Heading off NAF damage control

I've blogged already about the damage control NAF is doing in the mainstream media. Their strategy has been:

Point out that Gosnell was rejected for membership.

Reiterate their worn-out talking points about how women are entitled to "safe" abortions, like the ones NAF provides.

These talking points already have a glaring hole in them: At least six of Kermit Gosnell's patients, including the mother of Baby Boy A were trussed up and handed over to him by a NAF member facility.

If anybody holds their feet to the fire about this, their talking point is bound to be:

Okay, so ONE of our members made a bad judment call! We're revamping our Clinical Guidelines to include how to vet contracted physicians.

Let's not let them get away with it.

This is not an isolated incident. It's not even the worst thing a NAF member has been caught doing. Lots of their members have been caught doing some of the same things Kermit Gosnell has been caught doing:

Allowing untrained and unlicensed staff to administer anesthesia

Killing live-born babies

Allowing unlicensed staff to care for patients in the absence of a physician

Operating filthy facilities

But it's best to just choose the worst and hold their feet to the fire about that fine and upright provider of vital reproductive health care services.

For that dubious honor, I submit Abu Hayat, "The Butcher of Avenue A."

Hayat caught the public eye at the same time a reporter for Life Advocate was tapping into the NAF network. The reporter, Jenny Westberg, got hold of Martin Haskell's presentation paper. Jenny, who was also a cartoonist, produced what may be the most politically powerful line drawings in history. The D&X cat was out of the bag.

The timing couldn't be worse for abortion proponents. Abu Hayat was in a peck of trouble in New York. He'd been performing one of the old-style kill-and-rot D&E abortions when he discovered that the fetus wasn't dead yet. He sent the mother home with instructions to return the next day, and to call only his clinic if she experienced trouble. Evidently there was a communications breakdown, because when the mother called Hayat's clinic, she was unable to get help. She ended up going to the hospital where she delivered a live baby -- minus a traumatically amputated right arm.

The mother sued. The New York Post had a field day. The baby, Ana Rosa, (pictured) ended up appearing on Donohue. Women came forward reporting sexual abuse, malpractice, and seedy business practices. Reporters learned that Hayat had sent an 18-year-old abortion patient, Sophie McCoy, home to die of complications. National Right to Life moved into the fray, selecting little Ana Rosa, adorable in her frilly dresses, as the representative of the children targeted for abortion, and Hayat, scowling and unsavory, as the representative of those who wanted to abort them.

And that seedy abortionist was a member of the National Abortion Federation -- a fact I discovered entirely by accident, when I asked NAF for a copy of their Annual Report, which listed Hayat as a member.

Those of you who were in the pro-life movement back then might remember the Hayat scandal. When we were researching Lime 5 we sent out a call to our mailing list asking for clippings about bad abortionists. We were so inundated with clippings about Hayat -- from all over the country -- that I quipped that even the hate mail was including them.

SO! Remember these main points:

A NAF member was providing patients to Kermit Gosnell.

That member's "bad judgment" pales compared to the "bad judgment" of Abu Hayat.

And most importantly, when they try to weasel:

Hayat was just the worst. There are an abundance of other quacks that NAF has harbored. And this overarching "bad judgment" among their practitioners has cost women their lives