WASHINGTON – When a team of health officials and
investigators looking into illegal drug use raided Dr. Kermit
Barron Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society Feb. 18, 2010, they
happened upon what many are calling a “house of
horrors.”<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
“urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”
/><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT size=3><FONT face=”Utopia
Std”>”There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine
filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the
facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs,” said a
grand jury report about the conditions found in the clinic
Gosnell ran in West
Philadelphia.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>The two surgical rooms resembled a “bad gas
station restroom,” according to Agent Stephen Dougherty of
the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. The team went on to
recover the remains of 45 fetuses “in bags, milk jugs, orange
juice cartons, and even in cat-food containers,” the report
explained.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>Three days later, the Pennsylvania Department
of Health suspended Gosnell’s license. He was arrested in
January 2011 and charged with seven counts of infanticide and
one count of murder in the case of a Nepalese woman who died
during an
abortion.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>Gosnell’s trial on those charges began March 18
of this year. By the fifth week, beginning April 15,
prosecutors were continuing to call witnesses, including
several patients and several former employees, who testified
about the squalid conditions they saw at the
clinic.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>Three days later, the Pennsylvania Department
of Health suspended Gosnell’s license. He was arrested in
January 2011 and charged with seven counts of infanticide and
one count of murder in the case of a Nepalese woman who died
during an
abortion.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>Gosnell’s trial on those charges began March 18
of this year. By the fifth week, beginning April 15,
prosecutors were continuing to call witnesses, including
several patients and several former employees, who testified
about the squalid conditions they saw at the
clinic.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>April 23, three of the eight murder charges
against Gosnell were thrown out by the judge for insufficient
evidence that three babies were born alive and later
killed.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>Gosnell could still face the death penalty if
he’s convicted in four other infant deaths and in an adult’s
overdose.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=body-eventslist><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Arial>Several pro-life leaders in interviews with
Catholic News Service or in statements emailed to CNS
discussed the Gosnell case and the attention it brings to
what they said are deplorable conditions all too common at
abortion
clinics.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>It was a “meat-market-style of assembly lines of
abortions,” Mallory Quigley, a spokeswoman for the Susan B.
Anthony List, said April 15, referencing the words of two
nurses who recently left a Delaware clinic for similar
reasons. “The Gosnell case is a lot more common than people
realize,” Quigley
said.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>Jeanne Monahan, president of the March for Life
Education & Defense Fund, said that “Americans as a whole
think that abortion clinics are sanitary decent clinics,” but
the “majority of abortion clinics in our country are held to
very minimal standards: legally the same standards as beauty
parlors and vet
clinics.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>According to Pennsylvania Department of Health
spokeswoman Kait Gillis, because of “tougher regulation and
new leadership, today, abortion facilities are being held
accountable to higher standards to better protect the health
and safety of
women.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”We have a far deeper understanding of these
facilities now than we did then (when Gosnell’s abuses were
uncovered) and conduct regular annual and unannounced
inspections, not only because the law tells us to, but
because we are committed to doing what is right,” she
said.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>While Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act prohibits
some forms of abortion, not all clinics performing ambulatory
surgical procedures at the time of Gosnell’s arrest in 2011
were subject to the same standards of care for
women.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>The state’s Abortion Facilities Control Act that
came into effect late that year now holds abortion clinics to
the same standards of health and safety as other outpatient
clinics, such as eye care or urgent care
facilities.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”Prior to the passage of this legislation, it was
clear that the law favored the abortion industry – not
women’s health, as is so often claimed,” the Pennsylvania
Catholic Conference said in a statement on the
law.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>State law requires that abortions be done under 24
weeks of pregnancy because of the risks to the mother, but
the grand jury report showed Gosnell routinely flouted that
law. “The bigger the baby, the more he charged,” it
said.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>He is accused of sticking a pair of medical
scissors into the back of the necks of prematurely born
babies and cutting the spinal cord, a procedure he called
“snipping.” Court records show he destroyed most of the
documentation on his use of “snipping,” but pictures taken by
employees and other evidence are being used by
prosecutors.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”Over the years, many people came to know that
something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it,”
the report explained. The clinic went unchecked by the
Department of Health for 16 years until its horrors were
accidentally uncovered by the drug
raid.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>Several employees face similar charges. The grand
jury report said Gosnell hired untrained, uncertified nurses,
and taught them to view ultrasound pictures at an angle so
that unborn babies to be aborted looked smaller than they
actually were. It also said Gosnell and his wife performed
late-term abortions on Sundays when no other staff was
present.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>In an April 16 statement Dayle Steinberg, president
and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, said
that Gosnell “is a criminal who preyed upon vulnerable women,
and committed illegal
acts.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”As health care providers who work every day to
protect women’s health and safety, we are outraged by his
criminal behavior and hope he is held accountable,” she
continued. “All health care providers must be regulated, and
these regulations should be based on health care needs – not
on
politics.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”Planned Parenthood insists on the highest
standards of patient care and has rigorous safety guidelines
in place,” Steinberg
added.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>Lila Rose, president of Live Action, told CNS in an
emailed statement that “as long as these clinics enjoy such
privileges – privileges no health department would ever grant
to any hospital – we will never know how many Kermit Gosnells
are out there. And every time we find the next one, it will
be too
late.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>Rose, a 24-year-old Catholic convert, officially
became involved with the abortion cause at 15 when she
founded Live Action, a pro-life nonprofit specializing in
investigative journalism. Since then she has received
national recognition for her hidden-camera exposes of the
Planned Parenthood abortion industry, which she calls
“reckless (and)
unregulated.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>Kristan Hawkins, executive director Students for
Life of America, said that “just because abortion is legal
doesn’t make it
safe.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>Said Quigley, “Abortion doesn’t help women.” She
explained that the pro-life movement operates more than 3,000
pregnancy resource centers for mothers and families in need,
offering them assistance so they do not feel abortion is
their only
alternative.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”Those are the places we need to be building up,”
she said, noting that more than 90 percent of the funding for
such centers is
private.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>While Monahan acknowledged the Gosnell case is a
somewhat extreme case, she said that it highlights the
violence of the abortion procedure, which she describes as
being “deeply invasive” to the woman. She said it also shines
a light on what she termed is the sad reality of the abortion
business.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Body><FONT face=”Utopia Std”><FONT
size=3>”There is no constitutional right to maim and kill
women and girls nationwide,” said Kristi Hamrick, spokeswoman
for Americans United for Life. “One woman’s death is too
many. … The mere existence of protective laws is not
enough. State officials must also consistently enforce these
laws.”<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
</p><p><P style=”MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt”
class=Endnoteemail><EM><FONT size=3><FONT
face=”Arno Pro Display”>Contributing to this story was
Matt Gambino, director and general manager of
CatholicPhilly.com and PhaithMagazine.com, the news and
magazine websites of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.<o:p>
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