Pennsylvania Governor Upset by Lack of Abortion Oversight

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 20, 2011   |   7:21PM   |   Harrisburg, PA

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, who is pro-life, is upset by the lack of state oversight concerning the abortion practitioner recently charged with 8 counts of murder in connection with the death of a woman from a botched abortion and several babies purposefully born in order to kill them.

District Attorney Seth Williams released the detailed charges yesterday and the grand jury report contains shocking findings that he says shows significant problems in monitoring abortion centers.

The infanticide abortion cases are causing significant outrage and may get a federal law involved. Several of his staff were also arrested overnight and will face charges in connection with the cases.

Corbett, who was not governor during the last couple of years as abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell committed the atrocities, is so upset by a grand jury report showing state officials did nothing when told of the problems that he is taking action.

The Associated Press today indicates Corbett’s office is reviewing the grand jury report detailing the deplorable conditions at the abortion center and the acts in which Gosnell engaged in infanticides of seven babies purposefully born and killed with scissors. Corbett met with his new secretaries of Health and State on Thursday. Janet Kelley, Corbett’s spokeswoman, said the governor called what he read “horrific.”

“Pennsylvania is not a Third World country,” the district attorney’s office declared in the report. “There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago.”

The grand jury report came out a day after Corbett took office and spokesman Kevin Harley, according to the Courier Post, pledged that Corbett’s administration would do more to oversee abortion centers.

“The Corbett administration will review the allegations contained in the grand jury’s report regarding deficiencies in oversight by both the department of state and the department of health and make it a priority to address those deficiencies,” he said. “This has to do with enforcing regulations and the law.”

Denise Burke, an attorney for Americans United for Life, said the case of Gosnell shows the need for additional legislation to regulate and monitor abortion businesses.

“Wednesday’s arrest of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a West Philadelphia abortionist, for the murders of a pregnant woman and seven newborn infants and the blatant failure of Pennsylvania health officials to enforce the state’s existing abortion clinic regulations, underscores the need for more stringent regulation of abortion clinics and for more consistent and meaningful enforcement of these regulations by state officials,” she said.

“Sadly, Gosnell’s Philadelphia clinic is not an aberration.  Substandard and unsafe abortion clinics are currently operating across the nation.  All too often, America’s abortion clinics have become the “back alleys” that abortion advocates have warned against,” she added.

AUL provides two options: (a) the “Abortion Patient’s Enhanced Safety Act” which requires abortion clinics to be licensed as and to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers.  These exacting standards should be viewed as the “gold standard” of abortion care; and (b) the “Woman’s Health Protection Act” which codifies the abortion industry’s own internal standards – standards which have withstood multiple legal challenges over the last decade.

“Second, state health officials must prioritize the inspection of abortion clinics to ensure that they are complying with applicable standards.  Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” is a clear warning as to what can result when state officials neglect their responsibilities,” she said.