New York authorities dedicate more time to monitoring tanning salons than abortion clinics, according to a new report.
The New York Post found that many clinics escape safety inspections for years at a time, even as authorities aggressively scrutinize restaurants and tanning salons.
Health inspectors regulate 25 diagnostic and treatment clinics and surgery centers that provide abortion services — though pro-choice advocates say there are 225 abortion service providers in New York state.
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.
A total of just 45 inspections were conducted at all 25 facilities during the 12-year period.
By comparison, 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 slack oversight surprised pro-life activist Lila Rose, whose group Live Action has performed hidden camera exposes at abortion clinics across the country.
She visited several New York clinics as part of the project and met with clinic workers who advised their clients to poison and drown babies born alive following an abortion. Rose passed along the videos to state authorities but said the Cuomo administration and regulators "stonewalled us at every turn."
"This is one of America's most pro-abortion states, with an outrageously high abortion rate and next to nothing in the law to protect mothers and their babies from the industry's profit-hungry vultures," Rose said in an email to the Washington Free Beacon. "There is no excuse for this sort of negligence, especially in the wake of mass-murdering Kermit Gosnell in Pennsylvania and ‘Gosnell-like conditions’ at Planned Parenthood of Delaware. New York is being exposed once again as a partner in the full-throttle attack on the most basic of human rights."
Activists and conservative lawmakers have been pushing for increased safety regulations and inspections of abortion clinics after Pennsylvania abortionist Gosnell was accused of killing live babies and mothers, as well as operating a clinic covered in fecal matter, urine, and blood. Pennsylvania regulators had not visited his clinic in years due to political pressure.
Gosnell was convicted of multiple counts of murder in 2013 and is serving multiple life sentences without the chance of parole.