Gosnell's abortion atrocities no 'aberration': Column

Kirsten Powers | USATODAY

"If I talk, maybe people will make sure it won't happen again."

That's what 20-year-old Desiree Hawkins told me last week as she recounted the horror of visiting abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell in December 2009. The jury in Gosnell's trial for the alleged murders of multiple babies and one woman heard closing arguments Monday afternoon, but they won't hear from Hawkins.

Hawkins was forced to relive the nightmare of Gosnell's house of horrors when she was contacted by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent this year. The agent told her that one of the severed feet found in jars at the clinic belonged to her aborted baby. She was set to testify as a rebuttal witness against Gosnell until he chose to not take the stand.

When she was 16, Hawkins sought an abortion at a National Abortion Federation-certified abortion clinic, Hagerstown (Md.) Reproductive Health Services. The clinic told her she was 19 weeks pregnant and referred her to Gosnell. When she recently retrieved her file in anticipation of testifying, she was shocked that her sonogram showed she had in fact been at 21 weeks, which meant she would have been 23 weeks pregnant by the time Gosnell performed the abortion. "I was so overwhelmed and hurt," said Hawkins. "If I had known I was 23 weeks, I would have (chosen) adoption."

She also would have avoided the trauma visited upon her by Gosnell. Hawkins described the licensed medical professional as laughing at her during the procedure as she cried and begged him to stop because of the pain. "Stop being a baby," he said.

Hawkins experienced betrayal anew when she read the grand jury report replete with testimony of government officials admitting they ignored repeated complaints about Gosnell because they didn't want to limit access to abortion.

'People die'

Said Hawkins, "What really got me was when the (health department official) just said, 'People die.' They just decided to look the other way." She is passionate that "someone needs to make sure all states' departments of health ... are preventing this from happening."

Abortion rights advocates have asserted that Gosnell was an "extreme outlier" and opposed legislation to increase regulation of Pennsylvania abortion clinics as they have in other states. But how could they possibly know that this is an aberration?

Last week, Ohio officials shut down an abortion clinic after inspectors found that a medical assistant administered narcotics to five patients, that narcotics and powerful sedatives weren't properly accounted for, that pharmacy licenses had expired and that four staff members hadn't been screened for a communicable disease.

This month, a Delaware TV station reported that two Planned Parenthood nurses resigned in protest over conditions at a clinic there. One nurse, Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, said, "It was just unsafe. I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was."

Clinic closure drumbeat

Last month, Maryland officials shut down three abortion clinics, two for failings in their equipment and training to deal with life-threatening complications.

Last year, an Associated Press investigation found that Illinois hadn't inspected some abortion clinics for 10 to 15 years. After state health officials reinvigorated their clinic inspections in the wake of Gosnell, inspectors closed two clinics, including one fined for "failure to perform CPR on a patient who died after a procedure," according to AP.

Such problems wouldn't be a shock to Pennsylvania state Rep. Margo Davidson, the only member of the Democratic black caucus to vote for the abortion-regulation bill passed there. She told me, "We don't know how many (Gosnells) there are. I'm not trying to overturn Roe v. Wade, but if a woman makes this difficult choice, she should at least be afforded the highest level of care." She said the choice community knew what was going on and did nothing.

Indeed, the grand jury found that the National Abortion Federation inspected Gosnell's clinic, refused to certify him, but didn't tell anyone. Pennsylvania Planned Parenthood representative Dayle Steinberg has admitted that its officials knew the clinic was unsafe after women complained. What did they do? "We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health."

Davidson concluded that for the choice community, "the institution was more important than the individual lives." Davidson knows firsthand what can happen when people choose to look the other way: Her 22-year-old cousin died after an abortion at Gosnell's clinic.

Kirsten Powers is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, a Fox News political analyst and columnist for The Daily Beast.