Former Pennsylvania governor and Democratic stalwart Ed Rendell weighed in on the Dr. Kermit Gosnell murder trial Monday, saying he believes an investigation was not conducted on the abortionist because of “bureaucratic incompetence,” not “political pressure.”
Rendell went on say that he would be the first to arrest and convict someone like Gosnell.
“I can guarantee you it wasn’t because of political pressure, because if you believe -- if you’re pro-choice like I am, you want guys like this found, arrested, convicted. You want those clinics closed,” Rendell told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
Scarborough's questions were prompted by the prosecutor and grand jury's claim that one of the reasons why this clinic wasn’t investigated is "cause there [was] political pressure."
"Whenever someone wants to go in and investigate an abortion clinic or do tough regulations on it, suddenly people start screaming and yelling that somebody’s trying to take away their constitutional rights. What happened here?" Scarborough asked.
“Again, I think it was more bureaucratic incompetence than that, Joe. I never heard anything about that,” Rendell said.
The former governor also noted that he himself had once prosecuted a doctor “for doing exactly what Dr. Gosnell did” while serving as district attorney.
“When I was a young D.A., and I prosecuted the doctor, I picked up the phone, and I called Planned Parenthood and all those folks, and I said ‘Get down here and support what I’m doing,’” Rendell said.
When it comes to the Gosnell investigation, Rendell said officials at Philadelphia's regional offices just "didn’t do their job," adding that current regulations in place should have been enough but that they were not implemented.
The regulations “would have been sufficient had there been oversight, had there been active oversight,” he said.
(H/T: CNS)
