Life Links 4/30/13

Erik Wemple busts NARAL president Ilyse Hogue's obvious lie that NARAL was "first out of the gate to call attention to (the Gosnell) case."

Having done precisely 3,454 Nexis and Internet search on the Gosnell case, we missed the part where NARAL had led a charge to highlight the alleged atrocities in West Philadelphia. So we Nexised again, checking on NARAL's footprint around the time that Gosnell was indicted in January 2011. Not much there. When asked to provide news releases or other evidence of activism around that time, NARAL didn't provide anything.

Saynsumthn reveals that Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania CEO Dayle Steinberg lied about not knowing about the problems in Gosnell's clinic when he lost his license in 2010.  Steinberg recently said that while he was doing abortions, Gosnell's patients would come to Planned Parenthood and complain about the conditions there. 

  
Kirsten Powers has another column devoted to the Gosnell case in which she shares a conversation she had with a woman who went to Gosnell after being referred there by a NAF affiliated clinic in Maryland and whose child's foot was one of feet stored by Gosnell. 

When she was 16, Hawkins sought an abortion at a National Abortion Federation-certified abortion clinic, Hagerstown (Md.) Reproductive Health Services. The clinic told her she was 19 weeks pregnant and referred her to Gosnell. When she recently retrieved her file in anticipation of testifying, she was shocked that her sonogram showed she had in fact been at 21 weeks, which meant she would have been 23 weeks pregnant by the time Gosnell performed the abortion. "I was so overwhelmed and hurt," said Hawkins. "If I had known I was 23 weeks, I would have (chosen) adoption."

She also would have avoided the trauma visited upon her by Gosnell. Hawkins described the licensed medical professional as laughing at her during the procedure as she cried and begged him to stop because of the pain. "Stop being a baby," he said.