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Truth and Fiction
About Abortion Clinic Regulation By Dave Andrusko You never know what you might hear on weekends driving down the highway. I happen to have on NRP’s “Weekend Edition” and listened to a piece that is titled on NPR’s webpage, “Murder Case Puts Spotlight on Abortion Clinic Rules.” The murder case, of course, is a reference to abortionist Kermit Gosnell, charged with eight counts of murder, including seven babies born alive whom he allegedly killed by severing their spinal cords with surgical scissors. The lead paragraph really does summarize in a few words the dramatically different perspective of pro-and anti-life forces: “A murder case involving a sordid Philadelphia abortion clinic is fueling debate about how clinics should be run, with several states considering stricter regulations. Abortion rights groups say that could force some clinics to close and make abortions more expensive.” As you listen to the correspondent Kathy Lohr’s story (or read it online), there are some remarkably revealing paragraphs. Naturally, Lohr gives you a sense of how squalid Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society abortion clinic was. Whoops, sorry. In fact there is only one cursory reference—“ The grand jury report says conditions inside the clinic were squalid, patients were over-sedated and the staff was unlicensed”—and that comes AFTER Lohr interviews a woman who had an abortion there five years ago, who insists "When I went, it seemed clean to me.” This of a place (described as a “House of Horror” in the 261-page grand jury report) where authorities reportedly found blood everywhere, cat excrement, the bodies of unborn babies crammed into milk jugs, and “Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets,” according to the grand jury. “All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff—long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic—and staff members could not accurately state what medications or dosages they had administered to the waiting patients.” One of the things you won’t find in the transcript is that the listener is told that one abortion clinic responded by opening its doors (at least to NPR). Wouldn’t you know it, at the abortion clinic Lohr visits she finds “the waiting room is bright and clean, colorful artwork adorns the walls, and journals sit on tables.” State attempts to regulate these pits are all politics, according to Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, and will do nothing to make “abortion safer.” Ironically, she cites one set of proposed regulations that regulate the width of hallways. When authorities raided Gosnell’s West Philadelphia abortion clinic, “Ambulances were summoned to pick up the waiting patients, but (just as on the night Mrs. Mongar died three months earlier), no one, not even Gosnell, knew where the keys were to open the emergency exit. Emergency personnel had to use bolt cutters to remove the lock. They discovered they could not maneuver stretchers through the building’s narrow hallways to reach the patients (just as emergency personnel had been obstructed from reaching Mrs. Mongar).” Gosnell stands charged with third-degree murder in the 2009 death of Mrs. Mongar. Paramedics had rushed in to try to save her, “But, because of the cluttered hallways and the padlocked emergency door, it took them over twenty minutes just to find a way to get her out of the building.” Abortion clinic regulations are on the table in several states. Unless you get paid to kill babies for a living, you ought to see that these are long-overdue protections for women. For more, please go to http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/02/federal-court-upholds-louisiana-law-giving-health-department-authority-to-quickly-move-against-dangerous-abortion-clinics and http://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/02/virginia-close-to-enactment-of-abortion-clinic-regulations Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |