Thread by NYer.
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, January 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - “Scores” of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s victims are coming forward after his arrest last week, says Pennsylvania’s District Attorney. Many women are detailing the horrid atrocities in the media, with some alleging that he even forced them to abort their child.
One woman, Robyn Reid, told ABC News that she had planned to sneak away when her grandmother brought the then-three-month-pregnant 15-year-old to Gosnell’s facility on January 31, 1998. “When I said no, the doctor got upset and he ended up taking my clothes off, hitting me, my legs were tied to the stirrups,” she said.
“I was fully dressed. He actually managed to get all of my clothes off and tie me down to the medical bed,” she continued. “I just remember my very last thought ... looking up at the light and thinking, ‘Don’t fall asleep.’”
In the midst of the 30-minute struggle, she says the abortionist assured her by saying, “This is the same care that I would give to my own daughter.”
Reid said the drugs Gosnell gave her were so strong they knocked her out for 12 hours, and she was carried home asleep by her mother and aunt. “What would you give somebody that small that would knock me out for 12 hours? What if I had died?” she asked.
Gosnell, 69, was arrested last Wednesday for eight counts of murder, which included charges for killing seven babies that were born alive and one count for the botched-abortion death of 41-year-old Nepalese refugee Karnamaya Mongar.
His arrest followed the release of a 281-page photograph-laden Grand Jury Report that detailed Gosnell’s bone-chilling practices, including the killing of what clinic workers testified were “hundreds” of living, breathing newborn children by severing their spinal cords or slitting their necks.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and he smacked me. They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication,” Davida Johnson, who went to Gosnell in 2001, told The Associated Press.
Within a few months, the then-21-year-old began suffering gynecological issues, and learned she had contracted a venereal disease. She said she now suffers from an unidentified lifelong illness, and has since had four miscarriages.
Commenting on Gosnell’s horrid treatment of the babies, Johnson asked, “Did he do that to mine? Did he stab him in the neck? Because I was out of it. I don’t know what he did to my baby.”
Gosnell has faced 46 civil lawsuits in the past, the Pennsylvania District Attorney’s office told ABCNews, and more and more victims are coming forward. “Phones are ringing off the hook. There are scores of women,” District Attorney Christine Wechsler said.
LaToya Ransome told CNN that her abortion in July 2007 by Gosnell left her disabled. “It was the utensils that he used ... to do the abortion,” she said. “They wasn’t sterilized, so it caused me to get an infection called endocarditis.”
“By August 31, 2007 I had open heart surgery,” she said. “October the first of 2007 I was disabled, meaning I couldn’t do nothing for myself, take care of my son, take care of myself, feed myself, clothe myself, none of that.”
“He’s crazy and he’s careless. He had ... no type of feelings of what he’s doing to these women and these babies,” she added.
Nicole Gaither, 38, told ABC News that she was in excruciating pain and could hardly sit down after Gosnell aborted her baby at five-months gestation in 2001. It turned out that the abortionist had left parts of her baby’s body inside her. When she went back, he sucked the remains out without giving her anesthesia. Afterward he said, “Stand up, you aren’t in that much pain.”
“I was just laying on the table and crying and I just asked the Lord to get me through it,” she said.
The Grand Jury report slammed the Pennsylvania Department of Health and other state government agencies for turning a blind eye to Gosnell’s practices, despite their knowledge of complaints and lawsuits against the abortionist.
According to the Grand Jury, the state ceased inspecting abortion facilities in 1995 under the administration of former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, a pro-abortion Catholic. The inspections were only resumed in 2010 by then-Governor Ed Rendell.
“The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all,” said the grand jury. “With the change of administration from Governor [Robert] Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions … Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.”
The report also implicated the National Abortion Federation, which failed to report him to authorities after observing numerous violations during an evaluation as part of a failed membership application.
Authorities only discovered Gosnell’s gruesome thirty-year abortion operation when they raided his facility for a drug bust.
Today the pro-life activist organization Operation Rescue emphasized that Gosnell’s abortion facility is merely one of the few “house of horrors” to be caught, as they released a report exposing Gosnell’s connection to the Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The report, says the group, reveals a “web of death” between Gosnell, co-arrestee Eileen O’Neill, and Delta Clinic’s owner Leroy Brinkley, who also owns the Atlantic Women’s Services abortion facility in Wilmington, Delaware. Gosnell was employed at Atlantic Women’s Services one day per week, and O’Neill, who pretended to be a licensed physician, was employed by both Gosnell and Brinkley. She was arrested along with Gosnell last week.
The report also implicates again the National Abortion Federation, which claims Brinkley’s Louisiana and Delaware facilities as proud members.
A group of attorneys has threatened to sue the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals if it does not immediately order the Delta Clinic closed for violations that mirror squalid conditions found at Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion mill.
“Certainly Gosnell’s mill is not the only ‘house of horrors’ in operation. He is just one of the few that has been caught,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “Horrific conditions and practices exist at most abortion clinics, and in fact, we have yet to find even one that obeys all the laws.
“However, we can take hope in the fact that political conditions that have ignored and covered up for abortion abuses are changing and the arrests in Philadelphia of Gosnell’s band of criminals are a testament to that,” he added. “However, there is still a very long way to go, as this report shows.”
See the expose, “Not the Only House of Horrors: Troubled Baton Rouge Abortion Mill Has Disturbing Ties to Gosnell”, at Operation Rescue’s website.
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Thread by me.
It compared a cohort of women who had given birth with a cohort of women who submitted to abortions during the first trimester of their pregnancy. The findings indicate that compared to giving birth, obtaining an abortion did not increase the likelihood that women would seek psychiatric treatment for a mental disorder
Priscilla Coleman, a professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University is one of the nation’s leading scholars of the mental-health consequences of abortion, and she has found a number of methodological shortcomings in this particular study.
First, this study’s conclusions are largely based on the fact that the cohort of women who submitted to abortions experienced similar (but high) rates of mental-health problems both in the months before the abortion and in the months after the abortion took place. However, that does not negate a causal link between abortion and mental health. A number of academic studies find high levels of stress among women considering an abortion. Furthermore, it should be noted that the cohort of women who had abortions were more likely to experience mental-health problems than either the cohort who gave birth or the cohort who never became pregnant.
There exist other methodological shortcomings as well. This study lacks controls for other factors that might affect the likelihood of psychological disorders including pregnancy wantedness, coercion by others to abort, marital status, income, education, and exposure to violence. Additionally, there is also evidence that women with psychiatric histories are at increased risk for post-abortion mental-health problems. However, these women were excluded from the study. Finally, the results follow women for only one year post-abortion or -childbirth. There is significant evidence suggesting that the negative psychological effects of abortion may not surface for several years.
It should also be noted that this research was funded by a grant from the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation. This foundation was formed by investor Warren Buffet and named in honor of his wife after her death in 1994. This foundation has been very active in supporting abortion rights. Over the years, Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation has donated millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood. In fact, donations from the foundation have enabled dozens of Planned Parenthood clinics to add abortion to their services. Furthermore, this summer, an article in The New York Times Magazine indicated that two new programs designed to train and encourage young physicians to perform abortions were funded, in part, by the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation.
Furthermore, this is not the first time that The New England Journal of Medicine has used its reputation to advance liberal causes. In the spring of 2010, shortly before the vote on health-care reform, the journal published a superficial analysis of Massachusetts abortion trends. This was to argue that providing insurance coverage of abortion would not increase abortion rates. However, sophisticated statistical techniques were not used and there was just simply too little data after the enactment of Commonwealth Care to seriously analyze its effect on abortion rates in Massachusetts. Overall, it is unfortunate that such a prestigious and high-visibility journal is often deciding to place greater emphasis on ideology than scholarship in its editorial decisions.
LifeNews.com Note: Dr. Michael New is a political science professor at the University of Alabama and holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He is a fellow at Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey.