Abortion Clinics

 

NY State Health Commissioner suddenly announces he is resigning, follows report that abortion clinics rarely inspected

By Dave Andrusko

New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah to step down in June (Photo: AP)

The administration of pro-abortion New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says that is only a coincidence that hours after his likely opponent called for the resignation of State Health Commissioner Dr. Nirav Shah, word leaked out that Shah would be leaving in June to take a position with the Kaiser Health Foundation. They insisted “This has been in the works for quite awhile,” as a source told the New York Post.

But this hardly passes the straight-face test.
As NRL News Today reported (nrlc.cc/1oQUbE3 and nrlc.cc/1oQUgYc), Rob Astorino, a Republican running against Cuomo, delivered a 2 1/2-minute video Wednesday in which he spent much of his time criticizing the State Health Department and Cuomo for saying nothing in the 48 hours following a blockbuster story in the New York Post.
Post Reporter Carl Campanile, operating on data secured through a Freedom of Information inquiry filed by the Chiaroscuro Foundation, reported that only 17 of the 225 abortion providers in New York had been inspected in 13 years. To illustrate just how un-seriously the Health Department took its job, “city eateries are inspected every year and graded, while a new law requires tanning salons to undergo inspections at least once every other year,” the Post reported.
Noteworthy is that pro-abortionists acknowledged there are 225 abortion service providers in the state. Yet, as Campanile explained, the Health Department inspectors only “regulate 25 diagnostic and treatment clinics and surgery centers that provide abortion services.” What about those 25?
“Eight of the 25 clinics were never inspected over the 2000-12 span, five were inspected just once, and eight were inspected only twice or three times — meaning once every four or six years,” Campanile wrote. “A total of just 45 inspections were conducted at all 25 facilities during the 12-year period.”

In addition the New York State Department of Health told the Post that the agency had only taken legal action against one abortion clinic in all time.
In his video, Astorino said, “I am calling on Commissioner Shah to resign as state health commissioner.” And “if he refuses, I call on Governor Cuomo to replace him.”
Astorino told his audience, “Regardless of anyone’s feelings about abortion, these clinics must be clean and safe to protect women.” He added that the “State health department has completely ignored its responsibility to insure that,” warning, “That’s how the horrific Gosnell case in Pennsylvania occurred.”

Astorino then talked about the “the very few inspections” that had taken place “over the past dozen years.” The health department “found egregious sanitation violations at clinics–cringe-worthy violations–yet the department refuses to tell women at which clinics these violations occurred,” Astorino charged.
Even some pro-abortionists were willing to go public with their criticism.
“It’s kind of scary. The lack of inspections is really quite frightening,” state Sen. Diane Savino, a Democrat, told the Post. “These are facilities where women are seeking medical care. We shouldn’t allow these medical facilities to take second fiddle to inspections for tanning salons and restaurants.”

Source: NRLC News