The Atlantic has taken a shocking stance by criticizing an abortion-supporting non-profit organization for its inaction in reporting the horrifying facility where Kermit Gosnell murderously severed babies’ spinal cords to perform abortions. A network of non-profit groups called the National Network of Abortion Funds that sprang up in 1993 to fund abortions for poor women included a Philadelphia fund founded in 1985 called the Women’s Medical Fund. The Women’s Medical Fund claimed it helped 1,532 women get money to pay for their abortions last year, but its executive director, Susan Schewel, said they never worked with Gosnell.
Yet Schewel admitted that her organization’s help line took calls from some women who had been at Gosnell’s clinic, and that she attempted to help two women file complaints to the Pennsylvania Department of Health about him. But the two women gave up because the complaint process was too tedious and they didn’t want to tell their own stories.
Schewel stated, “We had heard stories over the years about care that seemed inappropriate. We had no idea–no idea–of how horrible things were there. We just didn’t know. We thought there were little odds and ends of problems, but nothing like this … All of us were completely surprised to learn how bad it was.” But when asked why she didn’t complain, she answered, “It really had to be a patient.”
Schewel was also asked why her feminist fund eschewed associating with Gosnell’s facility, if she wasn’t complaining to officials about it. She replied that there were stories of the caretakers at the facility wearing lab coats but no name tags. She admitted, “I think that’s not OK. I think it’s required by regulations to wear a name tag. It never occurred to us that these would be unlicensed people wearing lab coats.”
But in 2010 Pennsylvania passed legislation making identification requirement much stricter, requiring all medical personnel wear photo IDS that had their names and credentials in block letters.