[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6399-6401]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     THE CASE OF DR. KERMIT GOSNELL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. 
Fleming) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. FLEMING. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

[[Page 6400]]

  It is, indeed, a pleasure to be here tonight to talk about a very, 
very important subject, and that is the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell.
  Before I do, I do want to mention a couple of things about the 
previous Special Order of my friends on the other side of the aisle who 
were talking about, for instance, Medicare and coverage under Medicare 
and ObamaCare, pointing out that insurance companies are not as good as 
the government in terms of denying care. I would suggest to my friends 
that at least you can change your insurance companies. You cannot 
change your government. So I see that as a fatal flaw, among many, with 
ObamaCare.
  Also, a lot of time was spent talking about income disparity. I 
absolutely agree with my friends that the rich are getting richer and 
that the poor are getting poorer in America--but President Barack Obama 
has been our President for the last nearly 5 years. It's his policies 
that are creating that situation. In fact, unemployment levels among 
minorities, particularly Hispanics and African Americans, are at 
historically high levels. It is because of the policies of Obamanomics, 
ObamaCare regulations, Dodd-Frank, and the excessive spending that has 
been occurring in Washington that have led to this problem.
  Then, finally, my friends talked about the fact that the President 
has submitted a couple of jobs bills and that we've refused to take 
them up or to pass them. I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that these jobs 
bills are nothing more than mini-stimulus bills which passed this 
House, under Democrat control, in the first 2 years of the President's 
first term. What did we get as a result? Only more deficits and more 
debt. We did not get an improvement of the jobs picture.
  On the other hand, in the last term, under a Republican-controlled 
House, we passed 33 jobs bills, and the President and the Senate, 
controlled by Democrats, would not take up even a single one. One of 
them included diverting revenue from energy on Federal lands to 
rebuilding bridges and highways, the very infrastructure that they're 
talking about.

                              {time}  1720

  So again I would submit, Mr. Speaker, and to our friends on the other 
side of the aisle, that perhaps they need to update their talking 
points. They're giving the same ones they gave in 2009 at the beginning 
of the Obama administration. Now we're nearly 5 years down the road in 
the second Obama term, and the policies we're living under and have 
been the Obama economic policies, not Republican policies, and 
certainly not President Bush.
  Mr. Speaker, I'd like to talk about Kermit Gosnell. The mayor of 
Philadelphia says that Dr. Kermit Gosnell is an aberration, an outlier, 
a rare case. Gosnell, of course, is the abortionist in Philadelphia who 
is awaiting a verdict on charges of killing four babies and a woman, 
though we know that there were many more. Philadelphia's mayor said of 
these atrocities, ``This is a highly unusual situation.''
  Perhaps it's no wonder why some see Gosnell as an aberration. His 
clinic was inspected only three times in 31 years, and it was never 
inspected from 1993 to 2010. The gruesome discovery of multiple body 
parts from aborted babies, blood splattered on the walls, and other 
deplorable conditions were discovered only by accident.
  I want to point out that I think we know what Dr. Gosnell was all 
about. He was not about elevated principles of doing right for women, 
women's health and this sort of thing. Mr. Speaker, it was about money, 
and you'll see why.
  Despite the fact that this had been going on for 31 years, it went 
undiscovered. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration entered 
the clinic with the correct belief that Gosnell was running an illegal 
prescription drug business selling OxyContin and many other highly 
addictive drugs. He was writing about 1,900 prescriptions a month, and 
customers were picking them up in a takeout fashion.
  Again, it was not about elevated principles and women's health; it 
was about money.
  Law enforcement had no idea, until they raided Gosnell's clinic in 
2010, that the pill mill he was running by day was a gruesome abortion 
mill by night. Gosnell had been performing late-term abortions for 
decades, and his procedures caused so much harm to women that he was 
being hit with malpractice lawsuits.
  You see, in late term, doing those kind of abortions, it is very 
damaging to the womb. In many cases, they use sharp instruments to 
literally cut up the little baby, to puncture the skull. That's very 
damaging to the womb, and, of course, women can have excessive 
bleeding, a perforated uterus. These things lead to complications and, 
of course, lawsuits.
  So it is a sad irony, but abortion supporters have argued for years 
that making abortion legal protects women from the kind of butchery 
performed by doctors like Gosnell. But you see, Dr. Gosnell, after 
having literally dozens of lawsuits, he decided that it was safer for 
Gosnell--not for the women--to stop trying to kill the babies in the 
womb. He just went ahead and induced labor in late term and then killed 
the baby shortly thereafter the birth.
  How did he do it? He did what he referred to as ``snipping.'' He 
would thrust a pair of scissors in the base of the skull, in the back 
of the neck, clip the spinal cord, destroy the lower part of the brain 
and make the baby stop breathing. In fact, witnesses said that in a 
number of cases, the late-term babies, but somewhat premature but 
certainly well enough mature to have survived outside of the womb, 
would be there breathing before he did his heinous acts, or in some 
cases were actually crying.
  I know we'd like to wish that Kermit Gosnell was an aberration. In 
fact, I hope there's a day when we look back and see the practice of 
abortion itself as a horrible aberration in a culture that should 
defend life and protect the innocent.
  Since Bill Clinton first said it in 1996, the pro-abortion side has 
been telling us that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare, yet 
there are still more than a million abortions each year in the United 
States. We know that they're never safe for the unborn child because 
the child dies, of course. And as we can see, they're often dangerous 
for the women involved not only during the procedure, but shortly 
thereafter and often long term. We know statistics tell us that the 
infertility rate down the road, suicide rate, depression and many other 
scales by which we measure quality of life are all diminished after 
abortions. And the more abortions, the worse the outcomes.
  How many other Gosnells work in secret without inspections or 
regulations, as in this case? Perhaps they're not really so rare. Take, 
for example, Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who was responsible for the abortion 
procedure earlier this year in Maryland that ended with the death of a 
29-year-old woman who was 33 weeks pregnant. Carhart had another 
patient die after a similar procedure in 2005.
  In Muskegon, Michigan, details are just surfacing about another 
abortionist who is accused of leaving the decapitated head of an unborn 
child inside a woman's womb after rupturing her uterus and nearly 
taking her life. The Michigan State Legislature is investigating why 
the State Board of Medicine did not pursue earlier complaints about 
this same doctor.
  You see, what we're finding in many cases is that the medical 
agencies who are responsible for oversight are turning their heads when 
it comes to the issue of abortion. They're all about inspecting 
hospitals and doctors' offices; but when it comes to abortion, they 
don't want to even go there, apparently.
  In recent weeks, we've seen undercover videos from the group Live 
Action showing doctors and medical personnel at abortion clinics with a 
callous and even heinous disregard for life. In the most recent video, 
a woman who is at 23 weeks gestation in her pregnancy asked if there 
was any chance her baby might be born alive and could she take it home 
if it is. A clinic counselor assures her that it is not likely to 
happen and says that if

[[Page 6401]]

the child happens to be born alive during the abortion procedure, the 
medical staff will make no efforts to preserve the child's life but 
will allow it simply to die.
  That's no surprise, considering the Planned Parenthood representative 
who testified about the late-term abortions in March before a Florida 
State House subcommittee. When asked what Planned Parenthood would want 
to happen if a baby was born alive and still struggling to live after a 
botched abortion, she said, ``We believe that any decisions that's made 
should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.''
  When pressed further about what Planned Parenthood physicians do if a 
baby is alive and moving and breathing on the table, she answered, ``I 
do not have that information.''
  Doesn't that sound familiar?
  Remember that President Obama was once asked, ``When does life 
begin?'' of course implying, does it begin at conception? His answer 
was it was above his pay grade. Mr. Speaker, if it's above the 
President's pay grade, where do we go from there? Certainly Planned 
Parenthood doesn't know the answer either.
  I can tell you I do. I'm a physician. It's called the Born-Alive 
Infants Protection Act, a Federal law that was enacted in 2002, that 
extends legal protections to any infant born alive during an attempted 
abortion. There shouldn't be any doubt or any question about what to do 
with that baby. It is a life that is to be preserved.
  Remember, Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in 
this country. So if a Planned Parenthood representative in Florida 
thinks it's okay for the family to decide to let the child die, is 
there really any doubt that there are many more cases like Kermit 
Gosnell?
  Beyond cases of infanticide, badly injured women, and even women who 
have died during abortions, there has been an increase in the number of 
reports of dangerous and filthy conditions at abortion clinics. State 
officials in Delaware are investigating Planned Parenthood of Delaware 
for unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

                              {time}  1730

  In Virginia, again, elaboration here, there are many different 
examples of problems. In Virginia, an abortion clinic closed this month 
because it didn't want to operate under new safety standards and proper 
inspections that have been long overdue in the Commonwealth. Virginia's 
State Legislature and the State's Board of Health overwhelmingly saw 
the need for commonsense rules, like making sure doorways are wide 
enough for an emergency gurney to pass through so a patient can be 
taken to an ambulance in case of an emergency.
  Sadly, the abortion industry, with its focus on bottom-line profits--
and remember Kermit Gosnell. He ran a pill mill during the day and 
performed late-term abortions at night. We know what he was all about. 
It was not elevated principles. It was not women's health. It was all 
about the almighty dollar.
  What the Gosnell case and these others have helped to expose is the 
sad truth that some States simply look the other way while abortion 
clinics run amuck and the health and lives of women are endangered. 
Let's be clear: there's no such thing as a safe abortion. Not only does 
the pregnant woman face emotional and physical risks, up to and 
including death, but each abortion is the ending of an innocent human 
life.
  So, how is it that we have a Humane Society for animals but we don't 
have a humane society for the most vulnerable and innocent humans, 
babies? Why is it that the media and many Americans go crazy over the 
treatment of wild and domesticated animals, yet seem to turn a deaf ear 
to the silent screams emanating from inside the womb of millions of 
young women.
  Mr. Speaker, what can be done about such alleged murderers as 
Gosnell? How many more Gosnells are out there damaging wombs and 
killing babies? If we wait on the media and State health care officials 
to find them, we may have to wait many years while many deaths occur.
  Therefore, I call on State legislatures and Governors to write 
ironclad laws and regulations to protect mothers and infants from these 
heinous acts, State regulators to ensure that abortion clinics and 
abortionists are adhering completely to every rule and law now in place 
and the many more that will be established in the future, we hope. And, 
I call on prosecutors and judges to make sure that abortionists and 
abortion clinics that break the law and that defy the Born-Alive Act 
face the full measure of law.
  Finally, we stand today with our national conscience stirred by the 
Gosnell trial to stop and look again at life in the womb. Kermit 
Gosnell was killing babies who could otherwise survive had they been 
given the chance. But his trial is merely scratching the surface of the 
greater reality that medical technology has been showing us now for 
more than a decade: the life that is developing in the womb is a baby. 
It is a growing and developing child that feels pain, we know 
scientifically, as early as 20 weeks gestation, midpregnancy, and maybe 
even earlier. And destroying that life is extremely painful to the baby 
and should not--that is, abortion--be an option.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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