It is astounding to look at the trial of Kermit Gosnell, who is accused of murdering babies born after botched, illegal third trimester partial birth abortions, then seeing pro-abortion liberals arguing against regulations, that had they been enforced, would have stopped Gosnell. Liberals are making this argument just one day after the media finally started covering the Gosnell's "House of Horrors trial."
Starting with the Grand Jury report on Gosnell and the Women's Medical Society, page #140, Section VI "How Did Th is Go On So Long?"
Report states:
We discovered that Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has deliberately chosen not to enforce laws that should afford patients at abortion clinics the same safeguards and assurances of quality health care as patients of other medical service providers.There is much more, but that is the gist... the Pennsylvania Department of State, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and Pennsylvania Department of Public Health are talked about and how their failures allowed the murder of these born alive babies to continue for so many years at Gosnell's clinic.
The State Legislature has charged the Department of Health (DOH) with responsibility for writing and enforcing regulations to protect health and safety in abortion clinics as well as in hospitals and other health care facilities. Yet a significant difference exists between how DOH monitors abortion clinics and how it monitors facilities where other medical procedures are performed.
Indeed, the department has shown an utter disregard both for the safety of women who seek treatment at abortion clinics and for the health of fetuses after they have become viable. State health officials have also shown a disregard for the laws the department is supposed to enforce. Most appalling of all, the Department of Health’s neglect of abortion patients’ safety and of Pennsylvania laws is clearly not inadvertent: It is by design .
(See embedded video reports here and here about Gosnell and his "House of Horrors")
Keep those failures in mind when reading the quotes from liberals today over the Virginia Board of Health passing legislation, with a vote of 11-2, which would require clinics that provide abortions to meet the same standards as outpatient hospital facilities, accusing of a "conservative war on abortion clinics."
Liberal website ThinkProgress:
The Virginia Board of Health voted 11-2 on Friday “to require abortion clinics to meet strict, hospital-style building codes” that many women’s health advocates say will put abortion providers out of business and prevent women from accessing essential medical services.
[....]
The regulations — part of a nationwide anti-choice campaign to adopt so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP, laws — would require clinics that provide abortions to meet the same standards as outpatient hospital facilities, forcing many clinics to choose between expensive and medically unnecessary renovations such as widening halls and doorways or shutting down entirely. While the health board originally wished to grandfather existing clinics from having to comply with the new rules, Cuccinelli threatened to make its members foot the bill for any litigation that resulted from the law.
Friday’s vote represents the latest skirmish in an ongoing conservative war on abortion clinics. In the past three months, states have proposed an astonishing 694 provisions restricting or rolling back women’s reproductive rights. Efforts to shutter local abortion clinics disproportionately impact low-income women and significantly increase the incidence unintended pregnancies.
Lets take a look at what the Virginia TRAP law summary is, from 2011:
Board of Health; regulation of facilities. Requires the Board of Health to promulgate regulations containing minimum standards for policies related to infection prevention, disaster preparedness, and facility security of hospitals, nursing homes, and certified nursing facilities. This bill provides that minimum standards for construction, maintenance, operation, staffing, equipping, staff qualifications and training, and conditions under which services may be provided, as well as requirements for policies related to infection prevention, disaster preparedness, and facility security for hospitals, nursing homes, and certified nursing facilities shall also apply to any facility in which five or more first trimester abortions per month are performed, and that such facilities, shall be classified as a category of hospital for the purposes of such requirements. This bill requires the Board of Health to promulgate regulations to implement the provisions of this act within 280 days of enactment.
Liberals' argument is it is an onerous and an anti-choice campaign to require abortion clinics to meet the same standards and regulations as any other outpatient facility, including building code requirements.
Back to the Gosnell Grand Jury Report, page #24:
Ambulances were summoned to pick up the waiting patients, but (just as on the night Mrs. Mongar died three months earlier), no one, not even Gosnell, knew where the keys were to open the emergency exit. Emergency personnel had to use bolt cutters to remove the lock. They discovered they could not maneuver stretchers through the building’s narrow hallways to reach the patients (just as emergency personnel had been obstructed from reaching Mrs. Mongar).
Page #48:
The physical layout of the clinic, a confusing maze of narrow hallways and multiple twisting stairways, should have been an obvious bar to its use for surgical procedures. The three-story structure, created by joining two buildings, had no elevator. Access from procedure rooms to the outside by wheelchair or stretcher was impossible, as was evident the night Karnamaya Mongar died.
Page #144:
The next inspection was conducted on April 8, 1993, by DOH evaluators Susan Mitchell and Georgette Freed-Wolf. This was also the last site review – until February 2010, when an inspection occurred because law enforcement executed search warrants for illegal drug activity. In the 1993 review, Gosnell was the only doctor listed on staff, but “Dr. Weisberg” was still described as a consultant. Four years after Gosnell had promised to hire nurses to oversee the recovery room, there was still none. Lab work was still being performed by unspecified “medical assistants,” whose qualifications the evaluators apparently did not question, since that section of the review was left blank. For the third time, inspectors found the access for stretchers and wheelchairs adequate, even though the facility’s layout had become even more convoluted and the building still did not have an elevator.
Page #218:
Had DOH treated the clinic as the ambulatory surgical facility it was, DOH inspectors would have assured that the staff were all licensed, that the facility was clean and sanitary, that anesthesia protocols were followed, and that the building was properly equipped and could, at least, accommodate stretchers. Failure to comply with these standards would have given cause for DOH to revoke the facility’s license to operate.Dirty, unsanitary conditions, baby body parts in cabinets and jars, unclean instruments, all aside, had the basic building codes failures been addressed by the appropriate authorities, the rest of Gosnell's crimes would have been prevented.
Gosnell has is charged with eight counts of murder -- one for Mrs. Mongar and one each for Baby Boy A, Baby Girl A, Baby Boy B, Baby C, Baby D, Baby E, Baby F and Baby G. He is also charged with multiple counts of infanticide, drug delivery resulting in death, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit murder, abuse of a corpse, racketeering, theft by deception, participating in corrupt organizations, Controlled Substances Act violations, obstruction, tampering with evidence, hindering prosecution, and abortion at 24 or more weeks.
Pro-abortion supporters claim that by forcing abortion providers to meet the basic safety building codes that other facilities must, it is somehow onerous to women wanting abortions.
That very argument is a claim that unsafe conditions, the same kind that could have stopped Gosnell had they been investigated appropriately which would have exposed the other violations clearly and shut him down, should be allowed to continue unchecked, simply because it is an abortion facility.
While arguing for abortion facilities "rights" to be below building code standards, they are actually arguing to endanger the lives of the women using those facilities.