Abortion foes want probe of clinic in Del. where Gosnell worked

DOVER, Del. - An anti-abortion group called on federal prosecutors in Delaware yesterday to investigate a women's clinic tied to a Pennsylvania doctor charged with several counts of murder.

The Seaford-based Delaware Family Policy Council also urged state Attorney General Beau Biden, who previously announced his agency's own investigation of Atlantic Women's Medical Services, to "thoroughly and publicly" detail his findings regarding AWMS clinics in Wilmington and Dover.

The clinic is associated with Kermit Gosnell, 66, who is charged with murder in Pennsylvania and whose Delaware licenses to practice medicine and dispense drugs were suspended last March because of allegations against him in Pennsylvania.

In letters to Biden and U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly III, the Family Policy Council asked for investigations of Delaware clinic director Leroy Brinkley and of Arturo Apolinario, a clinic doctor whose controlled-substances license lapsed in June 2009.

Delaware Family Policy Council president Nicole Theis said allegations of controlled-substance violations at the Pennsylvania clinic led to the discovery of other problems. "That's what opened their doors, and we're asking the doors to be opened here," she said.

Biden spokesman Jason Miller reiterated that the attorney general's office is conducting a "wide-ranging investigation" of Gosnell.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Oberly said the office had not received any correspondence from the council and would not comment.

Messages left for Apolinario at the women's clinic were not immediately returned yesterday. Brinkley declined to comment on his attorney's advice.

According to a Pennsylvania grand-jury report released earlier this month, Brinkley owns the clinic in Delaware, where Gosnell worked one day a week. He also owns a clinic in Baton Rouge, La., which has a history of troubles.

The grand jury recommended that the National Abortion Federation reassess the Delaware clinic's membership, saying at least six patients were referred from Atlantic to Gosnell's clinic in Philadelphia for illegal late-term abortions.

"The director of Atlantic Women's Medical Services, Leroy Brinkley, was unconcerned," the report stated, adding that Brinkley did not properly supervise the doctors he hired and that, despite Gosnell's long association with Atlantic, Brinkley had produced only three files for patients seen by Gosnell in Delaware.

"Where are the records?" Theis asked yesterday at a news conference. " . . . It is vital that we know what they knew and when they knew it."