AP Philly Abortion Clinic Story Gives Rendell a Pass, Misses Serious Error in Grand Jury Timeline
In an Associated Press report by Patrick Walters yesterday afternoon, the following two reasons were offered as to why the Philadelphia abortion “clinic” operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who was arrested and charged earlier this week “with murdering seven babies and one woman who went to him for an abortion,” had not been inspected since 1993: Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell, who left office on Tuesday after eight year's as Keystone State chief executive, claimed that officials at the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), in the AP's words, “didn't think its authority extended to abortion clinics.” The grand jury indictment of Dr. Gosnell says that DOH “decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all.” According to the indictment handed down against Gosnell, the hard-to-handle first explanation (If DOH doesn't have jurisdiction, who does? No one?) is a subset of the second, i.e., the opinion on lack of jurisdiction was part of a longer-term effort to come up with reasons to avoid inspections. Walters never told readers that, and in doing so largely let Rendell off the hook for the fact that almost half of 17-years involved — the longest time period of any Keystone State governor contemporaneous with the non-inspection regime of non-inspection occurred on his watch
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on January 23, 2011. Filed under