Vicki Saporta doing NAF damage control

UPDATE: The Ms. blog has an even more self-serving and deceitful quote from Vicki Saporta:

NAF rejected the application in January, 2010. “The clinic cleaned up for us, hired a nurse, and in spite of their effort to put on their best face, they fell very short of meeting our standards,” said Saporta. “No woman should have to get abortion care from substandard providers like Gosnell.

Then what about the women who were "provided" with his care at your Delaware facility, Ms. Saporta?

Back to my original post:

"Those are the kind of stories that break your heart," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, which rejected Gosnell from membership years ago because he did not meet its standards of care. The group's 400 members perform about half the abortions in North America, she said.

"Unfortunately, some women don't know where to turn. You sometimes have substandard providers preying on low-income women who don't know that they do have other (safe) options," she said.

(Vicki Saporta of the National Abortion Federation, quoted in this AP article)

At least SIX of those women went to one of your member clinics, Ms. Saporta. There, this guy that your inspector found to be beyond redemption was able to initiate illegal late-term abortions, which he then finished -- with your member's collusion -- in his filthy Philadelphia mill. At lease SIX WOMEN went to your member clinic and were handed over to Kermit Gosnell.

Evidently nobody at that facility bothered to visit Gosnell's mill before they allowed him to take their patients to it, Ms. Saporta. But even after one of your members -- an inspector -- visited the place and found it repellant, your member clinic maintained a cordial professional relationship with him.

How do you explain that, Ms. Saporta? And evidently it wasn't heartbreaking enough for your people to sever their partnership with him.

UPDATE: While everybody else is just cutting and pasting the AP story and/or Vicki's mealy-mouthed attempts at distancing, I found one reporter who's actually doing some reporting:

Sean O'Sullivan, in Grisly abortions linked to Del., isn't just taking the National Abortion Federation line at face value. Gosnell started at least one of his illegal late-term abortions at what is, for Mr. O'Sullivan, a local NAF member, and he wants answers:

Details about Gosnell's practice in Delaware are sketchy. An employee at Atlantic Women's Medical abruptly hung up the phone when Gosnell's name was mentioned on one call. Later, a different employee claimed a "manager" would call back. After no return call was made, employees referred questions to a spokesperson with the National Abortion Federation in Washington, D.C., who, in turn, referred calls to a Philadelphia attorney who did not return calls late Friday.

According to court papers, in July 2008, a 17-year-old girl turned up with her great aunt at Atlantic Women's Medical seeking an abortion. Gosnell told the girl she was further along in her pregnancy than she had told him, so the procedure would cost more, and it would have to be done at Gosnell's Philadelphia clinic.

Prosecutors said Delaware law prohibits abortions after 20 weeks, but Pennsylvania law allows them up to 24 weeks.

So he called Atlantic Women's Medical, and he called NAF, and he called the NAF attorney. He checked on his state's law. He's really doing his leg work.

There is no way for NAF to come out of this smelling like roses. Either one of their members hired Gosnell -- and allowed him to take their patients to his filthy mill -- without having properly vetted him, or the member was aware of how bad Gosnell was, and teamed up with him anyway.

And the partnership continued, according to the Grand Jury Report, even after the NAF inspector found Gosnell's clinic -- that one of their members was letting him take patients to -- was beyond redemption.

Ah, to be a fly on the wall at those damage control meetings! What should they do?S Should they throw the Delaware member to the wolves, or circle the wagons and defend it?

Members they've quietly ignored (and allowed their memberships to silently fade away) when the shit hit the fan include:

Hanan Rotem, who got caught letting an untrained receptionist administer general anesthesia in the wake of a patient death

Midtown Hospital, a filthy mill caught doing illegal third trimester abortions

Abu "The Butcher of Avenue A" Hayat, who killed a teenage abortion patient, molested others, and got even Phil Donohue's attention when he ripped the arm off a 32-week baby who was subsequently born alive.

On the other hand, they've remained steadfastly faithful to:

Robert Crist, who has killed three abortion patients, including a Texas teenager who bled to death while her frantic brother in law was calling 911

Eastern Women's Center, that killed three abortion patients (including a 13-year-old girl left unattended to lapse into a coma while still under anesthesia) and couldn't find their medical director for three days

Steve Lichtenberg, who remains a popular presenter at their "Risk Management Seminars" even after what Michael Burnhill scolded him as "playing Russian roulette with patients' lives" killed a 13-year-old girl.

Sadly, Mr. O'Sullivan seems to be the only reporter in the entire country who has any curiosity about how NAF is going to try to weasel out of this one. The rest are just parroting NAF talking points and, like Vicki Saporta no doubt is, hoping this all blows over, like the Abu Hayat thing did.

In the mean time, I imagne Mr. O'Sullivan is having the same kind of circular discussions I had with NAF when I called them out on Lichtenberg.