Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Kermit Gosnell: Where Prolifers Dropped the Ball

There's a lot of finger-pointing regarding Kermit Gosnell and his house of horrors.

The Grand Jury pointed the finger at:

  • The Pennsylvania Department of Health, for making the political decision to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing by abortionists
  • The Pennsylvania Medical Board, for repeatedly blowing off complaints about Gosnell
  • The Philadelphia Health Department for not following through when one of their employees uncovered what a sordid dump Gosnell's clinic was
  • Doctors and hospitals that failed to report Gosnell's victims to the appropriate authorities

    Among the more knowledgeable, there's also finger-pointing at the National Abortion Federation for not only failing to report this guy after an inspector saw his hell house firsthand, but also for working in a partnership to provide him with at lesast six illegal third-trimester abortion patients, including the mother of Baby Boy A.

    Abortion advocates, of course, have been pointing fingers at prolifers. If only we had given abortionists (who would, after all, have included Kermit Gosnell) tax money, and held them less accountable, somehow the nice, clean guys would have totally crowded Gosnell out.

    Well, we do deserve some blame. Just not the blame abortion advocates are trying to lay at our feet.

    Where we dropped the ball is that we weren't watching this guy.

    As both Abby Johnson and Lila Rose said at ProLifeCon, we need to be doing research. And part of that research is knowing who the local abortionists are and watching them like a hawk.

    Kermit Gosnell's House of Horrors would not have flourished had prolifers been on top of him.

  • Digging for dirt on him would have revealed the malpractice suits against him.
  • Copies of those malpractice suits could have been made available outside the facility (the "Chicago Method"), warning vulnerable women
  • Copies of those lawsuits could have been provided to prochoice organizations that refer women for abortions
  • We could have been pestering the media about the fact that despite all of these malpractice suits, the Medical Board wasn't investigating him.
  • The connection between Kermit Gosnell and the National Abortion Federation could have been exposed, and that Delaware mill held accountable for sending patients to his mill in Philadelphia
  • Prolife spies could have posed as prospective patients and photographed / videotaped his disgusting facility, a la Lila Rose, and posted these materials on internet sites such as YouTube

    We've known since Lime 5 came out in 1996 that public officials and prochoice groups were willing to look the other way when abortionists were endangering women. We knew that this was a case of the fox guarding the henhouse.

    Prochoicers can be excused for this. They really believe that the government and prochoice groups can be trusted. But we know better.

    We need to stop being just an echo chamber. We need to be listening to Lila and Abby. We need to make sure every abortionist in America has somebody who's watching him, doing docket searches, checking medical board and health department records, visiting his facility, and just making it plain that even though prochoice leaders are willing to let the Kermit Gosnells of the world thrive at the expense of women and children, we're not.
  • 6 comments:

    Christina Dunigan said...

    We don't have a local abortionist here in Johnstown, but we do have a Planned Parenthood that of course refers for abortions. But when I called them, explaining that people on both sides dropped the ball and we need to be looking into where local women are being referred.

    I asked who they referred women to. They directed my question to their Pittsburgh office. When I asked how they vet the places they refer women to, especially in the wake of the Gosnell story, again, I was referred to the Pittsburgh office.

    If they were doing right by women, wouldn't they come right out and say, "We thoroughly vet them. We check with the medical board, and do a docket search. We check health department records. And we ask local women's groups if they've gotten any feedback."

    The secretiveness seems fishy to me.

    Jessica said...

    How do you find out who the abortionist is at the local Planned Parenthood? How do you find out local doctors that do abortions that are not at the Planned Parenthood (private doctors and such)?

    Christina Dunigan said...

    One way is to contact the Health Department for public records about facilities.

    To find out who does abortions, just pose as a prospective patient and start making phone calls. When you get somebody who makes an appointment to do an abortion on you, you've identified an abortionist!

    Headmistress, zookeeper said...

    This is something that has been bothering me as well. Where were the pro-life groups?

    Is it because the clinic was in a rough neighborhood?

    Kathy said...

    I echo Headmistress, and was on my way to post the same question. In reading the GJ report, I wondered what if anything pro-life groups/people had on this guy, and why, if he was so obvious about his filthy office and shameful practices, they hadn't raised a stink before. Then when watching that interview you posted a few days ago, which included a woman who went to Gosnell's facility after being "scared off" from another abortion mill because of pro-life people outside, I wondered how she could be referred to Gosnell's place as somewhere "where the pro-life people wouldn't be."

    Perhaps Headmistress nailed it, that it was in a bad neighborhood, so didn't attract as much attention -- people may have even been downright scared to be on the streets there, if that area is bad enough. It's perhaps also possible that much of Gosnell's business was word-of-mouth, and he was not as public with his abortion business (like, having a website, or advertising in the Yellow Pages) as other places.

    Still, since abortionists and abortion mills had to register with the state, they could have known about Gosnell and his clinic.

    Lauren said...

    Christina, call back and say that you want to have an abortion and see where they send you.