Never Again Can We Allow Another Gosnell Scandal to Take Place
(Harrisburg,PA) This week, a long-overdue law, Act 122, takes effect to more properly and effectively regulate surgical abortion facilities. The act is aimed at ensuring that Pennsylvania never again goes through the horrors of what happens when abortion facilities are given special political and bureaucratic cover. We commend Rep. Matt Baker (R-Tioga) and Sen. Bob Mensch (R-Montgomery), for their leadership in passing the law, and we thank Gov. Tom Corbett and the Department of Health for this week’s implementation of it.
That law, passed in December, requires that surgical abortion facilities finally must meet guidelines and regulations under Pennsylvania’s Health Care Facilities Act; regulations that all other outpatient surgical facilities have been required to follow for many years. Additionally, the abortion centers face inspections – something that did not happen for more than 15 years — since the earliest days of the Ridge administration.
This lack of oversight led to the decades of horrific practices at the Women’s Medical Society abortion center in West Philadelphia; where under gruesome conditions late-term abortions were performed by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, teenagers administered anesthesia, and many women suffered bodily harm, disease and even death as a at the hands of Dr. Gosnell and his staff. Murder charges against the abortionist and other staffers ensued following a grand jury investigation. We don’t know what similar horrors may have happened at other abortion centers during this time, since none were inspected.
“Now, at least the women that enter abortion clinics in Pennsylvania will have a greater degree of health and safety protections, even if the baby they’re carrying does not,” said Michael Geer of the Pennsylvania Family Institute.
“The political cover provided to the abortion industry from the highest levels of government had a high cost in human life, and in diminished respect for governmental officials whose first charge is to protect the safety of its citizens,” added Geer.
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