Kermit Gosnell's Last Abortion

Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer, by Ann McElhinney and Philem McAleer, is eye-opening even for folks like me who followed the Gosnell story closely and delved deeply. Nobody has delved more deeply than Ann and Philem. I'm grateful to them.

It's a best-seller on Amazon, and for good reason. There's so much meat here, it's hard to know where to start, so I'll just start with Kermit Gosnell's last hurrah.

Darlene Augustine.and Elinor Barsony, two Department of Health nurses, accompanied the initial raid on Women's Medical Society.

Darlene Augustine had worked at the Department of Health since 1989, supervising inspectors who responded to complaints about health care facilities. She had gotten a fax from Kermit Gosnell on November 24, 2009 notifying the Department of Health about the death of Karnamaya Mongar after her abortion at his Women's Medical Society.

According to the Grand Jury Report, Ms. Augustine had the authority to send someone out to investigate. She often sent someone out within an hour of receiving a report of a serious incident. But since this serious incident involved abortion, she decided that she should run it up the chain of command. She presented the fax to her boss, Cynthia Boyne, to get permission to launch an immediate investigation.

Ms. Boyne supervised the Division of Home Health.  (For some reason only bureaucrats can fathom, the Division of Home Health was in charge of overseeing abortion facilities.) Rather than give the go-ahead, Ms. Boyne discussed the matter with her boss, Janice Staloski, who oversaw the entire Bureau of Community Licensure and Certification.

Boyne and Staloski told Ms. Augustine no. She was not allowed to start an investigation into the death of Karnamaya Mongar.

According to the Grand Jury Report, Ms. Augustine got instructions by senior Department of Health Attorneys Kenneth Brody and James Steele that when she accompanied law enforcement on the raid, she was to to reveal anything about Karnamaya's death. If she were asked about it, she was to refer the questions to the Department's attorneys.

She decided to go even farther. She told the other Department of Health nurse in the group, Elinor Barsony, not to even admit that they knew about Karnamaya's death.

In they went. Ann and Philem note:

Everything was covered in cat hair -- the chairs, blankets, and all the surfaces. The clinic's two surgical procedure rooms were filthy and unsanitary. .... Instruments were not sterile. Equipment was outdated and rusty. Women recovering from their abortions sat on dirty recliners covered with bloodstained blankets that the employees said they 'tried' to clean weekly. Unlicensed employees had sedated all of the women, long before Gosnell arrived. Staff members couldn't say for certain which medications they had administered. Many of the medications that the agents and the detectives found in inventory were well past their expiration dates.

Detective James Wood expressed his shock and disgust to Ms. Augustine, who stunned him by replying, "Well, you're just saying that because you're a cop."

Blood-encrusted and torn procedure room table

As she later testified in Gosnell's trial, Ms. Barsony noticed that the women in recovery weren't hooked up to any of the standard post-surgery monitors for things like blood pressure, pulse, and oxygen saturation. There was only one blood-pressure monitoring cuff on the premises, and it was dusty and dirty and obviously disused. As for the procedure rooms, "They had the trays for the procedure already opened, so they were sitting there exposed ... and they're supposed to be covered." The fact that they were sitting out open, and not being kept sterile prior to starting the abortion, meant that they were unsafe for use. The suction machine was in disrepair and could not allow an accurate measure of how much suction was being applied.

Two of the patients were in such bad shape medically that they needed to be hospitalized. Because the emergency exit was still padlocked and blocked with junk furniture and equipment and the hallways were so narrow and crooked, the paramedics couldn't get stretchers to the patients and had to walk them to the waiting ambulances.

Even after witnessing all of the filth and chaos, nurse Barsony decided to pass one patient's request along to her supervisors. Barsony called Cythia Boyne, who called Janice Staloski, with a question: Should Gosnell be allowed to use his unsterile instruments, expired medications, and dysfunctional suction machine to do one last abortion in his feces-encrusted, urine-spattered, flea-infested clinic?

Boyne and Staloski, the two health officials who had refused to green-light an investigation into a death at Gosnell's filthy facility, were willing to green-light an abortion there.

Who Benefits from Abortion-Rights Efforts?

Abortion rights activists are fighting tooth and nail against laws and regulations that hold abortion clinics to the same standards as other outpatient surgical facilities. They assert that it is for women's benefit that they fight to keep the state from tightening standards for abortion clinics. But who is it that really benefits?

Let's look at some of the clinics that closed down in the wake of the Texas law that Wendy "Abortion Barbie" Davis fought so hard against and ask, "Cui bono?"

Let's look at some of the facilities Davis and her friends were fighting so hard to keep open.

Abortion Advantage (operating under several different names) was fined for repeated health violations: in March 2003 for $11,400 and in September 2007 for $1,950. Violations included:

• failure to maintain a safe and sanitary environment
• failure to maintain appropriate infection control
• failure to maintain complete and accurate medical records including documentation of medications administered
• failure to ensure that staff who provided patient care were certified in basic life support
• failure to meet minimum standards for administering sedation

A doctor at this clinic, Dr. Robert Prince, was no prince. He was sued by the family of Dorothy Brant for failing to perform a proper pre-operative evaluation before performing an abortion on 22-year-old Dorothy at Dallas Medical Ladies Clinic on May 27, 1986. Dorothy hemorrhaged during the procedure. Prince, they added was negligent in his administration of drugs, anesthesia, and a blood transfusion. Dorothy was transferred to a hospital, where she died four days later.
One of Routh Street Clinic's doctors, Jasbir Ahluwalia had lost hospital privileges in 1996 due to improper handling of high-risk pregnancies. He had already been sued in 1991 and 1995 by three women whose abortions he botched, one of whom wound up needing a hysterectomy, and sued in 1995 by a woman who ended up losing a kidney because he stitched one of her ureters shut during a hysterectomy. In 2002, the Dallas Morning News noted that Ahluwalia had been sued after causing severe brain damage to their child during delivery.

Hilltop Women's Reproductive Health Services threw fetal remains in the trash, where a neighborhood dog found them. The dog's whose owners gave the remains to prolifers who then notified the authorities -- who chose to do nothing. If the state is turning a blind eye to a clinic dumping fetal remains outside the clinic, what are they turning a blind eye to behind the clinic's doors?

Women's Center of Houston's doctor Richard Cunningham was sued for his involvement in an ordeal suffered by a teenage abortion patient and her baby. After the insertion of laminaria (sterile seaweed sticks) to dilate her cervix for a late abortion, the teen changed her mind. Another doctor working with Cunningham lied to the girl, telling her that it would very much endanger her to remove the laminaria and stop the procedure, and put in more laminaria to further dilate her cervix. After leaving the clinic, the teen, increasingly upset, returned and spoke first to the other doctor then to Cunningham, who again lied, telling her that she could bleed to death if they removed the laminaria. After half an hour of badgering the girl to continue the abortion, Cunningham told her to look in the yellow pages for an anti-abortion group and dismissed her from the clinic. The girl and her mother immediately went to a hospital, but by then the teen's cervix had been too far dilated to keep her from going into labor. She gave birth to a 1 lb. 13 oz. baby girl who struggled for life in the NICU for six months before dying in February of 1992. Cunningham had also performed a fatal abortion on Sheila Watley in 1987.

In 2010 their other doctor, Shah Siddiqi, was disciplined for malpractice involving two non-abortion patients. One suffered permanent damage after he botched back surgery and failed to diagnose what he'd done wrong. Another patient lost function in her left hand due to an infection caused by a spinal procedure and Siddiqi failed to quickly diagnose and treat the infection.

Whole Women's Health of McAllen: disposed of fetal remains and other biohazardous waste in a dumpster.

Douglas Karpen closed his clinic soon after the law was passed, without waiting for the injunction to be sorted out.

He was the  main doctor involved in the refusal to stop an abortion after the teenage patient changed her mind. (See Richard Cunningham, above.)

He let a teenage abortion patient bleed to death, after having lied to her parents about the risks to their daughter.

Glenda Davis bled to death after an abortion at Karpen's Aaron Family Planning. Rather than call an ambulance when Glenda started to hemorrhage, employees just pushed her out in a wheelchair and loaded her into an employee's car.

Three former employees provided photographic evidence that Karpen was killing live-born infants.

On two occasions, the owner of a car dealership next door to Karpen's clinic had to call authorities to report that the clinic sewer had backed up, spilling recognizable fetal parts onto his lot.

The mainstream media, who evidently consider "journalism" to consist of getting a talking points sheet from abortion-rights groups, have failed to report on the conditions at any of the closed clinics, but have instead just uncritically and unquestioningly parroting the words of those organizations.

Who would benefit if abortion-rights advocates successfully block state crackdowns on abortion clinics? Who would benefit if abortion clinics aren't held to the same standards as other outpatient surgical facilities? Who would benefit if Wendy Davis had her way?

It wouldn't be the women walking into those abortion clinics.