DOVER, Del. | An anti-abortion group called on federal prosecutors in Delaware on Monday to investigate a women’s clinic operation tied to a Pennsylvania doctor who is charged with several counts of murder.
The Seaford-based Delaware Family Policy Council also urged state Attorney General Beau Biden, who previously announced his agency’s own investigation of Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, to “thoroughly and publicly” detail his findings regarding AWMS clinics in Wilmington and Dover.
The clinic service is associated with Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 66, who is charged with murder in Pennsylvania and whose Delaware licenses to practice medicine and dispense drugs were suspended in March because of allegations against him in Pennsylvania.
In letters to Mr. Biden and U.S. Attorney Charles M. Oberly III, the Family Policy Council asked for investigations of Delaware clinic Director Leroy Brinkley and of Dr. Arturo N. Apolinario, a clinic doctor whose controlled-substances license lapsed in June 2009.
Delaware Family Policy Council President Nicole Theis said state and federal authorities need to investigate Dr. Apolinario because allegations of controlled-substance violations at the Pennsylvania clinic and at a Louisiana clinic owned by Mr. Brinkley led to the discovery of other problems.
“That’s what opened their doors, and we’re asking the doors to be opened here,” she said.
Biden spokesman Jason Miller reiterated that the attorney general’s office is conducting a “wide-ranging investigation” of Dr. Gosnell, but he had no response to the council’s statements.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Oberly also had no comment.
Messages left for Dr. Apolinario at AWMS were not returned Monday. Mr. Brinkley declined to comment.
“My lawyer has advised me not to make any statement,” Mr. Brinkley said. “I have, of course, rebuttals, but I’m not to make any statement.”
According to a Pennsylvania grand jury report released earlier this month, Mr. Brinkley owns the clinics in Delaware, where Dr. Gosnell worked one day a week. He also owns the Delta Clinic in Baton Rouge, La., which has a long history of troubles, including violations of the Federal Controlled Substances Act two decades ago.
The grand jury recommended that the National Abortion Federation reassess the Delaware clinics’ membership, saying at least six patients were referred from Atlantic to Dr. Gosnell’s clinic in Philadelphia for illegal late-term abortions.
“The director of Atlantic Women’s Medical Services, Leroy Brinkley, was unconcerned,” the report stated, adding that Mr. Brinkley did not properly supervise the doctors he hired and that, despite Dr. Gosnell’s long association with Atlantic, Mr. Brinkley had produced just three files for patients seen by Dr. Gosnell in Delaware.
“Where are the records?” Ms. Theis asked Monday at a news conference where she was joined by about two dozen supporters. “It is vital that we know what they knew and when they knew it.”
A spokeswoman for the National Abortion Federation confirmed Monday that the group had suspended the memberships of the Delaware and Louisiana clinics owned by Mr. Brinkley.
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