Abortion clinics, like "bad gas station restroom" Gosnell clinic, forced by health regs to close

Gosnell's house of horrors

The Washington Times reports that in states across the country, a growing number of abortion clinics required to match the health and safety requirements of similar facilities are choosing to close their doors rather than come up to basic standards. That evidence speaks volumes about the appallingly low health and safety standards of abortion clinics. It also unveils the cold profit motives of clinic owners, who choose to close rather than pay for health and safety measures that would help protect the women, if not the babies, who enter their facilities.

Such a high regard for profit and low regard for women's health and safety marked the horrific Philadelphia abortion clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, which was likened to "a bad gas station restroom." Gosnell was ultimately convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, for the death of three babies he delivered alive and then killed with concentration camp inhumanity, and also of involuntary manslaughter, for the death of Karnamaya Mongar, an immigrant woman who died after an anesthesia overdose during a Gosnell abortion.

Clinic regulations, such as vital requirements related to anesthesia, and on-site health inspections might have prevented the deaths. But a Grand Jury report revealed that under abortion advocate Governor Tom Ridge, "high-level government officials" had made a political and ideological decision to discontinue abortion clinic inspections because of "a concern that if they did routine inspections, they may find that a lot of these facilities didn’t meet [health and safety standards], and then there would be less abortion facilities, less access to women to have an abortion."

That's exactly what abortion advocates now claim about new state regulations for abortion clinics. Rather than initiating or even simply supporting efforts to protect women's health and safety in clinics through regulation and inspection, they instead accuse politicians of a "war on women."

The real war on women is where the casualties are found--inside the abortion clinics.