really bad 10th grade English paper rather from a legal standpoint, using evidence.
Frankly, if this is how PA does business, I am surprised the state isn’t a mecca for every fly by night doctor in the world.
It is difficult to take any of it seriously given the unprofessional presentation. Where was the evidence? I see mostly narrative and opinion.
I will stop.
Let me answer the question. Just who was the NAF inspector supposed to tell? The Penn Health Dept had received complaints that supposedly could be documented going back to 1980, according to the report. The cops? The DA’s office? We don’t know that she didn’t ‘tell.’ She might very well have told authorities, whoever they are.
How would we ever know?
What a shame and a disgrace in a modern world where abortion is a legal surgical procedure. Whaat a shame that any medical procedure would take place in such vile conditions. This is the United States, not some third world country.
What is with these grand jury reports coming out of Pennsylvania? The whole Jerry Sandusky dealings seemed unprofessional as did these.
We are getting off on a tangent here and missing my bigger point, but the government sets all manner of wage controls. There have been caps put on wages (the entire reason that health insurance comes from your company is because of wage caps put in during World War 2) Davis-Bacon, prevailing wage laws, SCA, there are thousands of laws on the books related to pay.
Similarly, there are medicines, medical procedures and medical devices that are not allowed in the US. Some of them for medical reasons, others for political reasons. The next time you visit your doctor, ask him or her.
But you are missing my bigger point, which is kind of funny because we are in general agreement. So I’ll be really clear here: I want abortion to be treated like any other medical procedure. Isn’t that what you said you wanted? But being treated like any other medical procedure means Congress can allow it or ban it or somewhere in between.
This shouldn’t be a controversial opinion. You can argue what Congress should do on abortion, but arguing that Congress shouldn’t have authority over it seems silly when there are so many other things Congress can do.
Congress has the authority to take my home and send me against my will to fight and die overseas. I might not like it, but that’s what society wants. So why is abortion any different? Why is your choice more important than my life?
I was not aware that congress controlled medical treatments.
I think we are getting too far fetched. Let me be blunt. Congress can say and do whatever. In the end, women will make their own decisions regarding abortion. Legal abortion has been around 40 years. What on earth do you think was done before Jan. 1973? I rest my case.
Throughout the ages women have tried to control their reproductive destiny, in spite of men wanting otherwise, and the future will not change that dynamic.
@Moon-howler
“Just who was the NAF inspector supposed to tell? ”
if there was no action….the press.
Why was it up to her and her alone? How about all those pro life protesters drpping a dime on Gosnell?
Sorry. This isnt going to be dumped on NAF. She did more than anyone else it appears.
Not dumping it on NAF other than that they were in a position of knowledge and are an industry watchdog. The abortion industry has done a good job of side lining anything put out by the pro-life organizations.
NAF isn’t really an industry watch dog as much as it is a professional organization of abortion providers. It doens’t go out looking for bad abortion providers. It does have standards though. They would make you jump through some hoops to ecome a member.
If NAF had done a good job of sideling anything put out by the pro life organizations then we certainly wouldn’t have some of the onerous laws on the books that we have now.