According to the transcript of Grand Jury testimony taken on January 20, 2011, Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor on trial for the murder of seven babies and an adult patient, was not caught by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Health (DOH). The discovery of what has been described as a “horror show” was accidental, the result of a police raid to seize evidence of illegal prescription sales.
It was only after this raid and the resulting media publicity of what the police found at the clinic (“the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses”) that the DOH stepped in.
What the Grand Jury testimony makes clear, though, is that very little of what was ultimately discovered could have come as a surprise to the Pennsylvania Department of Health — the government agency that should have been “the first line of defense” against Gosnell. The DOH had not only received numerous complaints about deaths and underage abortions over the years, but DOH personnel had also visited Gosnell’s clinic on numerous occasions.
Despite these complaints and being an eye witness to heaven knows what, no action was ever taken.
The testimony claims that prior to Gosnell’s arrest in 2011, the only official DOH inspection of his clinic occurred in 1992 or 1993. At the time, numerous violations were noted, but “Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them.”
There was no official follow up to see if he had.
Then, in 1993, for political reasons, inspections of abortion clinics came to an end. “With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge,” the report says, it was concluded that inspections “would be putting up a barrier to women” seeking abortions.
The only exception to this ridiculous inspection guideline would occur when complaints were received. But although the DOH received numerous complaints — harrowing complaints — the DOH still chose to do nothing.
Ten years ago, one of Gosnell’s ex-employees exposed the grotesque unsanitary conditions of the clinic to the Board of Medicine. The complaint included unsupervised sedations, underage abortions, and unlicensed workers.
No action was taken.
Not long after that complaint came the report of the death of a 22 year-old woman named Karnamaya Mongar, who “died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus.”
The DOH “dismissed the complaint.”
According to the Grand Jury testimony, “the same thing happened at least twice more.”
But now comes the real shocker: For reasons not involving official inspections, “Philadelphia health department employees regularly visited [Gosnell’s clinic] to retrieve blood samples for testing purposes, but never noticed, or more likely, never bothered to report, that anything was amiss.”
A different DOH employee inspected the clinic after a complaint was made about the improper disposal of fetuses. The complaints were confirmed. No action or follow-up ever occurred.
A few weeks before Ms. Mongar entered Gosnell’s clinic, a health department representative inquiring about a citywide vaccination program discovered the horrors and reported them to the DOH in detail.
No action was taken.
The Grand Jury report goes on to report even more examples of a breathtaking dereliction of duty on the part of the Department of Health.
The header for this section of the testimony is “See No Evil.”
This is a story the national media doesn’t find worth reporting.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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