Kermit who? Abortion zealots still claim emergency access to clinics unnecessary
One of many complaints abortion supporters have against clinic regulations, which they call TRAP laws – Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers – is a requirement for wider doors and hallways than clinics apparently usually have.
“At no point does the width of doorways have any bearing on the medical treatment that’s being administered,” griped Planned Parenthood of Indiana Executive Director Betty Cockrum to jconline.com.
“Abortion proponents mocked the idea that the architectural standards would actually translate into better health care,” noted the Washington Post.
RH Reality Check’s Robin Marty listed “the size of doorways” as one of several “onerous new regulations” in Virginia.
NARAL Virginia’s deputy director agreed, grumbling that the real agenda behind mandating wider halls and doors was “restricting safe, legal abortion access,” according to MSNBC.
SocialistWorker.org protested that “larger hallways and doorways… serve no apparent medical purpose – nor do they make any logical sense.”
You could try telling all that to Kermit Gosnell’s patient Karnamaya Mongar, except she’s dead, in part due to the inability of paramedics to negotiate the halls. According to the grand jury report:
[T]here might have been some slim hope of reviving Mrs. Mongar. The paramedics were able to generate a weak pulse. But, because of the cluttered hallways and the padlocked emergency door, it took them over twenty minutes just to find a way to get her out of the building.
She wasn’t the only one. When Gosnell’s clinic was raided three months later:
Ambulances were summoned to pick up the waiting patients, but… emergency personnel… discovered they could not maneuver stretchers through the building’s narrow hallways to reach the patients….
Access from procedure rooms to the outside by wheelchair or stretcher was impossible, as was evident the night Karnamaya Mongar died….
Clinics must have doors, elevators, and other passages adequate to allow stretcher-borne patients to be carried to a street-level exit. Gosnell’s clinic, with its narrow, twisted passageways, could not accommodate a stretcher at all.
So, you see, the reason behind mandating that doorways and halls be 36 inches wide is to allow for gurney access. This doesn’t seem to me to be too much to ask of abortion providers, particularly since they say they are so concerned about “safe and legal” abortions. Some clinic regs go further to mandate that hallways be five feet wide, but this is simply to allow for simultaneous passage of two gurneys, which doesn’t seem too much to ask either.
To be fair, all the aforementioned complaints were lodged before the Gosnell story started to get traction, when Kirsten Powers’ USA Today column was published.
So you would think after all the notoriety abortion proponents would back away from protesting common sense safeguards that might have saved Mongar’s life. But no. I was shocked by a frankly ignorant tweet last night by RH Reality Check’s Editor-in-Chief, Jodi Jacobson, in response to my question:
Really? I hardly know where to begin. Jodi apparently thinks legalization has made abortion so safe it is utterly impervious to human error or frailty.
But Jodi did qualify herself the word, “most,” meaning she acknowledges there may be medical emergencies at a few clinics, but she’s willing to roll the dice with women’s lives for the sake of access.
Like at the abortion industry standard bearer, Planned Parenthood?
Well, after Operation Rescue compiled the following video last October of 14 emergency calls to PPs across the country since January 2011, there have been a whopping 13 more, recorded at PPs in Colorado (x2), Delaware x5, Indiana, Missouri (same clinic 3x since Thanksgiving – make that 4), and New York, for a total of 27…
[youtube]http://youtu.be/jtpy6WU5xNM[/youtube]
… and that’s just at Planned Parenthoods, which comprise 25% of freestanding abortion clinics in the U.S.
But Jacobson isn’t alone. Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL, complained in a piece blaming pro-lifers for Gosnell that the very state hosting his “House of Horrors,” as it’s now known, Pennsylvania, had enacted “volumes of costly regulations… designed to regulate abortion care right out of existence.”
This makes no sense. Gosnell would have been one of the abortion clinics regulated out of existence had state agencies or the National Abortion Federation bothered.
Don’t these people want that?
Obviously, no.
[Top photo, taken in January 2012, is of an ambulance crew having to hand-carry an emergency victim from New Woman All Woman abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, because the mill could not accommodate a gurney.]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
great work Jill #not an outlier should be our new hash tag
*Sigh*, these people have haven’t learned anything, have they?
I’ve been an EMT. If a patient isn’t breathing you need room for the gurney, PLUS for whoever is walking beside the gurney bagging the patient (using one of those squeezy-ball thingies you see on TV when they’re resuscitating a patient), plus whoever his holding the person’s IV bag aloft until the patient is loaded in the ambulance and the bag can be hung properly. The person who is bagging the patient MUST be BESIDE the gurney because the people at the head and foot are the ones MOVING the gurney and you can’t do that while using both hands to provide the patient with oxygen.
Plus, while all that’s going on there’s another rescue worker on top of the gurney, straddling the patient and doing chest compressions. A smooth exit down wide enough halls, through wide enough doors, and down a RAMP, not STAIRS, can be life or death for the patient.
But I think abortion proponents are fine with playing Russian roulette with patients’ lives, since it was over 15 years ago that Planned Parenthood Medical Director Michael Burnhill chewed out National Abortion Federation member Steve Lichtenberg for — Burnhill’s words — playing Russian roulette with patients’ lives, and Lichtenberg and the place he runs are still NAF members. Three patients that I know of — including a 13-year-old girl — have died there while staff were doing what Burnhill found so appalling — trying to treat life-threatening complications in the clinic rather than calling 911 immediately and having the patient transferred to a properly equipped hospital. Burnhill said that Lichtenberg seemed to be getting off on the thrill of the challenge.
Well..that’s another strike against their little “mantra” isn’t it?
“Safe, legal and rare”….apparently, the Pro- Aborts (Hey, if they can call US ‘antis’…)
only REALLY care about ONE thing when it comes to their precious “Golden Calf” ( what they worship)
They don’t care if abortion is “safe”, they don’t care if it’s “rare”, they only care that it’s
LEGAL. One day (hopefully SOON!) they won’t have a golden calf to worship (when abortion becomes illegal again).
Guess they’ll just have to continue to worship their other “god” - SELF.
Just ignorant. I’m not calling her that, but her statement is totally ignorant. How can someone actually give that as a response? These people are actually willing to make themselves look foolish to stick with their “cause.”
Does anyone know how many deaths and serious injuries there were before Roe vs. Wade and now? My guess would be that with the widspread use of abortion now, that there are actually more women killed or injured now. If pro-abortionists really cared about women, they would be the first to demand health and safety regulations, not fighting them.
My daughter recently had a baby. She started at a birthing center, which is very very strictly regulated. The moment they decided there was a potential problem, they transfered her, despite her objections, to a hospital where they could handle the problem if it became necessary. They did not even wait until it became a fullblown emergency. Turned out my grandson was able to make his appearance into this world naturally afterall, but my daughter’s and his safety was top priority. Abortion clinics fight much less restrictive regulations than birthing centers gladly comply with because their top priority is the almighty dollar rather than patient safety.
So true, Elizabeth. Giving birth *can* be an event which might necessitate a crash cart or other emergency assistance. This is true whether a woman chooses to deliver her child at a birthing center or an abortion clinic. Sometimes the unexpected happens in labor and delivery, so why wouldn’t all abortion clinics anticipate this and willingly oblige to all safety standards to protect women? At the bare minimum, women should demand that these clinics are subject to the same inspections and certifications that day surgery centers are. And when a patient is injured or killed at one of these clinics (and why so often, I ask? It’s 2013. Shouldn’t they have perfected the art of murder by now?) the pro-abortion crowd says nothing. Silence! I thought the health and safety of women’s lives were paramount to these people? I tell you truthfully, if one dog here in Colorado was harmed while having its puppies aborted at a veterinarian’s office, there would be riots in the streets. Just look at the vigil they held in Boulder over an elk. Sigh…
I agree with y’all. It seems that if they want abortion so much it would be in their best interest to have the regulations. After all, from what I understand, hospitals are held to high regulations and are expected to be. Why not abortion clinics? What makes them the exception?
Jill,
EXCELLENT piece! And to Christina, you prove once again how invaluable you are to the pro-life movement.
I never realized that mammograms, STD and birth control counselling, and prenatal care were so fraught with danger.
I noticed the guard rail is off and as I recall, a frontal view of these same steps on a previous thread showed they were supported by cinderblocks. Are there a few building code violations here? Also, how safe is it for both paramedics and patient in this picture?
They aren’t interested in the safety of women. They are worried about their paychecks.
All of these strange comments and tweets are from persons who are paid solely from the profits of the abortion industry. They’ll say anything to protect those profits.
They’ll stop protecting the abortion industry as soon as they stop getting paid.
Great piece, Jill. I live in Alabama and we recently had this type legislation pass in our state, but it wasn’t easy. There was extreme opposition by PP, they even planned a Women’s Day and brought a busload of people from Atlanta (because they have a voice in passing laws in our state??), passed out free t-shirts and lunches. They claimed there were ‘hundreds’ at their event, but I was there and they had no more than 75 people, and that is a generous estimate. And I also wanted to mention, the clinic in Birmingham (pictured above) has been operating without a license since last year, and the State Dept is finally investigating it, but only AFTER several pro-life groups held a press conference across the street demanding for an investigation. These so called TRAP laws, should be supported on both sides of the issue, if it was truly about women’s health. I even had a pro-choice friend in another state read the actual bill (HB57), and she even asked, saying she is pro-choice and supports it, I am pro-life and support it.. so who opposed it? Very interesting that some people who are pro-choice would support it when they know what is in it.
Hi Sherry R,
What if the paramedics in this picture were performing CPR or other emergency measures and had to stop what they were doing so as to carry a patient down the stairs? Christina describes what can be involved in emergency care of a patient. Precious seconds, and the patient’s life, could be lost. Let’s consider the paramedic(s) could also be seriously injured on those stairs!
Medical treatment being administered?? At an abortion mill??
LOL
Nothing absolutely nothing has changed. Its gotten WORSE ! Before abortion became legal.feminists moaned about women dying from infections unsafe and unsanitary conditions worrying about sexual assault from an abortion provider and death. So what’s changed?
I remember an old quote from a woman complaining about the back ally days. The abortionist said. “You tramps are all alike. You get yourselves in trouble and all come crawling for help.” Sometimes a sexual favor had ti be performed for a woman to have her abortion. Brian Finkle is a former Arizona abortion doctor locked up for 81 counts of molestation rape and gsi. He jerked one woman down hard on the table and tried to kiss her. Yet another woman compained he was sucking her breast. Also he was raping them and told a woman “You have a pretty Explicit for private part.”!!! They finally locked the jerk up.
Eh sorry for typos getting tired. He also prided himself on his suction machine he called the “super sucker” He quoted “Back in the good old days I could open up a woman in 5 minutes ( the cervix.) It was only when I worked on the abortion floor that I realized women will do ANYTHING for an abortion .
But feminists protected him anyway. Minors were easier to molest and rape because they wouldn’t tell and when women began to come forward they were blown off or dismissed as just a hysterical woman. shhhhhh be quiet!
Luckily he’s doing 20 years!
Wonder what it is with Diane Derzis painting her chop shops pepto pink…she is at least co owner of both New Woman All Women pictured above, and JWHO, the one remaining death mill in Mississippi, and probably still has interests in several others in Georgia and Virginia. Clearly, she cares nothing about the “safe” part of “safe, legal and rare”. Apparently she isn’t too concerned about the legal part, either; the mill pictured here was closed down by the Alabama health department some time ago; but I understand that she has reopened it illegally. And rare? give me a break; what business wants to sell less of their flagship?
Great stuff as usual, Jill, Mary and Christina!
“At no point does the width of doorways have any bearing on the medical treatment that’s being administered,” griped Planned Parenthood of Indiana Executive Director Betty Cockrum to jconline.com.
ms Betty,
It only matters if you’re the one who’s bleeding out and the emergecy medical personel want to transport you on a gurney, but they can’t get it thru the doors.
Excellent work, Jill, thank you.
So wider hallways and doorways restrict rather than increase access to abortion clinics? Clearly no physics majors in this bunch.
The utter lack of compassion for women like Karnamaya Mongar who just might have been saved by wider hallways makes the lie of the rhetoric by pro-abortionist groups about how much they care about the rights of women. What they care about is money, power and something to justify their existence as groups and businesses.
Jodi Jacobsen’s nonsensical and dismissive Tweet reply to Jill is typical of pro-abortion elitism. Those of us who really care about human life and women’s health are just so beneath them. Yes, Jodi, I’m an “anti”. I’m anti poor health for women, I’m anti poorly regulated clinics and their workers who get away with murder literally, I’m anti gendercide, anti-hate and anti abortion.
Elizabeth, in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade, there were 37 mothers who died of illegal abortions; the talk of thousands of women dying in back allies was all lies, as many pro-abortionists proudly admitted after Roe v Wade. There are hundreds who have died since and that’s just the ones that have been uncovered out of government and abortion industry red tape and coverup:
http://safeandlegal.com/the-pro-choice-death-list/
Mary, unless something has changed lately, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson recently admitted that not one PP facility had mammography equipment. Supposedly some of them do referrals but that’s hardly the same thing.
“So wider hallways and doorways restrict rather than increase access to abortion clinics? Clearly no physics majors in this bunch.”
That’s priceless, Victor. :) After all, isn’t something easier to ‘access’ if the door is bigger?
Some women are aborting because their ob/gyn’s refer them rather be responsible for caring for the mother and her baby. Some are using abortion as double-secret-birth control. They don’t want anyone to know they were pregnant, and if they have a late term abortion, they lie and say it was a miscarriage. At the heart of these motivations: shirking responsibility.
If people were willing to take responsibility for their actions, there would be almost no demand for abortions. Shirking responsibility is the name of the game. I don’t have to care for a child, I don’t have to care for a patient, I don’t have to care. And often, as we see with abortion advocates, people who shirk responsibility learn to make a real habit of it. They’re not responsible for the children they create, or the patients they refer, and now, they don’t want to be responsible for the gross behavior of an abortionist. They want to blame, blame, blame, because they can’t handle even the most minimal amount of responsibility. I’m not suprised by the antics of the anti-lifers. But, sigh, I sure wish they would have suprised me over the years. I wish that when we say they don’t care about safety, that they would care, and prove me wrong. Sometimes, it’s just sad to be right.
Thank you Julia. :D If I didn’t at least try to have a bit of a sense of humor in situations like this, I sometimes think they would totally overwhelm me.
You nailed it, Ninek. Again instead of taking responsibility pro-abortionists are blaming pro-lifers. Exactly what did pro-lifers do to make their hallways and doorways smaller? Did pro-lifers force them to buy small cheap buildings, then try to cram them with women to pay them for abortions?
We are becoming less and less a country of people who take responsibility for their own actions, and more and more a country of people who blame others–and usually the blame goes to those who are the least blameworthy.
We are becoming less and less a country of people who take responsibility for their own actions, and more and more a country of people who blame others–and usually the blame goes to those who are the least blameworthy.
Ah yes, Victor – it’s called scapegoating, a component of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Great quip about the physics majors… !
Yes listen up pro lifers IT’S ALL our fault that paramedics can’t get down those narrow hallways to get to the dying women! After warning them not to go in there! ALL our fault!!
They cram as many women as they can into a shoddy building to save themselves money and profit on all the babies they can kill in a day. Why put money into making the clinic better when that could be money for the abortionists new Lexus or golf club membership and trips galore. Employee bonuses.
“Ah yes, Victor – it’s called scapegoating, a component of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Great quip about the physics majors… !”
Thanks jtm! :D
I am convinced that for some years now, the USA has been turning into a narcissistic society. I grew up with someone with a major case of NPD, I know the signs, and I see a lot of it in our entitlement culture, where people love to scream for their own rights but have no care for who they trample on to get those “rights”.
Like the “right” to murder helpless unborn children for profit while forgetting about their right to live, and the right of mothers to be safe, have good health, and to be told the truth.
Yes I agree Victor. A 17 year old girl was just arrested for a hit skip on an elderly woman crossing the street with a walker. The woman’s son exclaimed ” My mom was slower than a turtle with her walker. IDK how on earth she didn’t know she hit her.” The accident happened in January and the girl was just arrested today. She knew shed hit her but kept going. I’m sure she was scared but had it been me I would have checked to see if I could have helped the poor woman. Now she’s in scalding hot water. It’s I i i i i me me me me. I’m in trouble .
I mean where is your conscience? Yes she would have been in trouble but her charges might have been reduced to accidental vehicular homicide. How could you just leave an old woman dying in the street in the freezing snow? Now its hit skip and then some.
Right, Heather this is what happens in a culture of death: a callousness toward life and other human beings. What so many people don’t understand and maybe don’t want to understand is that while abortion is clearly a horrible tragedy all by itself, it is not a horror in isolation. Abortion leads to a lot of other problems, including a lack of respect for life and other human beings.