In light of the grisly discovery of Dr. Gosnell’s Women’s Health Clinic, many states are now enacting tougher Abortion laws in cases of late term abortions, but also in terms of safety of the expectant mother.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell owned and ran The Women’s Medical Society an abortion clinic in Philadelphia. Along with co-defendant employees, he was charged with eight counts of murder of patients at his clinic due to gross medical malpractice. The murder charges related to a patient who died while under his care and seven newborns killed after being born alive during attempted abortions. In May 2013, he was convicted on three of the murder charges. Gosnell in a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty, and waived his right of appeal. Instead he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Gosnell was an early proponent of abortion rights in the 1960s and 1970s and, in 1972, he returned New York City to open up the Philadelphia abortion clinic on Lancaster Avenue. In the same year, he also performed fifteen televised second-trimester abortions, using an experimental “Super Coil” method invented by Harvey Karman. The coils were inserted into the uterus, where they caused irritation leading to the expulsion of the fetus. However, complications from the procedure were reported by nine of the women, with three of these reporting severe complications. The super coil experiment by Gosnell has been dubbed the “mother’s day massacre” by some.
In total during the course of his career, 46 known lawsuits had been filed against Gosnell over some 32 years. Observers claimed that there was a complete failure by Pennsylvania regulators who had overlooked other repeated concerns brought to their attention, including lack of trained staff, “barbaric” conditions, and a high level of illegal late-term abortions
Dr. Gosnell’s clinic was raided as a result of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Philadelphia Police Department, and the State’s Dangerous Drug-Offender Unit into suspected illegal drug prescription use at the practice. The investigation had also revealed the suspicious death of patient Karnamaya Mongar in 2009, which had in turn brought to light further information about unsanitary operations, use of untrained staff, and use of powerful drugs without proper medical supervision and control.
When the team members entered the clinic, they were appalled, there was blood on the floor, the stench of urine, a flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were in the waiting room/recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets. The patients had been sedated by Gosnell’s unlicensed staff before Gosnell arrived at the clinic. The staff could not state what medications or dosages they had administered to the women. The surgical rooms were so dirty and unsanitary that they were described as “resembling a bad gas station restroom.” Instruments were not sterile, equipment was rusty and outdated, oxygen equipment was covered with dust, and had not been inspected, and the same suction tube used for abortions was also used for breathing assistance if needed.
In Gosnell’s clinic infant remains were stored throughout the clinic in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers. Gosnell admitted to the detectives that at least 10 to 20 percent were probably older than the legal limit of 24 weeks. In some instances, incisions had been made at the base of the fetal skulls, severing the spinal cord of the once living newborn. In all, the remains of 45 fetuses were recovered; three had been proven viable in trial.
Examples of cases cited in the media include:
- Girl age 15, accompanied by relative (1998): said to have told Gosnell she changed her mind about the abortion once inside the practice. Gosnell allegedly got upset, ripped off the patient’s clothing, and forcibly restrained her. The patient later stated that Gosnell told her “This is the same care that I would give to my own daughter.“She regained consciousness 12 hours later at her aunt’s home, the abortion having been completed against her will.”
- Woman age 28, five months pregnant (2001): Patient described the pain four days after abortion as being so bad she could barely walk. The patient described that upon returning to the clinic because of the pain, “ultrasound showed fetal remains left inside her womb, and that Gosnell suctioned these out without anesthesia.”
- Fifteen-year-old: damages awarded in court upon a finding that Gosnell performed an abortion on a “fifteen-year-old without parental permission.”
- Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan (2009): according to prosecutors, Gosnell’s staff gave the 90-pound woman a lethal dose of anesthesia and painkillers during a 2009 abortion. During Gosnell’s trial, the chair of Anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburg Medical School testified that the dose the patient had was “outrageous” and “most” average adults would have stopped breathing if dosed in the manner described.
The case against Dr. Gosnell was kept out of most mainstream media, with only a few cable networks covering the trial, before or after the verdict. One would wonder why such a horrific house of horrors was not front page news, considering how for months America was hinged on the edge of their seats for the trial of the deranged murderess Jodi Arias.
Maybe the answer can be found in Melinda Henneberger’s response when she was asked why The Washington Post in which she writes for was not covering Gosnell’s trial.
Ms. Henneberger stated,
“We didn’t write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it’s genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news. That’s not so much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the effect is one-sided coverage”.
She tried to explaining that her colleagues did not report on the story when she wrote,
“One colleague viewed Gosnell’s alleged atrocities as a local crime story, though I can’t think of another mass murder, with hundreds of victims, which we ever saw that way.”
“Another said it was just too lurid, though that didn’t keep us from covering Jeffrey Dahmer, or that aspiring cannibal at the NYPD.”
Jeffrey Goldberg with the Bloomberg View said that this story,
“upsets a particular narrative about the reality of certain types of abortion, and that reality isn’t something some pro-choice absolutists want to discuss”
But this is something that we need to address, ugly as it may seem. It is not just about what a woman can or cannot do with her body; it’s about drawing lines to what can be legally and morally acceptable, despite its so called inconveniences.
Many states are enacting bills concerning later term abortions, abortions of fetus’ of 20 weeks or more. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, 18 U.S.C. § 1531 (2003) is a United States law prohibiting a form of late-term abortion that the Act calls “partial-birth abortion.” The procedure described in the statute is usually used in the second trimester, from 15 to 26 weeks. The law was enacted in 2003, and in 2007 its constitutionality was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart.
The main argument that states are using is that at 20 weeks “fetus feel pain” (see documentation below). State laws being introduced and passed are banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions in the cases of the pregnant mother’s life is endanger or that the child is suffering from physical defects.
The House Bill 2 for the State of Texas would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with the normal exceptions, and would also require that the procedure would be performed at ambulatory surgical centers, and that doctors who perform abortions obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.
Texas not wanting to allow another Gosnell clinic has put forth these strict laws to protect women from the atrocities that were committed in Philadelphia. Today in Texas only five out of 42 clinics in Texas qualify as ambulatory surgical centers, and they are in major metropolitan areas. Most clinics will need to relocate to meet ventilation requirements and to have the space required for operating rooms and hallways.
Similar measures have passed in other states, but many are tied up in court. Mississippi’s only abortion clinic remains open pending a federal lawsuit over the requirement for doctors to have admitting privileges.
Live Action conducted an series of undercover videos, in which a 27-weeks-pregnant undercover reporter goes back to a clinic and the abortionist Dr. Carmen Landau likened a late-term abortion injection that kills a baby to “a flu shot.” Dr. Landau cannot answer the question whether a child can feel pain at the 27th week of gestation, even though it’s clearly established that the entire neural network for pain has developed by the 20th week.
Dr. Landau tells the undercover Live Action reporter that a late-term abortion involving an injection of poison into the uterus, killing the child, and leaving it there for more than two days is safer than a full-term delivery.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/uCX-tLqETpk[/youtube]
The video, exposes abortion doctors at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico revealing disturbing aspects of the facility’s protocol, including the practice of leaving women alone in hotel rooms to deliver their dead children. Dr. Carmen Landau tells the Live Action investigator to “sit on the toilet”, “unlock the hotel room” and “Just sit there,” Landau instructs, “and you do not move until we come and get you.”
Abortion is a BIG BUSINESS, especially for providers like Planned Parenthood; it’s all about health you know.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/cYaTywSDmls[/youtube]
Planned Parenthood alone has become a billion dollar industry, largely cash and largely unregulated due to ongoing political pressure. 1/3 of those billion dollars is subsidized — in other words, it’s our taxpayer money. The profits of Planned Parenthood, in turn, get plowed back into powerful lobbies and political campaigns, and that helps ensure that the industry stays subsidized and unregulated.
One such political party lobbying for Planned Parenthood, Moveon.org, Democracy Now, and many other progressive organizations, actually hired the protestors in the recent Texas House State Affairs Committee session. YES I SAID HIRED! YES, the same groups that are primarily financed by George Soros! An ad on Craigslist in Austin by “Grassroots Campaigns” sought to hire abortion activists for “our Pro Choice Campaign in Austin” offered to pay $1300-$2200/month.
Craigslist Ad Posted in Austin by Grassroots Campaign Org. (One of Obama’s get out the Vote groups
The radical left-wing group has ties to the Obama re-election campaign. Grassroots Campaign sought to hire outside agitators for pro-abortion protest. On the Grassroots Campaigns web site, the group states that it works to hire activists in the areas of “environmental protection, LGBT equality, poverty and social justice.”
It notes that it has joined forces with the radically liberal organization MoveOn.org and other leftist groups were heavily involved in the Obama re-election campaign as well as radical environmental groups.
“It is clear that militant left-wing activists are being paid in an outrageous effort to disrupt the legislative process in Texas and manipulate the public into thinking that the pro-abortion crowds shown on the evening news are organically generated. The reality is that hired thugs are being brought in by Obama Administration leftists to thwart the true will of the people who support this common-sense abortion bill by no less than 64%,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. (Click the picture to enlarge).
The bill was prompted by news of abortion horrors committed by late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted in May of three counts of First Degree Murder for killing babies born alive during late-term abortions. The bill was given greater urgency after Operation Rescue helped break the news of similar illegal behavior by Houston abortionist Douglas Karpen. Karpen remains under active investigation by the Houston Police Department Homicide Division.
“We need to remember what this Texas law is really about and that is providing more protections for women from substandard medical practices and protecting babies that can feel pain. It’s hard to believe that anyone would want to fight to keep abortion dangerous and continue the barbaric practice of late-term abortion that eyewitnesses say have led to abortionists twisting the heads off babies born alive during abortions. Those acts are simply indefensible and require legislation protections immediately,” said Newman.
The Senate has scheduled a Monday morning hearing on a separate but identical bill. Supporters are planning a rally outside the Capitol Monday night.
“We took testimony in the regular session, in the first special. We’ve taken a lot of testimony,” said House State Affairs Chairman Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, in explaining his decision to cut off testimony after 100 at the second special session.
Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Houston Democrat asked for more time for testimony. “The people have the right to come here, and they have the right to be heard,”Turner said. Just before the committee’s vote, Turner tried to offer amendments to the bill, but Cook refused to recognize him or any other Democrat.
“You can bring it up on the (House) floor,” Cook said.
(I am so proud of this man; I had the honor to work for Byron Cook and his family for years, even assisting in his first campaign for State Representative.)
This article first appeared on Lady Patriots. Julia Sieben is the Co-Editor of Lady Patriots and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.
