General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Should abortion clinics be regulated like other outpatient surgery facilities? [View all]cali
(114,904 posts)yes, the case will wrongly be used to pass more trap laws, but the clinic operated openly.
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Why wasnt this shut down sooner?
This is partly what the grand jury set out to figure out, and their conclusion is disturbing to say the least. Multiple government agencies, hospitals, and organizations sat on information that should have shut the clinic down years earlier.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health audits hospitals and medical facilities. It approved Gosnells clinic in 1979. When it checked back a decade later, the report says it found numerous violations but took Gosnell at his word when he promised to fix them.
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But still, it did get complaints: from several lawyers representing women injured by Gosnell; from a doctor who hand-delivered a complaint alerting the department to the fact that several women referred to Gosnell got the same venereal disease; from the medical examiner of Delaware County informing the department that Gosnell performed an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who was 30 weeks pregnant; and when Mongar, the Bhutanese woman, died.
The Department of State, which licenses individual physicians, also ignored the alarm bells. A decade ago, a former employee reported dangerous conditions at the clinic, but the department let it drop after interviewing Gosnell offsite. Then an insurance company told the department about a 22-year-old woman who died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus. Again, and several more times, the department ignored complaints.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/12/why-is-the-media-apologizing-about-kermit-gosnell-coverage.html