I'm just happy that I live in a state where nobody is trying to raise the bar for "decent behavior." To the best of my knowledge, we are also the only state where sitting judges were taking bribes to jail children.
It's also interesting that Unfogged commenters have not criticized recent instances of Islamic terrorism, or the harsh repressive practices of the Syrian government. Yet somehow we find time to criticize college football coaches. It's odd that liberals would favor Islamic terrorists and Middle East dictators over college sports. But that's liberals for you.
I find it interesting and odd that I've gone literally hours without denouncing the horrible regime in $ConservativeBugabooLocationOrMetaphoricalRegion. At long last, have I no decency?
It's the conservative push to have unreasonably strict regulations of abortion providers in order to force them all to close which has lead to the politicization of clinic inspection.
4 strikes me as a good explanation (without knowing the details of what led to lax regulation of the clinic in this case.) The illegitimate pressures that have driven abortion provision out of hospitals and general-purpose gynecological clinics are going to lead to regulators concerned about the continued availability of abortion to look the other way in terms of enforcing the law against the few providers there are.
Not an excuse at all, but I'd bet that's the dynamic.
It's also interesting that Unfogged commenters have not criticized recent instances of Islamic terrorism, or the harsh repressive practices of the Syrian government.
Can we just skip to the part where somebody links to a Fr/ee R/epublic thread that says that liberals are all sluts (or crypto-homosexuals, I guess) who want to submit to the Swarthy Other, Brown, in recompense of America's sins against the Swarthy Other, Black?
Suppose we commented proportionally to the wickedness of our subjects, with more comments for the more wicked. What would the comment threads look like? Who's the worst person in the world?
I will say that this is a very weird story, and I'd love to (well, not in the 'actually enjoy' sense) read a longform piece of journalism sense. On the extraordinarily late-term abortions/infanticides -- this clinic was apparently drawing in patients from a multiple-state area, which should have required either a lot of advertising, or referrals from other health-care providers. I'd be really curious about who was referring to the clinic, and what standards generally are for knowledge about a health-care provider before someone will refer to them.
What's puzzling me is that it seems self-contradictory; to explain the large area from which the clinic was drawing, you'd have to assume that there weren't enough competing providers. But if it were widely known as one of the few providers of a rare service, you'd think people would be paying enough attention to it to catch red flags.
Why does this post exist? Isn't this just positive reinforcement for Shearer's worst tendencies?
9: I dunno. I debated it. See my part where I debated it.
Why does this post exist?
Why is this post different from all the other posts?
Without any showing of a need, the anti-government, anti-regulation crowd has successfully pushed for strict regulations for early abortions. Even though no other similarly situated medical procedure is so regulated.
Their concern is not health, but to stop abortions.
Also remember the Supreme Court case in Carhart et al: They banned one kind of late term abortion even though ALL of the medical evidence was that procedure was safer in some circumstances. "Partial birth abortion" regulations did not stop any late term abortions. They just made MEDICALLY NECESSARY abortions less safe.
They do not care about safety.
8: Well, the grand jury report says there were red flags - multiple serious complaints. They weren't acted on.
Apparently the Chief Rabbi of England was knighted a few years ago. It's quite an involved ceremony, and the rabbi had never really been through anything like it before - fortunately there are rehearsals where people from the Palace go through it all with you in advance, but it's still a bit nerve-racking, especially the bit where you have to acknowledge fealty to the Queen in Latin (which the rabbi didn't actually speak). It was that last bit that went wrong on the day: the rabbi's mind went completely blank and in a panic he blurted out the first ceremonial response he had ever learned in his life, which was, of course, "Mah Nishtana HaLeila HaZeh."
The Queen stopped short and muttered to her equerry: "Why is this knight different from all other knights?"
In fact, the number of reports being made (from city health officials, the UPenn hospital, several lawyers and insurance companies) makes me think, without yet having read all the way through, that a lot of people had a motive to look the other way; perhaps kickbacks from the clinic's other business as a prescription drug mill?
12: This is all completely true.
I can't help suspecting that women were referring this clinic to each other because it seemed cheaper and easier than Planned Parenthood--and gradually it just became the place you go to sort this stuff out, no matter how horrible the experience was.
Planned Parenthood has 4 or 5 locations around Philadelphia. This crappy place should never have been able to compete. It makes me really sad to think that women didn't realize that these conditions were abhorrent, intolerable, and not what they deserved.
9: Well, we have to argue about something, and if Shearer has a virtue it's a finely-tuned skill at starting arguments.
15: I wondered the same thing -- if there was a straightforward bribery story that hadn't broken yet.
The case is horrific beyond belief, and I haven't been able to even read any of the detailed news coverage of it, much less the grand jury report.
From an outsider's point of view, it looks like a textbook example of a mayor, city department of health, city bureaucracy, state department of health and related bureaucracy, and governor all failing in their legal and ethical duty to the public.
I could speculate on why they failed -- and I think the hyper-politicization of abortion definitely played a role -- but to be absolutely frank, I think the issue was just as much about the race and social class of the victims. Dead women are less headline-grabbing when they are poor and nonwhite.
I'm pretty disappointed in the (Democratic, FWIW) elected officials' response, I have to say. It's a reprehensible situation to have overlooked, even if I can come up with reasons (as in the Penn State case) that people might have chosen to do it.
What's puzzling me is that it seems self-contradictory; to explain the large area from which the clinic was drawing, you'd have to assume that there weren't enough competing providers.
One does wonder why the Invisible Hand of the Free Market did not step in to provide a competing abortion provider who offered lower costs and/or more sanitary conditions.
By the way, I do think that this case is, in its own way, just as horrible and deplorable as the Penn State debacle. Having said that, I don't really have much else to say on the matter.
17: Do they perform second-trimester abortions, though? Later-term abortions aren't provided by most clinics, as far as I know.
It sounds like they perform fourth trimester abortions.
Yes to 12. Thanks to them, a medical procedure has been banned purely on the basis of its icky-ness.
One does wonder why the Invisible Hand of the Free Market did not step in to provide a competing abortion provider who offered lower costs and/or more sanitary conditions.
The Invisible Hand is mighty scrawny in poor neighborhoods.
15: Nah, I'd bet it's simpler than that: Racial politics. PP is perceived as a very white organization. I can definitely imagine people failing to pursue complaints because they didn't want to look like they were "persecuting" a black doctor while letting the white ones operate unhindered, notwithstanding the actual medical and human conditions they were practicing under.
21: The lack of competing providers isn't odd at all -- the antiabortion movement has done a spectacular job of pressuring OB/GYNs generally to keep out of providing abortion care. Sanely, someone getting a second-trimester abortion should be going to a general gynecological surgeon in an outpatient clinic or hospital that does minor gynecological surgery generally, but that often isn't available.
It just seems weird that if this place were providing a rare and unusual service, that people referring to it didn't have a clear picture of the conditions there.
For Shearer: Yeah, I'll go ahead and denounce people who knew what was going on at that clinic and didn't speak up. However, there was a real sense in the Penn State thread that McQueary was peculiarly failsome in seeing a child being raped and not stopping it then and there. A filthy abortion clinic is a more ambiguous sort of thing.
So, that NYT article. What's with charging murder in the deaths of "infants"? Am I misunderstanding something about what an abortion clinic does, or does a legal procedure magically turn into murder if you do it wrong? Because if it's the latter, I might just have to drink a lot today.
27: My understand is that they found a lot of dead, full-term, delivered babies. It's not a euphemism for fetuses. The case is unbelievably grisly.
Plenty of legal medical procedures turn to murder if you do them really wrong.
27: What the grand jury report says is that Gosnell was performing third-trimester abortions by inducing labor and then killing the prematurely born post-viability infants after birth. It is not 100% clear to me how solid those findings are, or to what extent they may be based on witness hyperbole, but to the extent that happened, it's infanticide.
I havent read much about this situation and I do not have any real knowledge about it.
BUT......he was sued 15 times in 16 years and in 16 years, two patients died.
Those facts, by themselves, are mostly meaningless. He is providing care for an extremely high risk population. Unfortunately, sometimes patients die. Unfortunately, a doctor in this area will get sued A LOT.
Also, infections are a huge issue in every single hospital. Period.
I have not read the grand jury report, so there might be a ton of other stuff, obviously.
That part in 21 about the Invisible Hand was partly Invisible Tongue in Invisible Cheek, by the way.
I suspect that one of the problems at the Health Department was that a dedicated group would make large numbers of frivolous complaints about abortion providers, which if investigated turn out to be unfounded. So they stopped investigating. Not an excuse.
Gosnell was performing third-trimester abortions by inducing labor and then killing the prematurely born post-viability infants after birth.
I do not why I am commenting until I know more about the situation.
BUT, you need more information bc it depends on your definition of birth. To most people, birth means the baby is outside the body. However, the anti-choicers say - "delivering into the vagina."
33: That seems completely plausible.
Also, if you want to be terrified, go read about the Med Errors that take place every month in every hospital.
35: In the report, it sounds like babies were born pre-term, non-induced, and then killed. It is so horrifying that I can't read the report for very long.
35: If you read the grand jury report, it's really unambiguous. Unambiguous doesn't mean true, it could be false, but it's clear what they're saying, and they're saying outside the body, breathing, alive, and then killed by the doctor. The relevant section starts at page 99 of the grand jury report.
38: Not non-induced, I don't think.
What the grand jury report says is that Gosnell was performing third-trimester abortions by inducing labor and then killing the prematurely born post-viability infants after birth.
Interestingly, I'm pretty sure he could have legally allowed the premature infants to die simply by withholding medical care.
The law attempts to draw bright, clear lines at two places where no such clarity exists: the difference between killing and letting die and the difference between viable and nonviable. Those lines intersect in this case.
Women absolutely deserve safe, caring places where they can have an abortion.
But, the anti's do not care about those things.
41: From the grand jury report, he would have been in violation of the law by performing abortions after 24 weeks in any case.
I entirely agree with 42. I assume no one's putting me on the pro-life or anti-late-term-abortion side of things here.
And same here. This particular clinic appears to have been operating wildly in violation of law -- that doesn't have anything to do with whether late-term abortions should be legally provided by proper medical care providers. Which they should.
My takeaways from this article:
1. Tort actions are no substitute for well-thought out and strictly enforced regulations.
2. Private medical practice allows abuses like this to continue in a way that government-sponsored healthcare would not.
3. Attacks on reproductive freedom which have the effect of forcing abortion underground, despite its (barely) legality are killing women.
What's odd about Shearer's attempt to engage here is that this was big news at the beginning of the year, and liberals then went through the ritual of tut-tutting the whole thing. Need we do this after every other instance of evil-doings in Pennsylvania? Very well, then: I denounce these bad practices times infinity.
And let's not fail to hammer in that if Roe were overturned, places like this would quickly become the new norm for poor women needing abortions.
particular clinic appears to have been operating wildly in violation of law
Maybe so. And maybe I should actually read the grand jury report.
But, it bears repeating that the following is not surprising to hear about any medical treatment:
1. There were infections!
2. The staff and/or doctor didnt care about me!
3. The doctor has been sued!
4. A patient died!
Those statements are meaningless without detailed, complete information.
Also, it is incredibly insulting to say that 99.9 percent of people who put their own lives on the line to deliver care to women in these situations do not care about the health and treatment of women going through these circumstances.
Hopefully, most people realize that all of these places depend on lots of volunteer care bc it isnt financially lucrative.
Nobody wants to see a shoddy clinic.
Also, it is incredibly insulting to say that 99.9 percent of people who put their own lives on the line to deliver care to women in these situations do not care about the health and treatment of women going through these circumstances.
Wait, what? Who said that?
Maybe so. And maybe I should actually read the grand jury report.
Yes, you should. There's a wealth of detail and testimony there.
Do any of the lawyers know what the deal is with these PA grand jury reports? Is this some kind of quirk of state procedure, or a conscious decision to publicize case details before trial? It just seems weird -- haven't really though about it, by it gets my adversarial system instincts a bit het up.
Wait, what? Who said that?
The people speaking in my brain! Just the implication of the post.
Never mind me. I am just ranting. I need to get back to more pressing work.
I don't know the deal, and I'm puzzled by it as well. The linked document clearly seems to be written for public release -- it's not written like an indictment, it's a report. I don't quite understand why the grand jury generates them -- I assume they're actually written by prosecutors -- or who's supposed to read them.
54: Yeah, I'm completely sympathetic with your reaction generally -- the loony Kansas AG who was out to get Tiller is the sort of thing you're thinking of. But if the grand jury report isn't mostly fiction, it's talking about unambiguous wrongdoing; Gosnell seems to have been running a very weird, very screwed-up, clinic.
There are some grand juries, like SF's Civil Grand Jury, that are set up as a sort of citizen's investigative unit, looking into municipal-government failings and so forth. I don't think this is that kind of thing, though. Perhaps the grand jury bureaucracy has publicity-minded staff.
53, 55: Here's a short WSJ piece covering that issue.
The use of presentments was common in the early part of the century but is now infrequent in many states and extremely rare in the federal system. When they are used, they often try to point out widespread or systemic failings within an institution--not to single out individual wrongdoing.Do not appear to be that common even in Pa, they say a "handful" in recent years and mention Sandusky, Gosnell and a Philadelphia Catholic Church abuse case. They also describe one that Morgenthau did in 1986.
I stopped reading at "Most of these acts cant be prosecuted bc {he} destroyed the files. Among the relatively few cases that could be specifically documented..."
I sure hope that the rest of it has actual facts, and not conclusory arguments that cannot be documented.
Obviously, the allegations sounds horrible though. ug.
It's mostly based on testimony from clinic employees.
Another issue leading to lack of inspections is the particular rules governing abortion clinics. Briefly, state legislatures place absurd requirements on abortion facilities, which most clinics can't meet. A health inspector may choose not to inspect to avoid having to shut down a safe clinic because of requirements they think are unnecesary. Again, not an excuse.
A health inspector may choose not to inspect to avoid having to shut down a safe clinic because of requirements they think are unnecesary. Again, not an excuse.
Not an excuse for anyone who actually knew what was going on, but if true then this sounds like a perfectly good excuse for not inspecting in the first place, and therefore not knowing what was going on.
It seems crazy that a system would be in place that would give inspectors discretion about whether to inspect facilities at all, but wouldn't give them discretion about whether to shut down a facility they find out of compliance. But I don't for a minute doubt that a crazy system might have been in place.
||
Currently the teaser sentence on NYT front page about failure of supercommittee:
Democrats and Republicans, as has been their wont throughout the process, could not even agree on what led the talks to slide into failure.
I bang my head against the desk. Why are the reporters/headline writers pretending that it's easier for parties to agree about who's at fault than to agree on a negotiated outcome? Most negotiated settlements don't include acknowledgement of fault on either side. Is it really astonishing that neither side says "We can't figure out what to do here, but at least we know that the fault for this is entirely on our side."
|>
I'm trying to figure out how Shearer thinks we were supposed to react to this story? Did he expect us to say, "Sure, conditions were deplorable. But at least abortions were getting performed, and we love abortions, so no harm, no foul."?
Perhaps when he heard about the Sandusky case, Shearer thought, "I don't know what those raped kids are complaining about. From all accounts, the shower facilities were spotlessly clean." It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
63: I don' t think they have legal discretion about whether to inspect. Ignoring abortion clinics seems more like an act of civil disobedience against an unjust law. Which is why, when it leads to multiple deaths, it's not an excuse.
27
For Shearer: Yeah, I'll go ahead and denounce people who knew what was going on at that clinic and didn't speak up. ...
Ok, let's consider a couple of specific examples.
An evaluator for an abortion provider certification organization failed Gosnell's clinic and (unusually) told him not to bother trying to fix the problems. But the evaluator took no further action. Was that ok?
A doctor hand delivered a letter of complaint about the clinic because among things patients the doctor referred to the clinic were being infected with a venereal disease. The letter was ignored. Did the doctor have an obligation to take further action?
20
... but to be absolutely frank, I think the issue was just as much about the race and social class of the victims. ...
Gosnell appears to have thought so, hence his policy of providing a higher standard of care to his (few) white patients.
I think I would have preferred not knowing that iatrogenic VD exists.
There's a type of VD called Type O, and it's one curious symptom is that it tends to help diminish existing post-injury blemishes. This led to the popular song, "VD-O Killed the Radial Scar". True story.
67: As long as as it didn't unduly interfere with the number of abortions performed per unit of time, those sound like best practices to this liberal ear.