After the macabre findings from notorious abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia charnel house were made public in 2011, lawmakers in Pennsylvania enacted legislation that ensures, among other things, that state inspectors will regularly visit abortion facilities in the state.
The Pro-Life Action League has obtained the most recent inspection at the Hillcrest Women’s Medical Center (HWMC) abortion facility in Harrisburg — and, like so many other abortion clinic inspections, it really throws a spanner in the works of the “pro-choice” movement’s claims that heightened oversight of abortion clinics is “medically unnecessary” and “politically motivated.”
No Patient Safety Plan = “Safe and Legal”?
On August 12, 2016, officials from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Health began an unannounced complaint investigation at HWMC. Among the findings listed in the inspection report was the following:
Hillcrest Women’s Medical Center was not in compliance with the following State Law… A medical facility shall develop, implement and comply with an internal patient safety plan that shall be established for the purpose of improving the health and safety of patients.”
The inspection then goes on to curtly note: “Based on review of facility policy and staff interview, it was determined the facility failed to develop a Patient Safety Plan.”
But that’s not all. The report went on to note:
Observation of the facility on August 12, 2016, revealed the facility was very warm and did not have operating air conditioning. According to Accuweather, the actual high temperature on August 12, 2016, was 96 degrees Fahrenheit. The facility did not have a thermometer inside and could not provide the room air temperature.
An interview conducted on August 12, 2016, at 10:00 AM with EMP1 [Employee #1] confirmed the facility did not report the loss of air conditioning, as an infrastructure failure. EMP1 further revealed that the air conditioning broke around June 17-20, 2016. EMP1 confirmed that a service technician was onsite on June 23, 2016, and July 28, 2016. The air conditioner had not been fixed as of August 12, 2016. EMP1 further stated that “I guess I should have reported it.”
The air conditioning had been out for two months during the summer, and on a day when the high temperature is 96 degrees, all the abortion clinic’s employee can say is, “I guess I should have reported it.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
In the facility’s Plan of Correction, HWMC notes that the air conditioning failure “did not interfere with [the] facility’s operation” and was ultimately replaced, but this raises the question: Really? Sterile packaging must be kept at temperature-controlled and humidity-controlled levels. After prolonged exposure to extreme heat and humidity, one wonders how the sterility of the instruments was maintained at this abortion clinic.
Right to Privacy? What Right to Privacy?
Inspectors also noted that HWMC “failed to ensure medical records were stored in manner to prevent loss, damage and unauthorized access” when they found “multiple boxes” of patients’ medical records in an unlocked and, what’s more, unlockable—the door didn’t even have a handle—room.
So much for protecting women’s “right to privacy.”
No Wonder Abortion Clinics Don’t Like Being Inspected
Abortion clinics have proven time and again that they simply cannot be trusted to police themselves. Hence, the need for strict oversight. If these are the conditions that are found in an abortion clinic that is regularly inspected, imagine what the conditions are in abortion clinics—like several in Illinois—that are never inspected?
That it is necessary for state inspectors to show a so-called medical facility how to protect their patients speaks to the tendency of all human beings to be lazy, but especially to the clinic’s lack of respect for life. It should come as no surprise that those who would cut babies into pieces may find it difficult to show much concern for the lives of their mothers.
