The appalling story of "House of Horrors" abortionist Kermit Gosnell in Pennsylvania is something most of us prefer not to think about. And I am not in this entry going to include anything gruesome. The gruesome information is all out there and available.
I'm also going to take it as read that I do not believe that Gosnell's murderous business would have been non-murderous and okay if it had been clean and had followed state requirements for staff, equipment, cleanliness, etc., nor that if he had not been killing women by gross malpractice (repeatedly), everything would have been all right. Abortion is murder always and everywhere, and that is my well-known position.
However, Gosnell's particular murder clinic might have been shut down many, many years sooner, and possibly some lives (both those of mothers and children) saved if he had not been shamefully, blatantly, and repeatedly protected by Pennsylvania bureaucrats. In fact, since his building didn't have sufficient access for a stretcher, he could have been refused a license to operate in the first place.
Section VI of the Grand Jury Report begins on p.140 (PDF software numbering, 137 on the page) and goes on for nearly eighty pages, telling the outrageous tale. Particularly prominent in the story is the name of one Janice Staloski, who had a number of important positions in the Pennsylvania Department of Health and protected Gosnell again and again.
Staloski began protecting Gosnell with her faux inspections of his facilities even during the Casey administration, but she attempted to blame the complete lack of inspection thereafter on the administration of Tom Ridge, which began in 1995. Staloski, who quite evidently was annoyed at the raid on Gosnell even after it was over, testified to the grand jury that the policy of non-inspection was motivated by a desire "not to be putting a barrier up to women" seeking abortions (p. 147). She said it. I didn't. And attorneys justifying the unequal treatment of abortion clinics also said that abortion is "controversial" (p. 163).
The Grand Jury report is devastating. The obvious fakery and the repeated cover-ups are everywhere. The DOH deliberately wrote regulations that don't expressly require it to inspect abortion clinics regularly, then it claimed that its hands were tied because the regulations (which it wrote) do not "authorize" regular inspections. One attorney tried to claim that DOH was "responsive" to complaints in a case when the only thing done (this was in a case of a woman's death at the clinic) was to ask Gosnell to resubmit his report of the death! The list of abuses of the system goes on and on, page after page. It is so bad that it almost makes one wonder if bribery was involved, though that may not have been necessary.
One other fact to which my attention was called by a correspondent: Gosnell was overtly performing forced abortions and was doing so with so little worry about legal repercussions that he expressly included a line in the paperwork that advised women regarding sedation that they should pay extra for more "comfort" sedation if they were being forced to have the abortion! (p. 55) At first when I heard this I thought Gosnell must have been crazy, as this involved leaving an explicit paper trail of his own practice of forced abortion. After reading section VI of the report, however, I realize that he knew full-well he had nothing to worry about. He was not being called to account. He had plenty of inductive evidence that all such things would be overlooked. Only when law enforcement finally got involved was DOH's hand forced, and then they acted none too willingly and complained in e-mails that they were "used." (p. 152) Even now, Gosnell hasn't been charged with carrying out forced abortions, though I assume that is illegal under PA law. He's been charged with plenty of other things, and I'm not blaming the Grand Jury. My guess is that until they have a specific case of a forced abortion to charge him with, they can't charge him. So he was perfectly safe putting that line in his paperwork.
Now, I have repeatedly said that pro-aborts turn the other way when there is evidence that even by their own lights women are being harmed, coerced, etc., by abortion. I call this the "choice devours itself" phenomenon. Pro-aborts start out defending abortion ostensibly for the woman's sake and end up not really caring tuppence even about the woman and even about her choice.
In this case, the direct evidence of coercion only came out after the evidence of everything else--the murders of born-alive infants, the gross malpractice that killed women, the multiple, egregious violations of health regulations--had already come to light. But if the bureaucrats had cared tuppence about women's health and well-being, they would have shut down the clinic long before, at which point presumably Gosnell's forced abortion practices would also have come to light and been stopped.
But they didn't really care. The most sickeningly believable aspect of the entire report comes in the statement that the only thing the DOH consistently tried to make Gosnell do was to file paperwork--in particular his (made up) reports of number of abortions that they needed to fill out their own required paperwork reporting on aggregate abortion numbers. (p. 171) So the machine of death ground on.
No doubt pro-choicers will find something to say to all of this. They are never at a loss for words for long. I hear that the despicable Amanda Marcotte is already in full spin mode, applying for a position as a one-woman electric power generator, asserting that somehow, somehow pro-lifers are responsible for the existence of Gosnell.
The facts say otherwise. In fact, the facts point to specific people with specific names, beginning (but by no means ending) with Janice Staloski, who (besides Gosnell himself) are responsible for Gosnell. And we have Ms. Staloski's own word for it that the hands-off policy towards abortion clinics, including Gosnell's, was motivated by the desire not to put a "barrier" in the way of women seeking abortion. In the name of which, Staloski and others apparently cared not one whit for the women who died of Gosnell's practices, those who developed infections, those who were infected with an STD at his clinic (p. 144), and those whose born-alive children were killed. I guess some people just have to suffer for the cause.
I do not quite understand why Janice Staloski cannot be prosecuted. One early news story said something that implied a statute of limitations issue, but I have not been able to follow that up. One thing is for sure: If she ever says a word about "women's lives," "women's bodies," or "women's choices," I hope everyone around her responds with appropriate disgust. Spitting in front of her feet would be a good start, and it's non-violent, too.
In cases like this, one wants (clearly, some members of the appalled Grand Jury want) to rise up and ask, "Where are the pro-choicers? Where are the feminists?" But don't bother. They're out there with Marcotte running the electric power generator.
The one that devours choice.
Comments (31)
Supposedly, there is precedent of mob operations out of abortuaries. I haven't researched it.
The Anchoress had a link to a then-15 year old girl whose grandmother took her there and reports that she was abused by the doctor and staff before and after the forced abortion. When she tried to report it, everyone shrugged and said they couldn't do anything.
Posted by Foxfier | January 21, 2011 6:23 PM
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/114347679.html?cmpid=15585797
Posted by Foxfier | January 21, 2011 6:25 PM
Okay, correction to my original post: The grand jury should charge him with forced abortions, and there are specific women who are testifying to having been forced.
Posted by Lydia | January 21, 2011 6:32 PM
I hope they throw the book at him and to whatever extent possible his government accomplices.
Posted by Step2 | January 21, 2011 7:02 PM
I'm betting the girl didn't come forward until this hit the news, so they didn't know.
Posted by Foxfier | January 21, 2011 7:14 PM
Based on what he was netting and his cash on hand, i will assume that various state and local officials are having their finances checked out.
Posted by al | January 21, 2011 10:28 PM
Obviously, Staloski should have her finances checked, but there were quite a few people involved here, and I don't see how he even _could_ have been bribing all of them. For one thing, complaints came in to multiple people (multiple attorneys at the Dept. of State, for example) from multiple sources. He couldn't even have anticipated all the people he would need to bribe.
Posted by Lydia | January 21, 2011 10:33 PM
The depravity at the "House of Horrors", which was protected by so-called pro-choice enthusiasm (if not legislation), is another hideous example of what's going on in our brave new world that encourages all-out pessimism. I mean pessimism about the breakdown of mere decency.
I no longer believe that things can be turned around in Western societies - that moral values can be restored by the unhistoric acts of people living hidden lives. Nothing less than an apocalyptic event will be required to change or to end it all.
Posted by Alex | January 22, 2011 3:41 AM
A ray of sunlight shines through this story, a cause of hope, prospects for a better future, a government agency, DOH, followed up on paperwork requirements.
The Republic lives, progress continues, civil servants bend their backs for the common good.
On the other hand, what would you expect these slugs to do other then shuffle sufficient paper to occupy the top of their desk for a day or two.
Is everybody getting their money's worth?
Posted by johnt | January 22, 2011 11:28 AM
al, I would agree that various officials SHOULD have their finances checked out. Is there any evidence that this is actually happening? You are pretty good at ferreting out details like this - go get 'em. Pretty please?
Posted by Tony | January 22, 2011 2:29 PM
"Obviously, Staloski should have her finances checked, but there were quite a few people involved here,"
Understood but my question is how many choke points? If complaints funneled into a few decision makers bribery becomes possible and that's all it takes. Many decades ago (everyone involved is long dead) a friend's father had an illegal gambling operation in a major U. S. city. He didn't need to pay off every cop; a vice lieutenant, precinct captain, and assistant chief were sufficient.
I'm suspicious about this "concern" they supposedly had over access. More information is needed.
Alternet has a horrified but otherwise different take,
“This was like a pre-Roe v. Wade clinic,” Schewel says. “And I think that as abortion access becomes narrower and narrower and more and more limited, there will be more and more of these types of providers.”
"Corrigan is also a volunteer at the Women’s Medical Fund, a Philadelphia organization that offers financial assistance to poor women seeking abortions. She says that her organization has been advising women against visiting the Women’s Medical Society since the mid-1990s."
“When women would call us we’d say, ‘There’s a reason it's cheap. Don’t go there.’”
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/149618/back-alley_abortions_in_2011%3A_how_anti-choice_zealots_force_women_to_go_to_dangerous_clinics_like_dr._kermit_gosnell%27s/
Posted by al | January 22, 2011 2:42 PM
Right. That's what I mean by "spin." I have choice words for that kind of spin. When *the testimony itself* indicates that "anti-choice zealots" had _nothing_ to do with this and that officials who refused to do their jobs _are_ the story. You can say these were probably bribed officials. Maybe, maybe not. But _they_ are the ones responsible, and they are not doing this out of some sort of perverse "anti-choice zealotry."
We also have in the testimony an express statement from one of these very officials that a blatantly unequal treatment (the grand jury report lays this all out--the totally puzzling refusal to treat and inspect abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities when that is manifestly what they are) of abortion clinics and other similar facilities *was motivated* by pro-choice sentiment.
Yet the pro-abort left has the despicable gall to talk about "anti-choice zealots" in this context. I will give no quarter to this sort of thing.
Posted by Lydia | January 22, 2011 2:52 PM
Oh, and I love the statement that it was "like a pre-Roe clinic" even though it _was not_ a pre-Roe clinic. You know, an honest person would say, "Gee, maybe legalization doesn't actually work, maybe it's not so easy as all of that to take the back-alley out of abortion." But no matter what the evidence, it's somehow the fault of pro-lifers! If we found _ten_ clinics like Gosnell's, they'd say the same thing, instead of saying, "Gee, I guess the pre-Roe and post-Roe distinction doesn't make the difference we thought it did." This is disgusting and dishonest.
Posted by Lydia | January 22, 2011 2:55 PM
"...abortion clinics and other similar facilities *was motivated* by pro-choice sentiment."
And no one has ever lied to a grand jury. That explanation may explain some of the lack of action but I suspect that a lot of it is nothing more than retrospective attempts to cover up corruption and incompetence. Central to this is the low social status of those harmed.
My understanding of their point is that the lack of Medicaid funding (both federal and state) puts financial pressure on poor women which is what seems to have happened here.
As I have pointed out many times, all criminalizing abortion will do is to inconvenience those with the means to travel and put those who don't in desperate circumstances. That appears to be what happened in response to Pennsylvania abortion law. Criminalizing abortion will merely formalize everywhere what happened here.
"You know, an honest person would say, "Gee, maybe legalization doesn't actually work, maybe it's not so easy as all of that to take the back-alley out of abortion."
And an honest person could look at the facts and just as easily say, "maybe restricting access to abortion doesn't work. All it seems to do is facilitate the exploitation of poor folks. Maybe we need to find policy solutions that don't focus on the penal code."
Posted by al | January 22, 2011 4:23 PM
A business based on killing babies is also guilty of exploiting the poor and bribing city officials? Imagine what a graph charting this moral declension might look like. I bet it craters at; "habitually tardy for his social appointments and boorish manners."
Posted by Don Colacho | January 22, 2011 5:00 PM
Al, if legalization is what it takes to keep women from resorting to going to such evil and disgusting abortion providers, why don't we legalize abortion through all three trimesters? That way we can make sure that the murders are done in as safe (for the mother) and clean an environment as possible. After all, women are going to get abortions anyway, right?
Posted by Josh | January 22, 2011 5:09 PM
Josh, you miss the point. I have no problem with limiting late term abortion to those involving the health of the mother and serious fetal problems. What is obvious from this case is that regardless of the law, services sought will be provided if the price is right.
"After all, women are going to get abortions anyway, right?"
Bingo! Now you seem to get it, especially for early abortions. Women who can afford an airline ticket or a tank of gas have easy access to abortion regardless of Medicaid policies.
Back in the middle of the last century, when abortion was still illegal, networks developed that facilitated abortion in Europe or Japan depending on which coast one lived. Also Mexico was always an option. The "right" kind of women always had access to safe abortions; others took their chances.
A further thought on the pro-choice defense from the relevant officials. These are folks whose livelihoods, pensions, and freedom are potentially in jeopardy. They have lawyered up, it seems. The Doc and his staff are likely going to prison. Were I one of these officials, i would want nothing more than for this to become a shooting match between the pro-choice/anti-abortion folks and everyone forgets about whatever combination of corruption, incompetence, and stupidity led me to do what I did.
Posted by al | January 22, 2011 6:23 PM
Rich people can always afford to hire hitmen instead of getting their own hands dirty. Murder will always happen. So long as it's criminalized, however, only the rich will have access to save, affordable, clean and effective trained assassins. Do we want to go back to the days when poor people had to do their killing in alleyway muggings?
Gah. I can't believe these things have to be said.
Posted by Michael Sullivan | January 22, 2011 7:13 PM
If anyone's interested, this site collects "legal" abortion deaths.
She caught on to the SOB nearly a year ago. When it didn't make as much news that he was keeping trophies, or that he'd killed (physically) adult women. (We know he was doing forced abortions on teenage girls. Bets that if one of them died of it, it wouldn't be reported or noticed?)
Posted by Foxfier | January 22, 2011 7:28 PM
I am here today because of the horrors of Mexican abortions. Let me explain:
My mother was pregnant with me and unmarried, pre-Roe. She panicked when she first found out and contemplated abortion at first. She was college age and had friends who had had abortions in Mexico. They told her horror stories about how bad it was. So she didn't do it. So I was born.
It does put rather a different light on the whole subject of that Mexican option and on the whole question of deterrence.
Posted by Lydia | January 22, 2011 7:39 PM
Al, you say, "I have no problem with limiting late term abortion to those involving the health of the mother and serious fetal problems." Okay, well, if this is a good enough reason to limit late term abortion despite the fact that "the right sort of women" are still going to be able to get late term abortions, why can't I simply say, "I have no problem outlawing all abortion"? Your answer that late term abortion is something you don't have a problem regulating is a complete non-answer.
You fail to address the point that Michael Sullivan and I make -- murder is going to happen, legal or not. Of course this is true. It's also true that making murder legal can make the process of murder safer for the murderer, whether we are talking about murder of the abortion variety or the murder of those already born. It doesn't follow from this that the legalization of murder is a good idea.
I feel condescending spelling this out, and I don't like that, but surely you can see that your position on regulating late term abortion is inconsistent with your argument for the legalization for earlier abortions?
Posted by Josh | January 22, 2011 8:30 PM
Foxfier, for some reason the post in your second link disappears after a moment (on my browser) and goes to a "women's renaissance" site without the post. Kind of frustrating. If you cd. grab a couple of interesting money quotes, that would be great.
Posted by Lydia | January 22, 2011 8:31 PM
I realize sick things have been in the news and that this is the anniversary of Row vs. Wade, but could we have a lighter post sometime, soon? Too depressing to read this stuff all the time...
The Chicken
Posted by The Asked Chicken | January 22, 2011 9:09 PM
Lydia- argh, it's an occasional problem that site has. If you try opening it in a new browser, it should work, or search for the address ( http://realchoice.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-information-on-last-novembers.html ) in google and look at the cache-- there are a lot of links, including to her first story.
It was November 20, 2009. Damber had taken his sister to Kermit Gosnell's filthy Philadelphia abortion mill. She had first gone to a facility in Virginia, but because they didn't do abortions after 12 weeks, they referred Karnamaya to an abortion clinic in Maryland. But Karnamaya was 18 or 19 weeks pregnant, further along than the Maryland clinic performed abortions, so they referred her to Gosnell's place.
The order suspending Gosnell's license said that an unlicensed employee, Lynda Gayle Williams, had given Karnamaya d 10 mg. Demerol and 12.5 mg promethazine, then had called Gosnell because the patient was still experiencing severe pain. Gosnell ordered more medications to be administered before his arrival -- 75 mg Demerol, 12.5 mg. promethazine, and 10 mg. diazepam -- and then ordered yet more after he arrived.
After Gosnell completed the abortion, Karnamaya developed a cardiac arrhythmia, and went into v-vib (abnormal heart rhythm that can't sustain life. An ambulance was summoned to take her to the hospital.
Because the filthy pile of garbage (the building, in this case) was so horribly designed, they couldn't get a stretcher or even A WHEELCHAIR to the room she was in. No elevator, either.
Her husband and three children had been in the country about five months.
Posted by Foxfier | January 22, 2011 9:35 PM
Do you doubt the sincerity of their commitment to "Choice", or suspect they are closet pro-lifers on the make?
This is not a pedestrian story of corrupt local officials allowing bad public hygiene to fester. Which is why the abortion industry wants this story to vanish without further reflection.
Posted by Don Colacho | January 22, 2011 10:37 PM
Great post, I shared it at a political information page that I run on facebook and also linked to it at my blog where I wrote about what happens to the girls and women who are usually coerced into having abortions:
http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/01/other-victims.html
Posted by Zilla | January 23, 2011 8:40 AM
Al,
Just to follow up on Josh's point, the fact that you are willing to outlaw certain late-term abortions must mean that you are willing to tolerate a black market in those types of abortions. That black market will likely result in the same back-alley horrors and "wealthy privilege" that result from other abortion restrictions. Why are you ok with this? Is it because you believe that there will be fewer women seeking the outlawed abortions and therefore fewer horror stories? Is it that the types of abortion you would outlaw just should be against public policy and so the fallout is the price society must accept? Or what?
Posted by CJ | January 23, 2011 8:50 AM
Central to this is the low social status of those harmed.
Which is why numerous Planned Parenthood mills have recently been exposed as readily open to donations expressly given for the abortion of black children. Because of their great compassion for poor blacks.
Posted by Paul J Cella | January 23, 2011 9:13 AM
As I have pointed out many times, all criminalizing abortion will do is to inconvenience those with the means to travel and put those who don't in desperate circumstances. That appears to be what happened in response to Pennsylvania abortion law. Criminalizing abortion will merely formalize everywhere what happened here.
Let's set the facts straight here. Abortion wasn't being criminalized in PA. Any women who finds herself with child in Pennsylvania can still get an abortion legally. There is no legal sanction that prevents it. The law may (theoretically, of course, but not practically in this case) impose some limits that may make it a little more effort, but that's really all. Nothing criminal about a women going to a doctor and buying an abortion. The law puts some significant limits on my getting a license, but that doesn't criminilize driving, does it? Of course not, that would be a stupid way of describing it.
The diminution of availability - to the extent the availability has actually reduced - is mainly due to other forces, including market and social forces. Not legal sanctions on the offering of abortion services. The Supremes have seen to that.
Supposing, for a moment, that at some unforseeable future moment the truly pro-life public gains the majority and convinces the lawmakers to make abortion illegal: Saying that criminalizing abortion simply forces it to go underground is kind of like saying that criminalizing failure to pay taxes merely forces it to go underground. It's ridiculous: the effort to treat an act as wrong by criminalizing it is, effectively, an effort to tell people that it is wrong and they must not do it. If the people then decide to skirt the law and do it anyway, that's their own responsibility, not the law's. And If they "go underground" to avoid discovery, they are doubly-wrong: they are admitting that they understand that they have been told the action is wrong, and they do it anyway. You cannot turn this into the law's fault.
In any case, the so-called statistics about back-alley abortions that were bandied about in the late 60's and early 70's have since been debunked. I am perfectly willing to accept a change in the social landscape that has 10,000 illegal abortions (every one of which is unsafe for the mother, and fatal for the other party) every year, instead of 3 million abortions every year, of which probably a good deal more than 10,000 are unsafe for the mother.
Posted by Tony | January 23, 2011 12:25 PM
A similar argument could be made about child sex trafficking. Our state laws against sex with minors and prostituting them do nothing to stop those with the means to travel to the third world where such crimes often barely rank in the hierarchy of police priorities.
Yet, NAMBLA aside, no one would argue that our laws are pointless because of what the affluent can do overseas.
Posted by Mike T | January 24, 2011 8:18 AM
P.Z. Myers displays what a sickening moral cretin he is.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/01/i_get_email_74.php
I'm sure that his devoted following of socially inept 18-25 year old boys is positively delighted.
Posted by Untenured | January 24, 2011 12:53 PM