Grand jury's report on abortion mill a roadmap of failure

After ripping Dana Haynes' cervix, uterus and bowel during a botched abortion, Kermit Gosnell - the West Philadelphia doctor now charged with murder - kept her bleeding and writhing in pain for four hours without calling for help, city prosecutors contend.

The doctor called an ambulance only after Haynes' cousins yelled to be let into his Women's Medical Society clinic and ordered him to do so. At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, doctors found that most of the nearly 17-week fetus still remained in Haynes' uterus. She needed extensive surgery and stayed at HUP for five days.

Haynes' November 2006 case represents just one of many examples in which authorities - particularly state officials - failed to investigate alarm bells that warned something awful was happening at Gosnell's clinic, according to the 261-page grand-jury report released by the District Attorney's Office on Wednesday.

If they had done so, they could have prevented the 2009 death of a 41-year-old woman who went to Gosnell for an abortion, and the killings of babies - who, after being delivered alive, had their necks slit and spinal cords severed - at Gosnell's filthy, cat-urine-reeking clinic, city prosecutors contend.

Gosnell, 69, and eight of his staffers were arraigned yesterday on counts that included murder, infanticide and related charges in the cases of the 41-year-old woman and seven babies. A ninth was awaiting arraignment last night.

According to the grand jury's report, people who allegedly looked the other way included:

* Juan Ruiz, a prosecuting attorney at the State Department - whose Board of Medicine licenses physicians - who in 2009 decided an investigation into Haynes' case was not warranted after he learned of a lawsuit filed by her.

He did not even look at Gosnell's history or talk to Haynes, according to the grand-jury report.

* State Department prosecuting attorney Mark Greenwald and his supervisor, Charles J. Hartwell, who in 2004 decided to close two investigations into Gosnell. One involved the 2000 death of Semika Shaw, 22, who died at HUP after getting an abortion at Gosnell's clinic on Lancaster Avenue and 38th Street.

The other investigation involved a complaint brought by a former Gosnell employee, Marcella Stanley Choung, who told the State Department in 2001 and 2002 that Gosnell was using unlicensed workers to administer anesthesia to patients and said she thought a second-trimester patient died at a hospital after Gosnell performed an abortion.