January 21, 2011

Please send me your comments!

By Dave Andrusko

Good evening and thanks for being part of the discussion as we end the week. Parts Two through Four talk about the introduction of two very important pro-life bills and what it means. Over at National Right to Life News Today (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org), David Prentice writes about "City of Hope Does 10,000th Adult Stem Cell Transplant." We also introduces you to "Rosa's First Photo Album," and end with a reminder about the National Prayer Vigil for Life. None of this matters unless I get your feedback on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today at daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha.

"This is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it."
     -- "Section One: Overview," of the Grand Jury report on abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

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Last night my wife, Lisa, went to babysit our first grandchild, Emma Grace, who made her grand entry two days before Thanksgiving. I woke up this morning at 5:00 and decided I might as well work as waste time trying to go back to sleep.

What I did was to read a good chunk of a 261-page report, the product of a year-long investigation into the stomach-turning, allegedly criminal behavior of 69-year-old abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell and various of his employees are charged with eight counts of murder-- 41-year-old refugee Karnamaya Mongar and for "seven specific incidents in which Gosnell or one of his employees severed the spine of a viable baby born alive," according to the report.

While I had carefully read a number of news accounts that covered Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams' no-punches-pulled press conference, nothing prepared me for the revelations in the first 30 pages alone. I didn't realize, for example, that in addition to the seven poor babies we've all read about, according to the report, Gosnell et al. are "also charged with conspiracy to commit murder in relation to the hundreds of unidentifiable instances in which they planned to, and no doubt did, carry out similar killings." ["Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files."]

Some of these babies were near-term.

To do it justice, the report must be read in its entirety at www.phila.gov/districtattorney/PDFs/GrandJuryWomensMedical.pdf.

When I finished the first paragraph, my thoughts turned to Emma and her beautiful ever-smiling face. I paused, took a deep breath, and continued to read.

For those who can't stand the thought of reading a single word--and I surely sympathize with you--let me mention some of the Grand Jury's findings, and why this case may resonate in a way previous alleged mass atrocities have not.

Gosnell's Women's Medical Society "was a baby charnel house." Filthy almost beyond belief, the description reminded me of the houses of hoarders. Only instead of dead cats and dogs, "scattered throughout, in cabinets, in the basement, in a freezer, in jars and bags and plastic jugs, were fetal remains."

"The people who ran this sham medical practice included no doctors other than Gosnell himself, and not even a single nurse. …Everyone called them 'Doctor,' even though they, and Gosnell, knew they weren't. Among the rest of the staff, there was no one with any medical licensing or relevant
certification at all. But that didn't stop them from making diagnoses, performing procedures, administering drugs. Because the real business of the 'Women's Medical Society' was not health; it was profit. There were two primary parts to the operation. By day it was a prescription mill; by night an abortion mill."

Under the subhead, "Murder in Plain Sight," we read, "With abortion, as with prescriptions, Gosnell's approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low – and break the law. That was his competitive edge. … At the Women's Medical Society, the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash. Too young? No problem. Didn't want to wait? Gosnell provided same-day service. The real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn't get abortions elsewhere – because they were too pregnant."

After talking about the excruciating pain Gosnell and his staff routinely put women through, the Grand Jury wrote, "When you perform late-term 'abortions' by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women's Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn't call it that. He called it 'ensuring fetal demise.' The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that 'snipping.' Over the years, there were hundreds of 'snippings.' Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the 'snipping' was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women's Medical Society knew.

Everyone there acted as if it wasn't murder at all."

The Grand Jury emphasized how Gosnell preyed on poor women, women of color, with little or no education, and often with limited or no skills in English.

There is a long section on the cavalier use of sedatives administered by assistants who had absolutely no training. (Gosnell was rarely there during the day.) "Only in one class of cases did Gosnell exercise any real care with these dangerous sedatives. On those rare occasions when the patient was a white woman from the suburbs, Gosnell insisted that he be consulted at every step. When an employee asked him why, he said it was 'the way of the world.'"

"Dr. Gosnell didn't just kill babies. He was also a deadly threat to mothers. Not every abortion could be completed by inducing labor and delivery. On these occasions, Gosnell would attempt to remove the fetus himself. The consequences were often calamitous – though that didn't stop the doctor from trying to cover them up. One woman, for example, was left lying in place for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon while trying, unsuccessfully, to extract the fetus. Relatives who came to pick her up were refused entry into the building; they had to threaten to call the police. They eventually found her inside, bleeding and incoherent, and transported her to the hospital, where doctors had to remove almost half a foot of her intestines."

Finally, after discussing "the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented" [because Gosnell destroyed records] that dealt with unborn babies 28-30 weeks old who were born alive, the Grand Jury report drops this bomb: "And these were not even the worst cases. Gosnell made little effort to hide his illegal abortion practice. But there were some, 'the really big ones,' that even he was afraid to perform in front of others. These abortions were scheduled for Sundays, a day when the clinic was closed and none of the regular employees were present. Only one person was allowed to assist with these special cases – Gosnell's wife. The files for these patients were not kept at the office; Gosnell took them home with him and disposed of them. We may never know the details of these cases. We do know, however, that, during the rest of the week, Gosnell routinely aborted and killed babies in the sixth and seventh month of pregnancy. The Sunday babies must have been bigger still."

As we discussed Thursday and Friday, there was a complete collapse of regulatory oversight. The signs that the clinic was a menace to women and to unborn babies were impossible to miss. So why wasn't Gosnell stopped?

For starters, after receiving its license in 1979 the clinic was rarely checked. Making it worse was "[T]he Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided [in 1993], for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. 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."

And there is the behavior of the National Abortion Federation, which "Gosnell, bizarrely, applied for admission shortly after Karnamaya Mongar's death."

The evaluator from NAF saw all the problems. "It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected. Of course, she rejected Gosnell's application. She just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen. Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion."

Let me conclude with this long quote from a story today from NBC Philadelphia.com. If more people read it, I believe the scales of indifference and ignorance might fall from their eyes.

"Perhaps more disturbing than an alleged sociopathic doctor who told his staff that babies' movements after birth were 'reflexes,' and that shoving scissors in the back of the neck of a breathing child was 'standard procedure,' is the fact that this group of people believed and accepted Gosnell's practices and allegedly followed suit," writes Teresa Masterson.

"The only time some of them questioned his method was when Gosnell allegedly killed a baby boy that was so large its legs and arms hung over the shoe box in which Gosnell threw him. Gosnell joked that the baby could have 'walked him to the bus stop,' staff testified. It was only then that three of the employees felt something was wrong and took a picture of the baby.

"While the estimated six-pound baby was visibly breathing 'the doctor just slit the neck,' said Kareema Cross. When asked why she and two other employees took a picture of the baby, Cross told the grand jury:' Because it was big and it was wrong and we knew it. We knew something was wrong.'"

Part Two
Part Three
Part Four