During a hearing before the state medical board on Tuesday night, Delaware officials say abortion practitioner Albert Dworkin helped embattled abortionist Kermit Gosnell avoid state law and enabled him to run the shoddy abortion business in neighboring Philadelphia.
Gosnell is the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania abortion business owner who ran one of the most filthy and unregulated abortion centers ever exposed and his shoddy practices resulted in the deaths of and injury to women from botched abortions. He also engaged in a brutal practice of live-birth abortions that saw him purposely prematurely birth babies and, afterwards, he would “snip” their spinal cords with medical scissors. The abortion practitioner likely killed hundreds of babies in the same abortion-infanticide method but prosecutors were only able to charge him with seven counts.
Gosnell not only operated in southeast Pennsylvania, but he was employed at the Delaware abortion facility known as Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, with offices in Wilmington and Dover, Delaware, where he would work one day per week to do abortions. That abortion center has already come under investigation from Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden and reportedly falsified abortion reports to state officials.
Earlier this month, the Board of Medical Licensing and Discipline agreed with a recommendation from Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden to suspend the medical license of Dr. Albert Dworkin.
Dworkin was on the staff of the Women’s Medical Society clinic in Philadelphia, the abortion center Gosnell ran and the medical board agreed with Biden that he presented a “clear and present danger” as obstetrician of record at the abortion center.
During last night’s hearing, according to the News Journal newspaper, Deputy Attorney General Barbara Gadbois said the 84-year old abortion practitioner signed a letter that was important in keeping Gosnell’s abortion center open. She said he was also essentially charged with overseeing Gosnell’s activity at the Delaware abortion business, where Gosnell would start abortions that are technically not legal in Delaware and transfer the women to Philadelphia where he would complete the abortion under Pennsylvania’s less restrictive late-term abortion law.
The objective of the hearing was to determine whether the emergency suspension of Dworkin’s medical license should be canceled or made permanent.
The New Journal indicated Dworkin’s attorney Richard Galperin said the state was building a case based on guilt by association and claimed Delaware officials have no evidence that Dworkin engaged in any wrongdoing.
But Gadbois told the three-person board of the Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline that Dworkin was required under state law to report Gosnell’s problematic activity and did not do so. She said Dworkin also should have known about the deplorable conditions at the Philadelphia abortion center. She also said Dworkin is responsible for 35 patient files Gosnell removed from Atlantic’s files that violated state law.
Galperin claims Dworkin was never the medical director of the Atlantic abortion business and claimed staff at the abortion center improperly put Dworkin’s name on the order to release the medical files and he said the letter Dworkin signed for Gosnell helping him keep his Philadelphia abortion business open was not meant to do that. He said Dworkin was the medical director of the Dover clinic where Gosnell did not work but did not oversee the Wilmington office where Gosnell did abortions.
The newspaper indicates the medical board will issue a decision in the next several weeks concerning Dworkin’s medical license.
Biden has also filed an amended complaint requesting the emergency suspension of Arturo Apolinario’s license. Delaware’s State Department and the Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline then agreed to suspend Apolinario’s license pending a hearing.
Biden’s papers say Gosnell would routinely begin illegal late-term abortions at Atlantic that could not be done under Delaware abortion law and then transfer the women to his Philadelphia abortion center. The papers say Apolinario participated in the transfers as medical director of Atlantic’s Wilmington abortion business and should have stopped them because of the danger to women.
Biden has also alleged Apolinario prescribed and dispensed controlled drugs at the Delaware abortion clinics that he was not authorized to give out — saying he let his license to write and dispense such prescriptions in Delaware lapse in June 2009. Gosnell was initially investigated by Pennsylvania officials on evidence showing he was running an illegal prescription ring and the probe into those concerns resulted in uncovering extensive evidence showing the botched abortions, infanticides and filthy conditions at his Philadelphia abortion facility.
Apolinario has worked at the Atlantic abortion business for 17 years but his attorney Adam Balick claimed in an interview with the News Journal newspaper that he never had contact with Gosnell. He also claimed Apolinario provided the information to Atlantic needed to renew his licensed to write prescription for controlled drugs but said the abortion business never processed it and he never realized his license lapsed.
But Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock said in a statement that Apolinario put women at “grave risk.”
“This new complaint clearly demonstrates that there is a significant link between Dr. Apolinario and Dr. Kermit Gosnell,” Bullock said.
Apolinario has been in trouble with Delaware officials before over abortions, according to the newspaper.
He oversaw an abortion Gosnell attempted on a 17-year-old girl whose aunt paid $2,500 for the abortion in July 2008 after an ultrasound showed she was 29 weeks along. Gosnell started the abortion in Delaware and then transferred the girl to Philadelphia. After 13 hours of labor, the girl gave birth to a baby boy and Gosnell used medical scissors to slit the baby’s neck and put him in a box to leave him to die.
The 17-year-old girl was released from the abortion center after giving birth but had to go to Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, Pennsylvania for emergency medical treatment. As her condition worsened, Gosnell did not respond to numerous attempts by medical officials to contact him.
The abortion industry has been forced to suspend two abortion businesses that employed embattled abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, who has been the subject of national controversy over his abortion business in Philadelphia.
Following revelations that Gosnell is associatedwith two other abortion centers in Louisiana and Delaware, the National Abortion Federation made the decision to suspend the memberships of both. Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, the Delaware abortion business that employed Gosnell one day a week to do abortions, and the Delta Clinic abortion center of Baton Rouge, have both had their memberships suspended. Leroy Brinkley owns both abortion businesses. Atlantic operates abortion centers in Wilmington and Dover.
Gosnell has been charged with eight counts of murder and several of his staff at the abortion center, including his wife and sister-in-law, have been charged as well in the case with assisting in botched abortions, practicing medicine without a license or covering up the actions of those who did. The counts include grisly infanticides that involved Gosnell snipping the spines with scissors of babies who had purposefully been prematurely born so they could be killed moments later.
Gosnell has been denied bail while the case against him moves forward. Women have spoken out about their treatment and one woman says she was drugged and tied up and forced to have an abortion.
Authorities searching the facility last year found bags and bottles holding aborted babies scattered around the building, jars containing babies’ severed feet lining a shelf, as well as filthy, unsanitary furniture and equipment.
The grand jury investigation also shows state officials did nothingwhen reports came in about problems at Gosnell’s abortion center, which has upset incoming pro-life Governor Tom Corbett who fired several state employees.
