Most people by now have heard the tragic story of the abortionist in Philadelphia who has been arrested ^[1] and charged with eight counts of murder – one for a pregnant women who allegedly died from an abortion at his hands and seven others for born children he allegedly killed by poking scissors in the back of their necks and severing their spinal cords. It appears that there have been complaints for years regarding this clinic, but government health officials did nothing to intervene ^[2]:

Time and time again, authorities alerted to Kermit Gosnell’s filthy and macabre abortion clinic – and to the injured, diseased or dead women he left in his wake – failed to rattle the alarm bells loudly enough to shut his house of horrors, the district attorney’s grand-jury report found.

“The Department of State literally licensed Gosnell’s criminally dangerous behavior,” the report concluded, and the state Department of Health “gave its stamp of approval to his facility.”

The “callous killing of babies outside the womb” persisted “for years” because officials looked the other way, the report said.

The grand jury also found that people at the city’s Department of Public Health and city hospitals also learned of warning signals, but failed to act.

According to the grand jury’s report:

* The State Department, whose Board of Medicine licenses and oversees physicians, “could have stopped Gosnell single-handedly.” About a decade ago, a former Gosnell employee filed a complaint detailing the clinic’s unsterile conditions and unlicensed workers. But the department dismissed the complaint after an investigation, which did not include an inspection.

Shortly after, the department received a report of the death of Semika Shaw, 22, and closed the case without investigation, concluding that her death was an “inherent” risk that did not warrant suspending Gosnell’s license.

* As for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the grand jury found it “deliberately” chose not to enforce laws that would have protected Gosnell’s patients.

After it approved the opening of Gosnell’s clinic in 1979, the department failed to conduct a site review until 10 years later, when violations were apparent.

Then, after 1993, the Health Department “abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all,” the grand-jury report found, leaving “clinics to do as they pleased.” (Emphasis Added)

Note especially that last line: the Health Department has not inspected abortion clinics – where major surgeries are performed – for over 17 years. Yet consider this quote from the city’s health commissioner:

[Donald] Schwarz, the city’s health commissioner since 2008, said yesterday that his department would work better to report complaints to state officials. He stressed that the public should know that Gosnell’s clinic was “abnormal” and “not the norm for abortion care.”

How would Schwarz know this? They don’t inspect abortion clinics!

For those who have been involved in pro-life activism, Schwarz’s claim rings hollow. Time and time again abortion clinics have been found to be unsanitary, unsafe and medically dangerous (always for the child and usually for the mother as well). Yet because of pressure from the pro-abortion lobby, abortion clinics are completely unregulated.

Many people are familiar with Operation Rescue ^[3] and know of the clinic blockades they organized in the late 1980′s/early 1990′s. However, with the advent of more draconian laws against such activities, Operation Rescue changed their tactics and they now work to shut down abortion clinics through legal means by exposing the health violations of these clinics. Troy Newman, the head of Operation Rescue, has stated that he has never encountered an abortion clinic that didn’t have significant violations – even by the pro-abortion standards of our health system. And this should not be shocking – anyone who decides to make a living killing innocent children is unlikely to be worried too much about the health of the mothers.

Pray for the conversion of all abortionists and abortion clinic workers. They are not beyond God’s grasp and He desperately wants them to come to a saving knowledge of His Son.