Pennsylvania posts abortionist Kermit Gosnell's long list of violations

The Pennsylvania Department of Health has listed 14 broad categories in which abortionist Kermit Gosnell committed multiple violations of state laws.

Health officials reviewed records of 11 patients on whom Gosnell performed abortions between Nov. 19, 2009, and Feb. 19 - the day after the clinic was raided. State investigators found that nine of those women were in the second trimester of pregnancy - 14 or more weeks.

Three of those patients developed severe complications and had to be rushed by ambulance to a hospital.

In all three cases, the Health Department order says, ambulance personnel found doors and halls that could not accommodate a stretcher, and locked exit doors - one of which was blocked by "an IV pole, a wheelchair, and a broken office chair."

Two patients had to be helped to walk out to the ambulance. The rescue of the third patient, who was unconscious, involved cutting a padlock and finding a key......


Among other violations found by the Health Department's investigation:

Emergency resuscitation and monitoring equipment such as a heart defibrillator, breathing tubes, and a blood oxygen gauge were nonexistent or broken. The only suction source for clearing a blocked airway was the same one used for early abortions; it had no inspection sticker and corroded tubing.

Drugs to treat a patient for cardiac arrest, allergic reactions, or excessive bleeding were not stocked.

An oxygen mask and tubing were covered "in a thick gray layer" of apparent dust.

Gosnell had no backup physician, and patients in the recovery area were not monitored by a nurse.

The clinic did not submit fetal tissue from the nine late abortions to a pathologist to verify the fetus was not "viable" - unable to survive.

The clinic did not do blood and urine tests required to make sure patients could safely undergo abortions.

The Health Department also found that, even though Gosnell knew he was required to report serious complications to the state within 24 hours, he did not do so with the patient who went into cardiac arrest Nov. 19.

And Gosnell apparently lied on the quarterly reports he had to submit. For the last quarter of last year, he listed only two second-trimester abortions, yet his facility "provided at least six second-trimester abortions" during that period, the state order said.