By Dave Andrusko

The story carried by the Associated Press was almost antiseptic, or at least as bloodless as a story can be about an abortionist whose license is pulled after FBI and Drug Enforcement agents raided The Women's Medical Society and found "deplorable and unsanitary" conditions, "including blood on the floor and parts of aborted fetuses in jars, according to the state agency that shut it down."

The Women's Medical Society in Philadelphia. State authorities have suspended a West Philadelphia doctor's medical license, citing "deplorable and unsanitary" conditions at his clinic.

Investigators "found numerous health and safety risks at [Dr. Keith] Gosnell's abortion and pain-management clinic, including a preoperative and recovery area that consisted of several recliners grouped together," according to the AP. We learn later in the story that the West Philadelphia clinic had been raided twice and that in November, according to a document, "a patient died after being given two separate doses of painkillers plus anesthesia before an abortion."

But the story in the Philadelphia Daily News, "A Matter of Life & Death," is not a once-over about a couple of recent infractions by an abortionist. Writer David Gambacorta begins with an interview with Marie Smith where she describes her 1989 abortion.

19 at the time, Smith knew "something had gone wrong with the abortion," he writes. Smith vomited incessantly and shivered with a high fever. When she went to a hospital she discovered that Gosnell had "left an arm and a leg inside me," as Smith told Gamborta. "I almost died. I thought he knew what he was doing, but I guess I was wrong."

Periodically these stories make their way into the popular press, stories of filth and indifference where women are treated like cattle at a stockyard. Stories, like this one, where "some of Gosnell's unlicensed employees were examining patients and giving them medication, and often worked alone," according to Gambacorta. "Gosnell's clinic is open for business during the day, authorities said, yet he doesn't arrive until between 6 and 9 p.m. That potentially dangerous arrangement ended in the death of a woman who went to Gosnell's clinic for an abortion on Nov. 20, according to Department of State documents."

Stories, like this one, where the reporter finds another woman who successfully sued the 69-year-old Gosnell for having "punctured her uterus and colon when he performed an abortion on her in 1986," according to Gambacorta. "I remember the pain was crazy, and I was screaming for him to stop," Hernandez said.

The story ends with this grim recitation of the facts.

"At some point, he did stop. He took me off the table, put me on a couch in the waiting room and did another girl's abortion." Hernandez said Gosnell then tried to finish her abortion and ran into complications. "I lost so much blood,

I almost died. My sweatshirt was soaked with blood." Hernandez said she was taken to a local hospital and treated for injuries. According to city records, she sued Gosnell on May 28, 1987. Hernandez said she was awarded about $60,000.

Gambacorta was not exaggerating when he called The Women's Medical Society a "house of horrors."
As rough going as it is, you should read the story for yourself at www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/85174112.html?viewAll=y.