Last month, Gloria Steinem gave a speech at Planned Parenthood’s Southeastern Pennsylvania annual Spring Gathering. The event was held during the Kermit Gosnell trial. It’s ironic since there’s been inquiries about whether Planned Parenthood knew about the Philly abortionist’s house of horrors. Well, it’s been confirmed that they knew in Pennsylvania, and they did nothing.
The Gosnell trial has shifted the focus off the high-quality services we provide,” said Dayle Steinberg, the organization’s president and chief executive. “These are criminal, horrendous . . . acts and should be appropriately punished.”
Steinberg said that when Gosnell was in practice, women would sometimes come to Planned Parenthood for services after first visiting Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, and would complain to staff about the conditions there.
“We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health,” Steinberg said
What about PP staff? Aren’t they required to report egregious health violations? According to Mary Chastain at Breitbart, under PA’s “Abortion Control Act, [it] requires any doctor who treats a woman because of a complication arising from an abortion to make a report to DOH. Willful failure to do so constitutes ‘unprofessional conduct’ and subjects the treating doctor to sanctions by the Board of Medicine.”
As details of the macabre grand jury report were made public, Chastain noted that:
the conditions of the clinic alone should have prompted Planned Parenthood to do something, especially since they ostensibly are focused on women’s health. The facility was filthy: countless witnesses told the grand jury about blood soaked recliners and medical tables, cats wondering about the place and relieving themselves in plants, baby feet in jars, and equipment that did not work. It was normal to see patients lying around, drugged up and waiting for their baby to be born.
What’s really mind-numbingly inane about this whole episode is that Planned Parenthood’s Steinberg said, “these are criminal, horrendous . . . acts and should be appropriately punished.” Why? Why is Planned Parenthood in favor of prosecuting a person who does what they do, albeit in a more sterile environment? Does PP consider a baby a living thing at 24 weeks? If so, why not at 24 days? It’s intellectually dishonest. It’s either a person or it isn’t. Then again, Steinberg seems to have trouble keeping her facts straight as this admission about Gosnell’s clinic contradicts what she said in 2010 when the abortion center was shut down.
Local media outlet WHYY reported at that time that planned Parenthood had no foreknowledge: “Steinberg says she knows that Gosnell has provided abortions in Philadelphia for many years, but says she hadn’t heard of any problems at clinic until the allegations surfaced in recent days.”
Concerning the political impact, it could all fall upon Democratic Congresswoman and 2014 gubernatorial candidate Allyson Schwartz, who helped launch – and operated – a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philly. The clinic was performing abortions at the timeKermit Gosnell was engaging in infanticide. The clinic has stopped performing abortions since the late 1980s, but why is Rep. Schwartz silent on this issue? Did she refer people to Gosnell? Michael Warren at the Weekly Standard wrote on May 3 that:
A Planned Parenthood official denies that [Elizabeth] Blackwell [Heath Center, Schwartz’s abortion clinic] ever referred mothers seeking abortions to take the 10-minute drive across town to Gosnell’s clinic, though she did not explain how she knew this.
“We have never referred to Gosnell,” said the official in an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Could she confirm that going all the way back to 1972, the year Gosnell first opened his clinic? The official did not immediately respond.
There have been rumblings amongst PA Democrats that Schwartz is just too liberal, and won’t perform well outside of the Philly area. But that’s irrelevant if she did refer people to the clinic in 1972, it’s the makings of a political disaster.
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