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Clinic of man who had performed over 40,000 abortions closes

Oct 22, 2019

By Maria V. Gallagher, Legislative Director, Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation

Editor’s note. The following appeared in the October digital edition of National Right to Life News. Please share the contents with your pro-life friends and family and urge them to sign up to receive NRL News and NRL News Today here.

Few outside of Pennsylvania will remember that Dr. Charles Benjamin testified at the 2013 murder trial of Kermit Gosnell. Benjamin told the jury that had performed 40,000 abortions over what was then a 30-year career.

Six years later Dr. Benjamin’s Berger & Benjamin abortion facility in Philadelphia has closed, as documented on the Pennsylvania Department of Health website. No reason was given.

Recently, the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation discovered the closure during a routine check of Health Department inspection reports. The reports are the result of the Keystone State’s trailblazing abortion center regulation law, which grew out of the Gosnell tragedy.

Gosnell was ultimately convicted of murdering three newborn babies and of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a female immigrant patient, Karnamaya Mongar, in his West Philadelphia “House of Horrors” abortion center.

When the clinic regulation legislation was originally proposed, it contained a loophole which would have prevented unannounced state inspections of abortion centers. But, thanks to the diligent work of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, the loophole closed, the bill passed, and unannounced inspections of abortion facilities have become the norm.

A newspaper report from April 15, 2013, documents what Dr. Charles Benjamin testified to at Gosnell’s murder trial.

Benjamin said he “takes far more precautions than the man charged with killing a patient and several babies,” according to Mary Beth Marklein and John Bacon.

For instance, Benjamin stated that he did not perform abortions after 21 weeks’ gestation (the legal limit in PA is 24 weeks). However, “On cross-examination, Benjamin did testify that his partner once had an abortion patient die of sepsis,” a lethal condition caused by the body’s response to infection.

Visit the national website CheckMyClinic.org, and you’ll find the results of the inspections at Berger & Benjamin. It paints a very different picture. For instance, fetal remains and medication were stored in the same refrigerator. The abortion center did not possess a policy “to address the safe storage of medications.” For example, lidocaine was unsecured, kept on a shelf in a cabinet that anyone could have had access to.

Moreover, the facility “failed to meet standards for infection control and sterilization, and had no policy in place to address infection control and sterilization.”

Meanwhile, a June state inspection report of Berger & Benjamin states, “This report is the result of a special monitor survey conducted onsite on June 24, 2019, at Berger and Benjamin, LLP. The facility voluntarily ceased services and relinquished their registration certificate.”

The reason for the closure of Benjamin’s abortion operation is unknown. Nevertheless, it is welcomed news for the women and children of southeastern Pennsylvania, who will be spared the trauma and tragedy of abortion at Benjamin’s long-operating facility.

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