If You Think the Philly PP Situation Is Bad, Wait Until You See What the Health Department Had To Say
The one thing Andy Warhol forgot to mention is that you don’t get to pick your 15 minutes of fame. Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims is finding this one out the hard way.
Sims had kept a moderately high profile as an LGBT advocate and the first openly gay football captain at an NCAA school. He’s a popular speaker (something that’s gotten him into a bit of an ethical bother, but que sera sera) and maintains a high profile for a guy whose political influence doesn’t go beyond his district in Philadelphia and the statehouse in Harrisburg.
That profile got exponentially higher after video of him sorta trying to dox an elderly protester outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Philadelphia went viral. The virality increased when it was revealed the brave Rep. Sims had actually offered a $100 donation to anyone who could dox any of the three teenagers in a previous livestreamed video.
Sims issued what I’ve come to call the kindapology: He was sorry for something, but he wasn’t necessarily clear what he was sorry for. Furthermore, everyone protesting was way worse than he was, as he made clear over and over again during this Twitter mea sorta culpa:
I will fiercely protect a woman’s right to make the best choices for her health & her body, unimpeded. I also know that two wrongs don’t make a right, especially on the front lines of a civil rights battle. I can do better, and I will do better, for the women of Pennsylvania. pic.twitter.com/jURL1UX9qE
— Brian Sims (@BrianSimsPA) May 7, 2019
As you may have noticed, Sims spends a lot of time talking about the health care services that the Planned Parenthood he volunteers at provides — as if this were just some normal doctor’s office.
Well, if it were, you’d be well-advised to pick another doctor’s office, preferably one that didn’t fail more than half of its last 23 health inspections.
“You may have seen the video going around of State Rep. Brian Sims (D-Philadelphia) harassing and mocking a woman praying outside of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Philadelphia. This is shameful behavior, especially by a current lawmaker,” an article from the PA Family Council published earlier this week read.
“But did you know this is the largest abortion clinic for Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania? And they have a shameful health and safety record with the state, with no repercussions,” they noted. “The Locust Street Surgical Center (Philadelphia), has failed 13 of their last 23 patient safety inspections.”
The 13 failed inspections from the Pennsylvania Department of Health “include failing to report child sex abuse, improper storage of aborted babies, failure to report a serious incident to a patient and no background checks on employees.”
The failed inspections stretch from 2011 to 2018.
First, I’d like to note that Pennsylvania state bureaucracy isn’t exactly known for having covert Operation Rescue types among its numbers; I would assume there’s no holy jihad on the part of the state government apparatus against Planned Parenthood. So, no, I don’t think that’s an escape clause for the left here.
Which raises yet another question about Rep. Sims: Is this really where he wants to plant his flag?
Abortion advocates have pretty much done away with the last article in the old pro-choice bromide “Safe, legal and rare.”
When we talk about safe and legal, well, safe probably doesn’t include 13 failed inspections, failure to report child sex abuse and lack of background checks for employees. That is, as the kids like to say, problematic.
This is important because in pretty much every one of his videos, Sims seems to paint the clinic as if it were practically doing the work of Albert Schweitzer. Health care for women! STD screenings! Saving lives! Oh, and also ending some, but they’re not really lives and that’s such a small part of it.
I know this is part of liberal dogma, and I’m not going to sit here and try to disabuse anyone on the left of that tenet of his or her secular faith.
However, if people like Rep. Sims are going to try to dox teenagers for protesting a clinic he glorifies, it would help if that clinic weren’t failing inspections like crazy. Just saying.
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