Delaware Abortion Business Blasted as ‘Ridiculously Unsafe’

Two former employees of the Planned Parenthood of Delaware abortion facility have spoken out against their employer.

WASHINGTON — Reports of another abortion business operating under drastically unsafe and unsanitary conditions have prompted pro-life leaders to call for more rigorous standards and inspections of Planned Parenthood.

“The abortion industry cannot be relied upon to police themselves,” said Susan B. Anthony List's president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, April 10.

She charged that abortion businesses’ opposition to efforts to strengthen health and safety standards in abortion facilities “does not reflect true concern for women and girls.”

“Planned Parenthood cannot claim to be truly concerned for women’s health while at the same time opposing laws aimed at securing women’s safety inside abortion clinics,” Dannenfelser said.

Ellen Barosse, founder of the Delaware pro-life group A Rose and a Prayer, also criticized the government response.

“It is a tragedy that in the state where we have the highest abortion rate in the country these abortion clinics are not even subject to routine inspection,” Barosse said.

“‘Safe, legal and rare’ has long been the mantra of the abortion industry and its supporters. It’s clear that in Delaware only legal matters — patient safety is not a concern.”

The pro-life leaders’ criticisms come after two former employees of the Planned Parenthood of Delaware abortion facility have spoken out against their employer. Five patients of the business have been taken from the site to the hospital since January.

Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich, a former Planned Parenthood of Delaware abortion business employee, told WPVI News that conditions were “ridiculously unsafe” and “unsanitary.” The abortionist did not wear gloves, she said.

Joyce Vasikonis, another former employee, said the facility was using instruments on patients that were not sterilized and that operating tables were left soiled and unclean in a rush to move patients through as quickly as possible.

Both women are nurses who quit to protect their own medical licenses. They said they believed they could be held liable if a patient were harmed.

Sites that perform abortions do not undergo routine inspections in the state. An official from the Delaware Department of Health and Human Services told WPVI News the agency lacks the manpower to do routine inspections.

Investigators said they have not found evidence to support the nurses’ claims, but the emergency-room admissions of facility patients have raised concerns.

The controversy over the Delaware abortion busineess comes as Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist at one time active in Wilmington, Dela., goes on trial in Philadelphia. He faces seven counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing seven infants born alive during abortions.

Prosecutors say he used scissors to cut the spinal cords of the born-alive infants. His attorney contends the infants were already dead and were only suffering death throes from the abortion drug Gosnell used.

He is charged with one count of third-degree murder in the 2009 death of a Virginia woman who was allegedly killed after Gosnell’s untrained staff administered an overdose of Demerol, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Dannenfelser suggested the two controversies are linked.

She said, “America’s No. 1 abortion business cannot claim that the Kermit Gosnell ‘house of horrors’ is an isolated incident, while their own employees expose them for conditions they call ‘ridiculously unsafe.’”