When Kermit Gosnell was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for killing babies in his West Philadelphia abortion clinic, it brought a continuing debate onto the front pages, with even the amount of trial coverage a cause of conflict. With his case as a backdrop, abortion-rights activists warned that his filthy and dangerous clinic would be the norm for desperate poor women if increasingly restrictive laws continued to be approved. Planned Parenthood called his crimes “appalling.” Many opposed to abortion saw Gosnell and his clinic, ignored by regulators, as indicative of why terminating a pregnancy, particularly late in the process, should be illegal. The fact that what Gosnell was doing was criminal occasionally got lost in all the politics. His case, though, is prompting closer looks at abortion providers.
In neighboring Delaware, state lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday tried to sort out allegations of questionable medical conduct at several clinics there, and what the state did or did not do in response. The setting — a bipartisan hearing at the state capital of Dover though no legislation was pending — could be considered political. The focus was the testimony of two nurses who said they were not opposed to abortions, but to unsafe medical practices. They described conditions they said they witnessed at their former employer, Planned Parenthood of Delaware, including rushed abortion procedures that emphasized speed and profit instead of patient safety, insufficiently trained staff and a neglect of medical standards that ultimately put patients at risk.
