Gosnell's enablers: The abortion industry

Via-NH Union Leader


EDITORIAL

The trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist accused of killing a woman and four babies, has exposed a truth about the abortion industry. It is that abortion is, in fact, an industry, not a rare medical procedure that happens to be passively available, with instruments collecting dust in long-unopened drawers, until some desperate woman rushes in under life-threatening emergency circumstances.

It is an industry that exists to make money, lots of money, by aborting as many babies as possible as often as possible. Roughly 1.2 million American babies are aborted every year, more than half of them to women in their 20s, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which maintains statistics on the practice.

It is an industry that promotes and protects its practitioners, including ones as wicked as Kermit Gosnell.

The president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania told the Philadelphia Inquirer last month that women often came to her organization after experiencing the horrors of Gosnell's clinic. "We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health," she told the newspaper. After that interview, she gave a speech to her organization in which she called Gosnell's practices "criminal." Planned Parenthood knew about Gosnell's criminal behavior, but never reported it. Why?

Others knew about Gosnell, too, and used him to perform procedures they were unwilling to risk being caught performing.

Desiree Hawkins was 16 when she had an abortion at Gosnell's clinic. She has said she was referred there by Hagerstown (Md.) Reproductive Health Services after that organization informed her that she was 19 weeks pregnant. She had her abortion two weeks later.

Preparing to testify at Gosnell's trial, she obtained her medical records and found to her her horror that she had been 23 weeks pregnant, not 21 weeks, when her baby was aborted. "If I had known I was 23 weeks, I would have (chosen) adoption," she told USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers.

Her pain was compounded when the DEA told her that one of the severed feet found in a jar in Gosnell's clinic was her baby's.

Why do abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood and the politicians they bankroll fight so hard to kill laws that would do nothing more than ensure that women who enter abortion mills are informed about all of their options, including adoption? Why do they oppose laws requiring parental notification for abortions given to minors? It is because those laws might discourage women and girls from choosing an abortion. And these organizations don't make a dime from a woman who chooses adoption. They are in the abortion business, and as far as they are concerned, ignorance is good for business.