Kermit Gosnell's supposedly safe and legal abortion clinic was filthy almost beyond belief, and his practices were callous and ghoulish. He delivered babies near or even past viability alive then killed them by "snipping" their spinal cords with surgical scissors. He stockpiled their corpses in makeshift containers and hoarded their severed feet in specimen jars. He let untrained staff dope women within inches of their lives -- and in at least one case past that point -- amid fleas and cat feces. But when the story broke, a narrative to protect the reputation of American abortion practice was rapidly put into place: dismiss him as an "outlier."
This distancing displays ignorance at best, and willful lying at worst.
A look at Kermit Gosnell's timeline reveals that he was far from being an outlier. He was a respected part of the community of abortion providers even after it had become impossible to ignore how appalling his practice was.
September 13-14, 1992 and Continuing: Inspiration
The earliest known link between Gosnell and the most reputable abortion providers -- the National Abortion Federation or NAF -- goes back to September 13 - 14, 1992. That was when, according to Gosnell, he attended a National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar in Dallas. At that meeting, Martin Haskell shared his "Dilation and Extraction" or "D&X" procedure. It was later dubbed "partial birth abortion" because it is performed by delivering the living baby feet first, stopping the delivery while the baby's head is still in the uterus, using scissors to poke a hole in the base of the baby's skull, then suctioning the baby's brains out through the hole.
Gosnell must have at least tried to use Haskell's technique between 1992 and when the federal "Partial Birth Abortion Ban" went into effect in 2007, because at some point he told his staff that he was no longer allowed to just use the scissors; he had to inject the baby with digoxin first. (Digoxin stops the baby's heart and was used as a workaround so that the baby could still be delivered in one piece except for having a collapsed head.) According to Gosnell's employees, he lacked the skill to get the digoxin injection into the fetal heart so he eventually gave up and just delivered the babies alive, then used scissors at the base of the skull.
So Gosnell's most infamous practice, "snipping," was inspired by the cream of the crop at the National Abortion Federation.
Starting during or before 2004: Gosnell's Prestigious Employment
Some time around or before 2004, Kermit Gosnell began working one day a week at a National Abortion Federation member, Atlantic Women's Medical Services. Atlantic had facilities in both Wilmington and Dover, Delaware, and it seems that Gosnell worked at both locations.
A woman who believed NAF's promises of safety would make an appointment at this reputable clinic, which would collect her fee and then turn her over to Gosnell's care. Her abortion would be started at the NAF clinic, after which the woman would be given an appointment to have her abortion completed at Gosnell's own facility, where she would be drugged within inches of her life by people who didn't even finish high school, then left to moan and writhe on a blood-stained recliner amid the cat feces.
This relationship can't be described as "outlier." It was "employee."
One of the patients handed off to Gosnell was "Sue." This 17-year-old girl was taken by her aunt to Atlantic in July of 2008, where Gosnell estimated her baby as 30 weeks by ultrasound. He inserted laminaria to dilate Sue's cervix and instructed her to report to Women's Medical Society to have the abortion completed.
When her baby was born alive, Gosnell joked that he was big enough to walk him to the bus stop as he was severing the child's spinal cord with surgical scissors. A neonatologist who examined a photo one of Gosnell's employees had taken of the infant, dubbed "Baby Boy A" in the Grand Jury Report, estimated the gestational age to be 32 weeks. Gosnell was
convicted of first-degree murder in the child's death.
Witnesses interviewed by investigators reported seeing Gosnell "snip" babies at the Delaware facilities as well, but police had no physical evidence, since Atlantic evidently paid their medical disposal bills rather than stockpile aborted babies in the freezer like Gosnell did in Philadelphia.
Ongoing - Example from December, 2009: Referrals From the Cream of the Crop
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| Desiree Hawkins |
Gosnell didn't just work at a NAF clinic. He got referrals from NAF clinics that didn't do abortions as late into the pregnancy as he did. One such patient was
Desiree Hawkins. Then only 16 years old, she was taken by her mother to NAF member Hagerstown Reproductive Services, which only did abortions up to 12 weeks. They told her that she was 19 weeks pregnant and referred her to Gosnell.
Desiree was provided with appalling care but tried to put the ordeal behind her until she got a shocking call: Police had found one of her unborn baby's feet in a specimen jar in Gosnell's facility. It was among other jars of feet that Gosnell seemed to keep as some sort of ghoulish trophies.
Desiree only learned from the investigators that her baby had been 23 weeks at the time of the abortion. She said that she never would have consented to an abortion if she had known how far along she was.
December 14 - 15, 2009: What the NAF Inspector Reported
Though patient Karnamaya Mongar had died of a massive anesthesia overdose administered by his untrained staff just the previous day, Gosnell decided on November 21, 2009 that it was a good time to finally join the National Abortion Federation. He sent in his application. A NAF inspector came to spend two days at the facility December 14 - 15. The Grand Jury had the following to say about what this uniquely unnamed inspector found:
She found the facility’s layout confusing, and was concerned that patients could not find their way around it or out of it. She was also concerned that there were plants everywhere, including in the procedure room and rooms designated as “labs.” Most alarming was the bed where Gosnell told her out-of-state patients were allowed to spend the night. These patients were unattended and it was difficult to locate the bathroom facilities and the exits. Such a practice does not meet NAF protocols. The NAF evaluator watched a few first-trimester procedures. She noticed that no one was monitoring or taking vital signs of patients who were sedated during procedures. She asked Gosnell about the pulse oximeter that should have been used for monitoring, but he told her it was broken. ....
The evaluator did note, however, that while she was talking to Gosnell in his office, a patient appeared to have been sedated by one of the staff. ....
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| Anesthesia chart for the clinic |
The level of medication administered was also troubling to the evaluator. She testified that Gosnell’s own description of the effects of his routine second-trimester dose – that the patient would feel no pain at all – was a description of deep sedation. She added: “that … would really not be a safe situation … for him to be handling himself.” She explained that when deep sedation or general anesthesia is administered, NAF standards not only require that the doctor performing the procedure be present when the anesthesia is administered, they also require that another doctor or an anesthesiologist administer the sedation and monitor the patient. Instead, Gosnell had Lynda Williams, Sherry West, and his other unlicensed workers routinely administer anesthesia without proper supervision or appropriate monitoring of patients. ....
The evaluator noted that Pennsylvania requires that anesthesia be administered only by licensed personnel, a regulation that Gosnell failed to follow even during the NAF review. Aside from these life-threatening practices, the evaluator noted numerous deficiencies in the clinic’s recordkeeping, including no notation of RH blood-typing and no record of sedation medications administered or the level of sedation. .... Even with the evaluator watching, patients were not being informed of the risks of the medications, the sedation, or the procedure itself. ....
"Throughout the office, there were patient charts everywhere. On desks, on this – the area in that upstairs sleeping area by the sleeping room. There were piles and piles and piles of medical records. That was – if that were in an area that was closed off and nobody had access to it, charts being stored there weren’t a big deal, but if there were patients in the sleeping room, who had to leave there to go to the restroom, they had full access to all of these people’s medical information if they wanted to look through it, it was very, very concerning to me."
On the final day of the visit, Gosnell disclosed to the inspector that a patient had died the previous month, so NAF knew that these sloppy practices had resulted in at least one patient's death.
She did not report any of these appalling conditions to the authorities. Gosnell continued to work every Wednesday at Atlantic Women's Medical Services, indicating that member clinics were not warned to stop working with or referring to him.
January 4, 2010: Formally Rejected
In spite of what the inspector saw, it wasn't until January 4 -- nearly three weeks later -- that the National Abortion Federation decided that Gosnell and his facility were beyond redemption and formally deny him membership. This leads one to ponder what conditions would have been considered redeemable.
Gosnell continued to work at Atlantic Women's Medical Services. Again, there is no sign that NAF warned their members not to refer to or work with Gosnell.
February 18, 2010: The Raid
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| Procedure room table in Gosnell's clinic |
This is the date of the infamous DEA/FBI raid on Kermit Gosnell's "Women's Medical Society. It took place only 65 days after the National Abortion Federation inspection.
When considering what the investigators found that February day, it's not hard to imagine what the NAF inspector saw -- and smelled -- in spite of the frantic pre-inspection clean-up.
The basement and freezers had been full of fetal remains during the NAF visit. The jars of baby feet had been in the cabinet during the NAF visit. The wear and tear of the exam tables and other equipment can't have been only the result of 65 days of neglect.
The "anesthesia cheat sheet" created by teenage employee Ashley Baldwin had been in the clinic since around 2006. Had it been posted someplace where the NAF inspector could have seen it -- or should have seen it had the two-day inspection been thorough?
Flea-infested cats had been roaming the clinic for years, urinating and defecating on the floors. This is not a stench that is easily cleaned up or masked, nor is the stench of the decomposing fetal remains that Gosnell allowed to pile up.
But this had not been enough for NAF to ensure that its members cut off all professional relationships with Kermit Gosnell.
February 22, 2010: The Clinic Officially Shut Down
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| Atlantic Women's Medical Services |
Under pressure from the DEA, FBI, and local law enforcement who had participate in the raid, Pennsylvania officials temporarily (eventually permanently) closed Women's Medical Society. Presumably Gosnell would have had to tell his employers at Atlantic Women's Medical Services that he would no longer be able to complete abortions in his own facility. This was a Monday, after all, and Gosnell would have been scheduled to start abortions at the NAF clinic on Wednesday and finish them in Philly.
Though outsiders have no way of knowing exactly what was said, this should have been a red flag that things were very wrong with Women's Medical Society, even without word from the NAF leadership about the failed inspection.
March 3, 2010: What Finally Ended the Relationship
On March 3, 2010, the state of Delaware suspended Gosnell's license. It was at this belated point -- two and a half months after the inspector saw Gosnell's unredeemable clinic -- that the National Abortion Federation finally stopped handing patients off to Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his House of Horrors.
But the story wasn't over yet.
January 18, 2011: The News Breaks
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office released the
Grand Jury report and announced Gosnell's indictments. The Report made this rather tepid recommendation:
We recommend that NAF reassess the membership of Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, the Delaware abortion clinic where Gosnell worked part-time before losing his license in that state. We learned that at least six patients were referred from Atlantic to Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia for illegal late-term abortions. These patients paid Atlantic for late-term procedures performed by Gosnell in his Lancaster Avenue clinic. We heard evidence that Gosnell would insert laminaria in patients in Delaware and then have them come to his Philadelphia office for the abortion procedure itself. The director of Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, Leroy Brinkley, was unconcerned. He did not properly supervise the doctors he hired as “independent contractors” to assure that they were complying with the law. Remarkably, despite Gosnell’s long time association with Atlantic, Brinkley only produced three files for patients seen by Gosnell at Brinkley’s clinic.
There is no way that Gosnell travelled to Atlantic Women's Medical Services nearly every Wednesday for at least seven years and only saw three or six patients. Even if we assume that he took off on holidays, Gosnell would have worked around 300 shifts at the Delaware NAF member. He rarely arrived at his own facility before 8 pm. It would have taken about 35 minutes to drive from his home to the Delaware clinic, and about the same amount of time to drive to his own clinic from the NAF member facility. He would not have made that trip to spend just 20 minutes treating a single patient, and treating one patient would not have kept him in Delaware until 7:30 pm. Based on overall Delaware abortion numbers, Gosnell would have likely been treating between 2 and 6 patients on any given Wednesday. It's likely that at least 600 women, and as many as 1,800 women, went to that National Abortion Federation member clinic expecting the kind of care NAF advertises, only to be handed over to Kermit Gosnell.
The NAF inspector had also been hauled before the Grand Jury to give testimony. She had told NAF leadership how bad Women's Medical Society was. But this still wasn't enough to end Atlantic's membership in the National Abortion Federation even though they had betrayed so many women's trust.
January 28, 2011: NAF Finally Takes Action
It was on this date, January 28, 2011, that NAF finally revoked the membership of Atlantic Women's Medical Services. This date was:
- 1 year, 1 month, and 14 days after the NAF inspector saw how bad Gosnell and his facility were; yet Atlantic continued to send patients there
- 1 year and 24 days after NAF rejected Gosnell's request for membership; yet Atlantic continued to hand patients off to Gosnell
- 11 months and 10 days after the raid on Gosnell's facility, yet he was still able to work at Atlantic
- 10 months and 25 days after Delaware suspended Gosnell's license, Atlantic stopped handing off patients to him, and it became unavoidably clear how poor Atlantic's vetting of their doctors was
- 9 days after the news hit the public about how bad Gosnell's clinic was -- the point at which it became clear that the "outlier" excuse was the only way to escape bad publicity
To Infinity and Beyond
In spite of all these links between Gosnell and the National Abortion Federation, they came out of the debacle totally unscathed. "We didn't let him join" was considered enough of an excuse to give them a pass on all the patients -- again, estimated as high as 1,800 -- who trusted them and were handed off to the most appalling abortion practitioner known, before or after legalization.
More to the point, how many other Gosnells is the National Abortion Federation covering up for? Let's look at other members besides just Atlantic Women's Medical Services:
Hanan Rotem was investigated after the April 29, 1986 death of
Gloria Aponte. It was discovered that he let his receptionist administer general anesthesia.
Abu "The Butcher of Avenue A" Hayat was accused of sexual abuse by several patients, was responsible for the malpractice death of 17-year-old
Sophie McCoy in 1990, and became infamous when he tore the arm off
Ana Rosa Rodriguez during a third-trimester abortion attempt in 1991.
Robert Crist has three known dead patients to his discredit:
Diane Boyd, an intellectually-disabled rape victim who died after a drug error in 1981;
Latachie Veal, age 17, who bled to death in 1991; and
Nichole Williams, who bled to death in 1997.
Family Planning Associates Medical Group has the following dead patients that I, personally, have learned about:
Patricia Chacon, age 16, bled to death March 3, 1984;
Mary Pena, age 43, bled to death December 16, 1984;
Josefina Garcia, age 37, bled to death May 23, 1985 after FPA failed to notice that she actually had an ectopic pregnancy;
Laniece Dorsey, age 17, died of anesthesia complications February 6, 1986;
Joyce Ortenzio, age 32, died of septic shock June 8, 1988;
Tami Suematsu, age 19, August 19, 1988;
Susan Levy, age 30, died of sepsis from an incomplete abortion April 9, 1992;
Deanna Bell, age 13, died of a massive overdose of anesthesia September 5, 1992;
Christine Mora, age 18, died of sepsis November 8, 1994;
Ta Tanisha Wesson, age 24, died of anesthesia complications January 24, 1995;
Nakia Jorden, age 16, was not properly monitored while under anesthesia and died December 10, 1998;
Maria Leho, age 26, died of anesthesia complications June 11, 1999;
Maria Rodriguez, age 22, bled to death from a ruptured uterus March 25, 2000;
Kimberly Neil, age 38, died after being improperly monitored under anesthesia May 22, 2000;
Chanelle Bryant, age 22, died of sepsis from abortion pills January 14, 2004; "
Kyla Ellis," age 23, bled to death May 16, 2014.
Still, whenever there's an appalling abortion story in the news, press coverage always seems to include a puff piece -- or at least a couple of sentences -- assuring the public that women are perfectly safe at a NAF clinic. After all, they rejected Kermit Gosnell's membership request. How bad could they be?
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For more about what appalling behavior this ghoul committed, read:
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Veteran pro-life investigator Kevin Sherlock asks people of good will to help him have Planned Parenthood prosecuted for profiteering from the rapes and incests of underage girls many thousands of times each year.
Sherlock has pulled the police records of hundreds of cities and has pulled the child protective services records of multiple states to prove Planned Parenthood staffers are violating mandated reporting laws designed to protect girl victims. But there is more to be done. Sherlock will make sure more and more evidence gets to federal and state prosecutors who care about protecting girls from abusers and profiteers.
If you would like to help, please click the following link:
Sherlock has talked to many girls and young women who trust him. Their stories and the forensic evidence shows most of them undergo pill abortions or humiliating invasive surgical abortions due to fear or ignorance or pressure or coercion. He treats the girls or women carrying children or devastated from their abortions as friends and neighbors in his home town, not afterthoughts.Thank you for doing what you can to help girls and fight sexual predators and rape profiteers.
He was arrested and charged with murder by abortion in Nathelyn's death.
