Allahpundit @ Hot Air:
Proof positive that we’ve reached a new phase of Gosnell damage control. Plan A: Ignore, ignore, ignore. Plan B: If Plan A becomes impossible, use Gosnell as some sort of exception that proves the rule about why, counterintuitively, America needs easier access to abortion.
#Gosnell case is appalling. He ran a criminal enterprise, not a health facility, & should be punished to full extent bit.ly/ZRyssI
— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) April 12, 2013
“Not a health facility” but something underground, not in any way similar to a Planned Parenthood clinic. If anything, the way to prevent future Gosnells is to have more clinics so that babies’ necks can be snipped earlier during gestation in a cleaner, safer environment. Be ready for this spin and know it for the garbage that it is. The reason Gosnell was able to run a “criminal enterprise” for 17 years is because the cretins in Pennsylvania state government decided they couldn’t risk the shrieking from pro-choicers if they insisted on tough inspections of clinics. So they stopped inspecting, which, as the Anchoress pointed out this morning, is likely why Gosnell felt safe keeping babies’ severed feet in jars as souvenirs like some Nazi degenerate at Buchenwald. No one was going to come knocking on his door or other clinics’ doors and he knew it, because the good people at Planned Parenthood, NARAL, et al. would have made too much trouble for the state if they had. Read the grand-jury transcript, via Jordan Bloom:
“After 1993, even that pro forma effort [to inspect Gosnell’s clinic and report its failings] came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions.”
In other words, it strongly suggests the absolutist pro-choice view that any regulation of abortion constitutes an infringement on reproductive rights led to the clinic not being overseen properly. All of these people [who are trying to spin Gosnell’s case] had access to the grand jury report, even back in 2011. To ignore that and then make the case for why abortions should be more widespread and less regulated is incredibly dishonest.
But wait, there’s more. Here’s another bit of the grand jury report showcased in an old post byMelinda Henneberger when Gosnell’s case first came to public attention in 2011: