Politics

Utah Sen. Mike Lee takes on abortion crimes in Gosnell resolution

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As the jury in the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell resumes deliberation, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee is set to introduce a resolution Monday highlighting Gosnell’s alleged crimes and calling for more oversight of abortion practices and facilities.

Lee’s resolution, obtained by The Daily Caller, focuses in large measure on the crimes for which Gosnell is being tried. It is entitled, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that Congress and the States should investigate and correct abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices.”

“Whereas the Report of the Grand Jury documented a pattern, over a period of 2 decades, at the Women’s Medical Society of Philadelphia of untrained and uncertified personnel performing abortions, non-medical personnel administering medications, grossly unsanitary and dangerous conditions, violations of law regarding storage of human remains, and, above all, instances of willful murder of infants born alive by severing their spinal cords,” the resolution reads in part.

The Grand Jury report, cited in Lee’s resolution, tells the gut-wrenching details about what allegedly went on inside Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” clinic. It describes Gosnell’s clinic as a “baby charnel house” in which Gosnell sought to reap the highest profit without regard for the safety of those in his care or the lives of the babies whose necks he “snipped.”

Gosnell faces more than 250 criminal charges, including first degree murder charges for the deaths of four babies born alive in botched abortions and a third degree murder charge for one woman killed in 2009 from a drug overdose during an abortion.

“[N]o woman should ever be abandoned, by policy or practice, to the depredations of an unlicensed, unregulated, or uninspected clinic operating outside of the law with no regard for the mothers or children ostensibly under its care,” the resolution states, going on to add that it is incumbent upon federal, state and local governments “to prevent dangerous conditions at abortion clinics.”

The resolution further delves into the fact that women were referred from out of state to Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society of Philadelphia. It also reports of other unsavory practices in other abortion facilities, including Planned Parenthood clinics in Delaware.

Lee’s resolution declares that the Senate should look to rectify “abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices” as well as “the interstate referral of women and girls to facilities engaged in dangerous or illegal second- and third-trimester procedures.”

The resolution also calls for congressional investigations and hearings on abortions performed near and at a fetus’ point of viability in order to “evaluate the extent to which such abortions involve violations of the civil right to life of infants who are born alive or are capable of being born alive, and therefore are entitled to equal protection under the law.”

Lee’s resolution adds that a government review of these issues is “long overdue and is an urgent priority.”

Gosnell’s alleged crimes were only uncovered when his facility was raided for a drug investigation and the police noticed the unsavory conditions of his clinic.

“In the end, Gosnell was only caught by accident, when police raided his offices to seize evidence of his illegal prescription selling,” the Grand Jury report reads. “Once law enforcement agents went in, they couldn’t help noticing the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses. That is why the complete regulatory collapse that occurred here is so inexcusable. It should have taken only one look.”

On Monday, the Gosnell jury is slated resume deliberations.