Grand Jury Report on Abortionist Kermit Gosnell

I've been reading the overview of the Report of the Grand Jury in the case against abortionist Kermit Gosnell.

It's horrifying. Over the years Gosnell probably killed hundreds of infants who survived abortions but took the records home and destroyed them.

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.

Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented, one was Baby Boy A. His 17-year-old mother was almost 30 weeks pregnant – seven and a half months – when labor was induced. An employee estimated his birth weight as approaching six pounds. He was breathing and moving when Dr. Gosnell severed his spine and put the body in a plastic shoebox for disposal. The doctor joked that this baby was so big he could walk me to the bus stop.” Another, Baby Boy B, whose body was found at the clinic frozen in a one-gallon spring-water bottle, was at least 28 weeks of gestational age when he was killed. Baby C was moving and breathing for 20 minutes before an assistant came in and cut the spinal cord, just the way she had seen Gosnell do it so many times.

Numerous women were butchered.

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.

On another occasion, Gosnell simply sent a patient home, after keeping her mother waiting for hours, without telling either of them that she still had fetal parts inside her. Gosnell insisted she was fine, even after signs of serious infection set in over the next several days. By the time her mother got her to the emergency room, she was unconscious and near death.

Who's to blame for this man being able to stay in business for decades?

Pro-choicers like RH Reality Check's Amie Newman and Rob from the Abortion Gang have already pointed the finger at "stigma" and lack of access to abortion "care."

What kind of person looks at the horrible things that can happen to women and children at an unregulated abortion clinic and thinks "this proves we need less regulations"?

The Grand Jury report (which Newman discusses parts of but doesn't link to for some reason) completely contracts their assertions. It shares that Gosnell's clinic was able to stay open for so long in spite of numerous complaints because pro-choice politicians and officials didn't want to put up barriers to abortions.

But at least the department had been doing something up to that point, however ineffectual. After 1993, even that pro forma effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, 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.

The report also notes how Gosnell attempted to get admitted to the National Abortion Federation after his incompetence killed Karnamaya Mongar (the woman he is charged with killing). He was rejected but the NAF rep. apparently never told authorities about the horrible conditions.

So too with the National Abortion Federation. NAF is an association of abortion providers that upholds the strictest health and legal standards for its members. Gosnell, bizarrely, applied for admission shortly after Karnamaya Mongar’s death. Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused. 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.

The moral of this story is not "stigma leads women to bad abortionists."

The moral is that when we allow the dehumanization of some vulnerable human beings, we shouldn't be surprised when some people in power start dehumanizing other vulnerable human beings when its to their advantage.