Williams and his top deputies also gave a glimpse of legal battles ahead: They said some state regulators have stopped cooperating with the investigation and retained lawyers - at state expense.
And they pointed a finger at race and class. If the clinic had been "in the nice suburbs of Philadelphia," Williams testified, "someone would have heeded the calls."
The prosecutors told the Senate panel that if any state official had followed up on the volumes of clues suggesting wrongdoing, or had set foot inside the filthy premises, the clinic would have swiftly been shut down.
Kermit Gosnell, the physician whose Women's Medical Society was closed after federal drug agents raided it last February, is charged in the deaths of seven babies and a 41-year-old female patient. Nine other persons also face criminal charges.
In a 261-page report released last month, a Philadelphia grand jury found that Gosnell routinely severed the spinal cords of near-full-term babies born alive. He is scheduled to appear Wednesday at a preliminary hearing in Philadelphia.
Prosecutors say the clinic, which served primarily low-income and minority patients on a cash-only basis, netted Gosnell at least $1.8 million a year.
To a question from State Sen. Bob Mensch (R., Montgomery) about whether Williams thought race or class had played a role in the absence of inspections and enforcement at the clinic, the district attorney nodded in agreement.
"It would not have gone on so long," Williams said. Complaints would not have gone uninvestigated, he said. "If the clinic had been located five miles away in Montgomery County, in the nice suburbs of Philadelphia, someone would have heeded the calls."
