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Gosnell case forces firings, reg changes at state level

HARRISBURG - Some state employees have been fired and two Pennsylvania agencies have overhauled their regulations in the wake of allegations that a West Philadelphia doctor performed illegal abortions that killed a patient and viable infants, Gov. Corbett said yesterday.

HARRISBURG - Some state employees have been fired and two Pennsylvania agencies have overhauled their regulations in the wake of allegations that a West Philadelphia doctor performed illegal abortions that killed a patient and viable infants, Gov. Corbett said yesterday.

"It happened because people weren't doing their jobs, plain and simple," Corbett said of Kermit Gosnell's clinic of horrors.

Corbett said that four attorneys and two supervisors at the departments of Health and State were either fired or resigned on Friday, and that eight other employees involved in the internal investigation remain on the state payroll. Others had previously resigned, he said.

"This doesn't even rise to the level of government run amok," Corbett said. "It was government not running at all. To call this unacceptable doesn't say enough. It's despicable."

Corbett said the Department of State, which licenses medical professionals, has changed how it handles complaints and now requires more detailed reports. It also will train lawyers on investigative procedures, rules and regulations, and how to prosecute complaints, he said.

At the Health Department, which was not performing systematic checks of the state's abortion clinics for more than a decade before Gosnell's clinic was raided last year, yearly inspections are now mandatory and the results will be posted on the state website.

"Laws are already on the books that should have prevented this situation," Corbett said. "The correction needs to take place inside the two agencies assigned to oversee them, so my administration has drawn up a set of guidelines or protocols."

Corbett deflected questions about one of the grand jury's most explosive findings: that political considerations involving the issue of abortion led state regulators in the 1990s to cease systematic inspections of abortion facilities.

The 300-page grand-jury report that led to the charges against Gosnell, his wife and eight other employees said that state regulators ignored complaints about him and the clinic. The jury also said that testimony by some Health Department officials "enraged" them.