Tag: atlantic women’s medical services

National Abortion Federation suspends Delaware abortion clinic

As I noted on Saturday, the National Abortion Federation deleted references on the organization website to Atlantic Women’s Medical Services late last week after my inquiries. This morning, The News Journal is reporting that the Atlantic clinics in Wilmington and Dover as well as a clinic in LA have been suspended.

The suspension, which had been recommended in a 261-page report by a Philadelphia grand jury that investigated Gosnell, came following a meeting of the executive committee of the federation’s board of directors, a federation representative wrote in an e-mail.

The suspension also applies to clinics that are affiliated with Atlantic in Louisiana, according to the statement.

Atlantic, which has clinics on Baynard Boulevard in Wilmington and on North DuPont Highway in Dover, is owned by Leroy Brinkley, who according to court papers also owns the Delta Clinic in Baton Rouge, La.

The Delta Clinic was cited by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals in a 2009 for a number of health and safety violations that regulators believed put the lives of patients at risk. The clinic, however, has fixed those deficiencies, according to Louisiana officials.

As a result of the suspension, the National Abortion Federation will no longer be referring patients to the Delaware or Louisiana facilities, according to the federation. Atlantic and Delta are also no longer listed on the federation’s website under “find a provider.” But NAF did not shut the clinic down because it has no jurisdiction or authority to do so.

I started contacting both the NAF and the Wilmington clinic last week and received this statement from NAF about Atlantic late Thursday.

NAF has been cooperating with the District Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. We take the Grand Jury Report seriously and we need to understand why they made the recommendation that they did in order to determine how to proceed.

It is hard to understand what else the NAF needed in order to make a determination about how to proceed. When this statement was made, the NAF had not suspended the Atlantic clinic but had been aware of the grand jury report which recommended the reassessment of the Wilmington clinic.

The LA clinic had also been under fire from pro-life groups due to allegations of poor conditions.

Delaware does not require inspections of abortion clinics which is similar to how PA related to them until the Kermit Gosnell scandal came to light. In states where such inspections are not required, the NAF is likely the only outside entity which evaluates conditions in abortion clinics. In the Gosnell grand jury report, the NAF representative testified that Kermit Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic was denied membership. However, the evaluator said that a denial had not happened before in her experience. Then she explained why such denials were rare.

The evaluator told the Grand Jury that this was the first time in her experience that NAF had outright rejected a provider for membership. Usually, if a clinic is able to fix deficiencies and come into compliance with the standards, NAF will admit them. Gosnell’s clinic, however, was deemed beyond redemption.

What seems clear is that in many states abortion is practically unregulated. If the state does not visit the clinic, clinics could go for years with no outside evaluation. The NAF only visits every 5-7 years, and their reports have no teeth legally. As the grand jury report points out, nail salons have more oversight.

National Abortion Federation quietly removes reference to Gosnell’s Delaware clinic

Sometime Friday, the National Abortion Federation removed reference to the Atlantic Women’s Medical Services in Wilmington, DE from their website. Atlantic is the clinic where Philadelphia abortion doctor and accused murderer, Kermit Gosnell, worked one day per week until early last year. For now, the clinic remains in the search cache.

Late Thursday, the NAF issued a statement to me indicating confusion about why the Philadelphia grand jury recommended that the NAF “reassess” the membership of Atlantic. At least six illegal abortions were paid for and began at the Delaware clinic. The Director of the clinic, Leroy Brinkley, failed to produce records relating to three of the clients in question. One of Gosnell’s staff, Lynda Williams, also worked at both clinics and has been charged with murder. An NAF spokesperson told me via email:

NAF has been cooperating with the District Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. We take the Grand Jury Report seriously and we need to understand why they made the recommendation that they did in order to determine how to proceed.

The grand jury report made clear why the recommendation to reassess was made.

We recommend that NAF reassess the membership of Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, the Delaware abortion clinic where Gosnell worked part-time before losing his license in that state. We learned that at least six patients were referred from Atlantic to Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia for illegal late-term abortions. These patients paid Atlantic for late-term procedures performed by Gosnell in his Lancaster Avenue clinic.

We heard evidence that Gosnell would insert laminaria in patients in Delaware and then have them come to his Philadelphia office for the abortion procedure itself. The director of Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, Leroy Brinkley, was unconcerned. He did not properly supervise the doctors he hired as “independent contractors” to assure that they were complying with the law. Remarkably, despite Gosnell’s long time association with Atlantic, Brinkley only produced three files for patients seen by Gosnell at Brinkley’s clinic.

Although, the NAF statement implies lack of understanding about why Atlantic should be removed, the clinic is not now showing up on the NAF website via search of clinics in DE. The membership status of Atlantic is not clear.

On Friday, the DE Attorney General, Beau Biden, announced the beginning of an investigation into the Atlantic clinic.