Videos show Gosnell practices in other abortion clinics

Washington D.C., Apr 30, 2013 / 01:06 am

Newly released videos from Live Action, a pro-life advocacy group, show that doctor Kermit Gosnell's practice of murdering infants who survive abortions is not isolated to his facility.

"It is clear from our investigation that the horrors revealed during the Kermit Gosnell trial are not exclusive to that clinic," Lila Rose, president of Live Action, stated April 29.

"Our videos expose the truly gruesome, illegal, and inhuman practices going on inside many of America's abortion clinics...these inhuman practices are just another day at the office for abortionists and their staff."

Closing arguments were made in Gosnell's trial on April 29 as the Pennsylvania abortionist is charged with the murder of one mother and four infants. The babies were allegedly killed in his Philadelphia clinic, the Women's Medial Society, after being born alive following botched procedures.

Charges involving three other infants were thrown out, after the trial judge decided the prosecution had not presented enough evidence that they had been born alive.

Nine of Gosnell's employees have faced state and federal charges for their actions at the clinic. Eight have plead guilty to various charges in the case – three of them to third-degree murder.

Former employee Stephen Massof in courtroom testimony in early April said that he saw about 100 babies born alive. He said clinic workers then "snipped" the back of their necks to ensure their "demise."

Massof is in prison after having plead guilty to third-degree murder in the deaths of two newborns.

In a January 2011 Grand Jury report, District Attorney R. Seth Williams found that the Pennsylvania Department of Health had contact with Gosnell's clinic in 1979, when it first approved it. The department did not conduct another site review until 1989, finding "numerous violations." Two site reviews found more violations in 1992 and 1993, but failed to make corrections.

"With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge," the report said, "officials concluded that inspections would be 'putting a barrier up to women' seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay."

Bob Casey was a pro-life Democrat who was replaced as Pennsylvania governor by abortion-supporting Republican Tom Ridge in 1995.

An undercover video released by Live Action on April 28 of this year showed a counselor at The Bronx's Dr. Emily Woman's Health Center saying the clinic would put a born-alive infant in a jar filled with solution that would ensure its death, should the abortion procedure be unsuccessful.

Dr. Emily's boasts on its website that it offers "gentle abortion" which is "streamlined for your convenience, and that for abortions performed between 20 and 24 weeks, "anesthesia guarantees that patients have no pain and no recollection of the procedure."

The undercover investigator, who was at least 23 weeks pregnant, asked what would be done with the child after the abortion. The counselor responded that they would put the corpse "in like a jar, a container, with solution, and send it to the lab."

And if the child twitches, perhaps showing signs of life, "the solution will make it stop. That's the whole purpose of the solution," the counselor said. "It will automatically stop. It won't be able to breathe anymore."

Another Live Action video shows Dr. Cesare Santangelo, an abortionist in the District of Columbia, saying that when a child survives abortion, "legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive. But...it's all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point. Let's say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know? Then we would do things – we would – we would not help it."

Santangelo compared the decision to a terminal cancer patient with 'do not resuscitate' orders. "We could do the same things here," he concluded.

Rose told CNA April 29 that Live Action conducted its investigations into late-term abortions knowing that a 2007 study in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that 1 in 30 children survive abortion attempts, and that up to 1 in 10 children survive abortion attempts performed after 23 weeks of gestation.

"Our weakest children may be surviving these brutal late term abortions, because in a late term abortion procedure you're inducing labor," Rose said.  

"You have to effectively deliver a child, which the abortionist has to kill either in the process or in utero, but sometimes that baby comes out alive."

A report from Philadelphia's ABC affiliate, WPVI, on April 9, revealed that several nurses at Planned Parenthood of Delaware had left their employment at the abortion clinic over unsanitary conditions and safety concerns.

"I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was," Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich told WPVI. And Joyce Vasikonis added that "they were using instruments on patients that were not sterile."

The news report said the two nurses quit Planned Parenthood of Delaware "to protect their own medical licenses."

On April 26, President Obama spoke at Planned Parenthood's 2013 conference, thanking the organization for their "outstanding leadership" and "remarkable work...providing quality health care to women."

He derided recent pro-life legislation passed in states such as North Dakota, where recently abortion was outlawed beginning at six weeks after conception, when the child's heartbeat is discernible.