Gov. Rick Perry's chief of staff met with key aides about a new vaccine to prevent cervical cancer on the same day its manufacturer donated money to his campaign, documents obtained by The Associated Press show.
The amniocentesis confirmed the diagnosis that our baby had Trisomy 18. The doctor went over the numbers with us: 80% chance of still birth, 90% chance he would die before first birthday.
We were steered in the direction of terminating the pregnancy. We explained that this was not an option. We were told to call our OB in the morning.
We cried all night long.
The next morning, we called our OB. She told us that our little Jordan was a nonviable fetus and there was no reason to continue pregnancy especially considering the hyperemesis that Jen was experiencing.
We were outraged. Our doctor had called the pregnancy 'pointless'. She refused to see us in the office until mid January and indicated that follow up appointments were not necessary. She advised us to terminate the pregnancy.
We were devastated and felt alone. We had been abandoned by our doctor.
To add insult to injury, our OB refused to authorize Zofran and told Jen she was no longer eligible for disability.
Dan Harris, pro-abortion reporter for ABC, pointed out that in most of the country, Amillia could have been legally aborted well past the point of her birth.
"Only one state, North Carolina, explicitly prohibits aborting a fetus at the point at which Amillia was born; 12 states permit abortion at that point; 23 states leave it to a doctor to decide whether the fetus is viable; and in 14 states, there are no laws on the books that would prevent such an abortion."
It's been almost 24 years since I was at the Loma Linda Hospital and was roomed with Barbara Hoppert, but not year goes by when Feb 22nd rolls around and I don't think of her. She died that day during her abortion procedure. I just now put her name into google and found your article on her. It was barely 4 sentences and seemed as cold as her death. She was once alive and had such a sad end and dramatic story. It still brings me to tears today thinking about her last night alive... how she was treated by her own family and the staff at the hospital. We watched Square Pegs that night on tv. And she told me about the boy who had impregnated her... She left early the next morning and I wished her good luck... An hour later a woman came to the room, later I found out that was her "real" mother whom Barbara thought was her sister. She missed seeing Barbara that one last time.... Barbara's story is very tragic. I am so very sad that she was so alone her last night alive. I was her only comfort and I was a complete stranger. Don't know how comforting I was other than I cried with her and listened.... Knowing the pain she was in.... She remains in my prayers. Just thought you should know she was more than just part of your cause.
"Before, we only had two or three abortion operations a day," Zheng Weili, director of the centre which provides free consultations and abortions for students, was quoted as saying by China News Service.
"But since the winter vacation started last week, we should be doing about 10 abortions every day, and most of them are 16 to 21 year old students," Zheng said.
We have John Baxter Hamilton (pictured), who bludgeoned his wife to death in the bathroom of their home. And we have Joe Bills Reynolds, who sliced his wife open in a supposed liposuction surgery and then just let her bleed to death.
Ada was 36 years old when she went to Nehorayoff's office in Manhattan, "known as Manhattan Women's Medical Offices," on June 23, 1990, to have a D&E to remove a fetus that had died of natural causes. Nehorayoff "failed to perform and/or record the findings of an adequate medical history and physical examination." He did not order proper tests, and did not use laminaria to dilate Ada's cervix. He inadequately dilated Ada's cervix, then had her given Anaprox and oral fluids, which was inappropriate given Ada's condition. Ada was in the recovery room from noon to 5:25 p.m. "During this period the Patient was weak, unresponsive and had a falling blood pressure. Respondent should have transferred the Patient to a hospital by 2 p.m. Instead, he waited until 5:25 p.m. when the patient was cyanotic with a blood pressure of 80/0."
At 5:25, Nehorayoff "inappropriately decided" to transfer Ada to a hospital two hours away. Ada's husband insisted that an ambulance be called to transfer Ada to a nearby hospital. Because Nehorayoff had no back-up arrangements with any local hospital, a nurse called 911, and Ada was taken to Beth Israel Medical Center.
Upon admission, Ada's hemoglobin was 7.8 and her hematocrit 23.4. her blood pressure was 80/0, and her pulse a racing 126. She was in shock. Emergency surgery found two lacerations in Ada's uterus. The bleeding could not be controlled. Surgeons at Beth Israel had to perform an emergency hysterectomy to save Ada's life.
Brandy was 18 years old when she went to Nehorayoff's office on November 22, 1989, for a second trimester abortion. Nehorayoff "failed to perform and/or record the findings of an adequate medical history and physical examination." He didn't use laminaria and inadequately dilated her cervix. During the abortion, Nehorayoff pulled a loop of Brandy's bowel through her cervix through a 2.5 cm tear he'd made in the back of her uterus.
Instead of stopping the procedure and transferring Brandy to a hospital, Nehorayoff just continued with the abortion. Only after the abortion did he hospitalize Brandy. Surgeons there found "a 6.5 segment of devascularized bowel" which they had to remove. They also had to remove fetal parts Nehorayoff had left in Brandy's uterus.
Camille was 22 years old when Nehorayoff performed a first-trimester abortion on her in his office on September 20, 1988. Camille returned on September 28, reporting lower abdominal pain. Nehorayoff didn't order a sonogram, perform a pregnancy test, or review Camille's pathology report. "It was not until on or about October 18, 1988, that Respondent ordered a sonogram and diagnosed an ectopic pregnancy." This delay in diagnosis could have resulted in Camille's death.
Demitria was 27 years old when she went to Nehorayoff's office on October 18, 1988, for a second-trimester abortion. Like with his other second trimester patients, Nehorayoff failed to record an adequate history and physical, failed to use laminaria, and inadequately dilated Demitria's cervix.
Despite Demitria's low hematocrit of only 26%, Nehorayoff performed the abortion on an outpatient basis. Evidently this abortion was either incomplete or unsuccessful, because Nehorayoff performed a second D&E on Demitria on October 22. He failed to perform a hematocrit prior to this second surgery. He did not record any pre-operative or post-operative diagnosis, and did not order a pathology exam for the tissues removed. The board concluded that this second D&E procedure was therefore not medically indicated.
In 1991, the Board of Regents permanently revoked petitioner's license
to practice medicine after he negligently performed five abortions, one resulting in a patient's death, and failed to maintain proper records. Eighteen months later, petitioner applied for restoration of his medical license, maintaining that he recognized the "deficiencies" in his conduct. As proof of his rehabilitation, petitioner submitted certificates of attendance at various medical conferences and courses, and also submitted letters from friends and colleagues attesting to his character.
Petitioner's application was first reviewed by a Peer Review Committee.... After a hearing, the Peer Review Committee concluded that petitioner had "sufficiently fulfilled" the standards of rehabilitation and remorse necessary to resume the practice of medicine. Accordingly, it unanimously recommended that the revocation of petitioner's license be stayed, that he be placed on probation for three years and that, upon completion of probation, his license be restored.
....
Although the Committee on the Professions remained "troubled" by the seriousness of petitioner's misconduct, it recommended, by a two-to-one vote, restoration of petitioner's license with restrictions. The Committee recommended a 10-year probation period, the first five years limited to a hospital setting.
On this day, Valentine's Day, in 2001, abortionist John Baxter Hamilton bludgeoned his wife, Susan, to death in their Oklahoma home. He was sentenced to life without parole. Mrs. Hamilton, 55, had worked as a physician's assistant at her husband's abortion facility, Oklahoma Women's Clinic.
[W]hether it is caused by a shortage of providers or an increased cost for the procedure, the abortion rate falls like a blind roofer when access to abortion is reduced. That reality explains something many in the abortion industry have long lamented: the cost of an abortion has not significantly changed since Roe vs. Wade.
At a September 1997, National Abortion Federation Seminar, Colorado abortionist Warren Hern pointed out that he can only charge $15 more for an abortion today than fellow abortionist Milan Vuitch was charging in 1972. At another National Abortion Federation meeting held earlier in 1997, Hern was quoted as saying, "... if you raise your [abortion] fees $25 to meet the cost for having an ultrasound machine ... the patient load plummets."
This pricing phenomenon can't be attributed to normal competitive pressures. After all, the abortion industry openly admits that there is a critical shortage of abortionists, and as anyone with a basic understanding of economics knows, when the supply of something is short, the cost is supposed to go up.
The exception is when there is some outside influence that is powerful enough to neutralize price increases that would have otherwise occurred due to short supply. Where it exists, the marginality of the decision to buy can be such an outside influence, having the ability to easily trump a shortage-driven increase in cost.
And that's the key here. [T]he cost of an abortion has remained flat for the last 25 years only because the women who have them won't pay more.
In some abortion-industry conferences, speakers have tried to attribute abortion price stagnation to competition between clinics. However, the fact that prices don't rise when the number of clinics decrease exposes that argument as a lie. Even in areas where there is only one abortion clinic, prices don't increase appreciably.
That leads to an obvious conclusion: contrary to what the abortion industry has always claimed, the decision to abort is profoundly marginal. The data suggests that abortion decisions are more often driven by access issues (price and location) than desperation.
And not only has the abortion industry always known that access controls the abortion rate, they have also figured out that the abortion rate controls the legal status of abortion.
I suspect that if an independent analysis were done, it would reveal that political contributions from advocates for the two sides are roughly equal. If either side has an edge, it would more likely be the pro-life side - not necessarily because there are more of us, but because we appear more likely to be single-issue voters. In recent national elections, polls have shown that among people who say that the abortion issue alone drives their voting decisions, twice as many vote pro-life as vote pro-choice. It would not be unreasonable to assume that contributions mirror voting-at least to some degree.
That still doesn't answer the question of where the abortion industry gets the money to consistently outspend us in the political arena.
The answer is that they get it from the women who have abortions. Let's say that a fifteen-year-old girl goes into an abortion clinic and gives the abortionist $350 .... Most of that money goes to pay salaries, taxes, overhead, profit, etc. However, every abortionist knows that if his political defenders are not successful, the pro-lifers will put him out of business. Therefore, he is going to pour some of that girl's money into the political machine that's trying to keep abortion legal. That way, the next girl can come in and give him money ..., and so on, and so on. In effect, pro-abortion political activists function as a trade organization for the abortion industry.
When someone participates in an activity that they feel is morally justifiable, they are generally comfortable defending it to others who may believe it is wrong. However, when someone does something in spite of a belief that it is wrong, they are often extremely defensive about it. .... And the greater the sense that one has violated his own moral belief system, the more strongly this sensitivity is felt. ....
This same dynamic also impacts the political arena. When a candidate for office takes a pro-life position, voters with abortion experiences hear the candidate calling them murderers. So does that make them more likely or less likely to vote for that candidate?
It’s time for the pro-life movement to accept certain realities. First, neither the church nor the Republican party is going to help us. More often than not, they are part of the problem, not the solution.
Second, this is a war and .... the first rule of war is that the goal is not to kill your opponents, but to destroy their ability to continue the fight.
[O]ur opponents’ ability to continue fighting comes from a high abortion rate. That is what fuels their political machine. As long as they have $64,000 an hour to draw on, and the potential for at least 4,000 new pro-abortion voters every day, the legal status of abortion will never change. That is simply too much inertia for us to overcome.
Compound that with their absolute stranglehold on the American media, and the idea that we can return legal protection to the unborn without first lowering the abortion rate is seen for what it really is ... utterly laughable.
Pamela L. alleged that she underwent an abortion by Hodari (pictured) and/or Dr. Roumell and/or other physicians. (Since it's not unusual for abortion facilities to keep a woman in the dark about who staff members are, it's not unusual for a woman to be forced to file suit against every doctor associated with the facility that did her abortion.) Whichever of them did her abortion failed to properly determine gestational age, failed to remove all of the placenta, and failed to detect Pamela's incomplete abortion. Pamela required further hospitalization and surgery. (Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 86-627445) I was directed to "the room." I had been there for a moment the day before and thought it to be a waiting room for family or driving companions. It had a leather sofa and a fabric sofa, both with a white blanket stretched across the seat cushions, a small television and a few magazines.
I came back to the sofa, (they both really smelled awful), wrapped up in the wet and sour-smelling blanket, then decided it was better without it. I rocked back and forth on my hands and knees, trying to hold the heating pad to my stomach to both relieve the pain and try to stay warm. I was looking down and saw little smears and spots of dried blood on the floor and an old cotton ball with blood on it by the fabric-covered sofa across from me. Noticing how dirty it was and how no one was in the room or even nearby in the hallway began to make me nervous and uncomfortable. I went right back to the powder room and began to try to push a lot. I thought it might help since I was told I was not nearly ready to deliver.
In one agonizing push, I felt and heard something come out. Then immediately another push. I was weak. I just held my head in my hands for a moment. Then I decided to stand up. I looked. There was my baby, the whitish cord and what I thought surely must be the placenta.
I started sobbing and lay down in the floor. I stared and stared at my son. I was horrified that I had just had him in a commode.
His right leg moved. He curled up a bit like he was cold; I screamed for Violene! No one came. I managed to get to the doorway, pants down, blood everywhere and yelled again. I went back to my baby. I heard her say she'd be right there.
I showed her Rowan, told her he was alive and moving and to call 911! She took a quick look, said he's not moving now and she'd be back to take care of things while walking out. I called her again. I was touching Rowan softly and he moved again. I called her back. Rowan jumped, I think startled by the loud sound of my calling for help. I showed her that he was moving and alive. I begged her to hurry and call 911, now!
She said for me to lie down and she would get her supervisor. No one came.
I continued to try to caress and comfort my son by rubbing his back, tummy and chest. I stroked his precious little head and kept telling him I loved him and we would be OK. I was afraid to move him because I did not want to do anything that might end up hurting him. I pushed my pinky into his little hand and his fingers curled around me. Still no one was coming. I was terrified but trying not to let him know I was scared. I kept telling him what a beautiful son he was and that we were going to be safe soon.
I left Rowan for two seconds, grabbed the phone, jumped back into the bathroom to be with him, calling my girlfriend 'Sharon' at the same time. I told her Rowan was alive and no one was helping us to please call an ambulance to the clinic immediately and hung up.
I stayed beside Rowan talking to him, telling him how strong he was being and how proud I was of him. I told him God must really want us to be together for him to make it through everything he had just been through and that Mommy was so sorry but so happy to have a chance to love him. I told him he was a strong little miracle and that I couldn't wait for him to meet his brother and sister. I just kept touching him, trying to warm him with my hands and talking to him so he would not feel any more afraid than he already must.
Then Rowan stopped moving.
He was perfect, slightly pale and a little translucent. His eyebrows were pale but wide and well-defined. You could see little hairs on his face and head. He had the tiniest little fingernails and toenails. I noticed they already had a little bit of growth. His mouth was lovely. He was this perfectly formed one pound, one ounce human being. He was beautiful. He had been so strong.
I wrapped him in [a] blue pad instead of one of the wet blankets. I just kept kissing him and telling him I loved him so much. I told him I was sorry I couldn't get anyone to help us and I was so sorry for ever coming here.
I wish that I had such a network and support before, I would still be pregnant. It is my hope that many things will transpire as a result of coming forward with my experience.
I hope that women will see my humiliation and remorse and seek forgiveness if they are post abortive.
I want to do everything in my power to see that this does not happen to other babies or mothers.
I want women in crisis pregnancies to see that whether they are of 6 weeks or 28 weeks gestation, that abortion will haunt them for the rest of their lives. I would like for them to know that no matter how little you want the pregnancy itself, you will want, love and cherish your child. Those 9 months of crisis are the toughest. If you make it through that, the rewards come 1000 fold!
If they choose not to keep their child; that adoption is easier than abortion, although that is not what most post abortive women thought before they terminated.
Finally I hope that women who remain pro choice will fight for these clinics to be more strictly regulated. As feminists, they should demand and expect it!
I think that even women who are pro choice, would not want to come face to face with what I have been through on any level. I also think they would agree, that having an infant born alive and left to die or literally murdered in some cases, is legally and morally wrong.
It is very shameful to step forward and admit publicly that I have been so wrong as to “choose” to take the life of my child. On the other hand if it will accomplish any or all of the above, then it is my duty, isn’t it? That is so long as I protect the children I have here first and foremost. I know God wants me to put them first, just as I should have with Rowan.
The lead executioner of a convicted killer who took twice the normal time to die never received any medical training....
After the botched execution, then-Gov. Jeb Bush halted executions in the state and created the panel to examine whether improvements can be made to the way lethal injections are administered.
Dr. Peter Springer, one of three doctors on the 11-person panel, said the people conducting lethal injections should be medical professionals.
American Medical Association guidelines bar doctors from taking part, directly or indirectly, in executions.
Harvey Karman, inventer of the Super Coil and the Karman Canula. Is he alive? Dead? Where is he and what's he up to? I've been trying to find out for ten years now. Wikipedia has his page up as a biography of a living person, probably because I have no date of death. It seems that Harvey, being a publicity hog, could hardly be upright and not be drawing attention to himself.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has had an epiphany on abortion -- not once, but twice.
The first time was when Romney was a young man in the 1960s and his brother-in-law's sister -- an engaged-to-be-married teen who became pregnant -- died in a botched illegal abortion.
Roughly three decades later, while campaigning for the Senate in 1994, Romney described that tragedy as the event that triggered his conclusion that regardless of personal beliefs, abortion should be safe and legal.
Romney says his moment of illumination about the immorality of abortion came two years ago during a meeting with an embryonic stem cell researcher.
"The comment was made that this really wasn't a moral issue, because the embryos were terminated or destroyed at 14 days," Romney said during a recent campaign stop in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, in a reprise of other recent explanations of his thinking on abortion.
"And it struck me very powerfully at that point, that the Roe v. Wade approach has so cheapened the value of human life that someone could think it's not a moral issue to destroy embryos that have been created solely for the purpose of research, and I said to my chief of staff, and that's been 2 1/2 years ago, I said to her, 'I want to make it very clear that I'm pro-life.'"
Romney later identified the relative as the teenage sister of his brother-in-law, Loren "Larry" Keenan.
My vagina is angry about the lies told in abstinence-only education, and my uterus is angry about the lies legislators tell to pretend that they care about women facing unplanned pregnancy.
OFD: Orlando Fire Department.
(Unintelligible.)
OFD: Thank you what is the address of the emergency?
Friend: 609 West Virginia Street. The EPOC Center.
OFD: 609 West Virginia? One moment please.
Friend: Let's see ... I don't have the address on me. A friend of mine called form the abortion clinic and her baby was born alive.
OFD: Okay. Do you know the closest intersection. Did she call you on a phone?
Friend: Right, she called me off her cell phone.
OFD: Okay. Did you ask her to call 911? Because ...
Friend: She asked me to call because she was back there with no kind of ... They were just telling her to leave it ... this is gross but ... leave it in the toilet, you know, and let it die.
OFD: Is she in a house?
Friend: She's in the clinic, the abortion clinic.
OFD: Okay.
Friend: Correct. EPOC. Center. Oh my God! I'm freaking out!
OFD: Did she call from a cell phone?
Friend: She called from her cell phone.
OFD: Okay. What did you say? She was having ... the baby just came out?
Friend: Right. She as getting an abortion and the baby came out and it was still living. And they're wanting it to die.
OFD: Okay. And she's inside the clinic?
Friend: Correct.
OFD: Okay. Let me give a call to the county. Hold on. Actually, do not hang up. Just hold on the line, okay?
Friend: Okay.
DISPACHER CALLS COUNTY
OCFR: Orange County Fire and Rescue
OFD: Hi can you look up a couple of addresses for me. I have a 911 caller on the line with a baby. She's in an abortion clinic and the baby is born and it's still alive. They don't know for how long.
OCFR: What would we be going for?
OFD: Uh, it would be for an obstetrics. It's a female that's in the center, I guess for ... it's an abortion clinic but the baby was born, and it's alive at this moment and they don't know for how long.
OCFR: Oh!
TRANSFER TO ORLANDO FIRE DEPARTMENT
OFD: Orlando Fire Department.
Friend: I need an ambulance to 609 Virginia Drive in Orlando.
OFD: 609 Virginia Drive?
Friend: Correct.
OFD: Okay, and what going on there?
Friend: Uh, it's the women's clinic. Uh, my friend was having an abortion and the baby was born alive.
OFD: Okay, you said the baby was born?
Friend: Correct.
OFD: Okay, hold on one second for me.
Friend: Okay.
OFD: 609 Virginia Drive?
Friend: Correct.
OFD: What's the business name?
Friend: Uh, EPOC Clinic for Women. E-P-O-C.
OFD: EPOC Clinic for Women? Okay. Is there a phone in the building?
Friend: Yes.
OFD: Okay, can you call me from that or just pick up that phone and dial 911?
Friend: Uh, well I'm not there. She's there. She called me and they're not allowing her to use the phone there.
OFD: Okay.
Friend: But they're wanting the baby to die.
OFD: She wants the baby to live?
Friend: Correct.
OFD: Okay.
Friend: She was expecting it to not be alive, and it is.
OFD: Okay. I'm going to get help out there.
Friend: Okay.
OFD: Just stay on the line with me.
Friend: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
OFD: Okay the baby's been born?
Friend: Correct:
OFD: How long ago, do you know?
Friend: Uh, she just called me. It wasn't 10 minutes ago. And said that the baby was born and it was alive and they were wanting her to leave it in the toilet. And uh ... just let it die. And uh ... she's not wanting that to happen.
OFD: Okay, we do have help on the way like I said. We're going try and call the center as well as have someone on the way.
Friend: Thank you very much.
OFD: Your welcome.
DISPATCHER CALLS WINTER PARK FIRE DEPARTMENT
OFD: Hi. Can you respond with us to 609 Virginia Drive?
Ambulance: For?
OFD: Uh, this is supposed ... This is the EPOC Center E-P-O-C Center for Women. We are going for a lady that is in an abortion clinic. She says that the baby has been born ten minutes ago, but the center wants to kill the baby and will not let the mother call 911.
Ambulance: Woah!
OFD: Uhm hmm! So we have a third party calling because the mother did call 911 ... uh ...call a family member.
Ambulance: Okay, so we are the way now. Alright. okay.
OFD: Bye!
Ambulance: Bye!
Those who plead for an extensive relaxation of the law [against abortion] have no idea of the very many cases where a woman who, during the first three months, makes a most impassioned appeal for her pregnancy to be 'finished,' later, when the baby is born, is thankful indeed that it was not killed while still an embryo. During my long years in practice I have had many a letter of the deepest gratitude for refusing to accede to an early appeal.
Dr. Aleck Bourne, who in 1938 successfully fought the law against abortion in the UK
Miramar, FL – Belkis Gonzalez has been arrested and jailed on two felony counts related to illegal abortions that were done at A Gyn of Miramar, Inc., an abortion clinic located in Miramar, Florida, now known as Miramar Women’s Center.
Miramar Police Department Information Officer Bill Robertson told Operation Rescue that as of Tuesday afternoon, Gonzalez had been taken into custody and that he believed that her partner, Siomara Senises had also been apprehended. ....
Gonzalez’s arrest report details how these women knowingly allowed two men to conduct abortions on women when neither of them had medical licenses. They also instructed at least two other unlicensed employees to conduct duties that required licensed medical personnel, including operating ultrasound machines, dispensing medication, and even assisting in abortions with duties normally done by licensed physicians. Gonzalez and Senises also performed medical duties without proper licensing.
This is not the first time the pair has been in the news. Last July, both were involved in a case where a baby was born alive at an abortion mill in Hialeah, FL. According to a search warrant obtained by Operation Rescue, Gonzalez swept the live baby into a bag and tossed her onto the roof of the abortion clinic to avoid detection by the authorities. On a tip, the police later recovered the baby’s remains and closed the clinic. An autopsy determined that the baby was indeed born alive.
Robelto Osbourne, a licensed physician until August 17, 2004 at which time his license to practice medicine was revoked by the Florida Board of Medicine was the medical director on file for the clinic.
Kieron Nisbet held a limited licnese with the Department of Health known as an "Unlicensed House Physician." Under this license, Nisbet could only be employed by a hospital.... At no time did Kieron Nisbet ever hold a clear and active license to practice medicine in the State of Florida.
[S]everal patients stated that they received a termination of pregnancy at Miramar ... and it was performed either by Robelto Osbourne or Kieron Nisbet.
.... Robelto Osbourne pled guilty on September 23, 2005, was adjudicated guilty and sentenced to two years community control followed by three years probation.
Kieron Nisbet fled to Trinidad....
Also, as a result of the investigation, Joselin Collado, an employee of the clinic, was arrested on September 12, 2005 and practicing medicine without a license. She pled nolo contendere ... and was sentenced to three years probation.
Adleren Rohas, also an employee of the clinic was arrested ... and charged with practicing nursing without a license. She pled nolo contendere on April 25, 2006, adjudication withheld and sentenced to three years probation.
....
Osborne testified that after the owners found out about his revocation it was "business as usual." Osborne testifed that Senesis was present while he was doing terminations at the clinic and she even assisted him on occasion and paid him. Osborne testified that Nisbet worked at the clinic as well and both owners were aware his license was "Unlicensed House Physician." ....
.... Collado testified that after being at the clinic for about a month she began doing sonograms and was trained how to do this by both owners and Dr. Brown. She testified that her training consisted of seeing the fetus on the screen and looking at it. She testified that she also had training on actual patients. Collado testified that she also administered Diazepam and ibuprofen to patients and that both owners instructed her to do that. .... Collado testified taht Niset did not sign his name on the charts, he left them blank and then Osburne would sign his name [Osborne] at a later time. After Collado and the owners became aware of the investigation, Collado testified that Senesis told her if anyone asks, don't tell them Nisbet works here. .... Collado testified that both owners told her not to open the door to investigator and not to talk to them. ....
Adieren Rohas .... testified that she met Nisbet between May and November 2004 when he did terminations at the clinic and treated patients. Rojas testified that she assisted him with the termiations....
Rojas also testified that both onwers told her not to tell investigators that Nisbet worked at the clinic. Rojas testifed that both owners trained her to perform sonograms and dispense medication.
....
Based upon the above information, there is probable cause to believe that both owners, Siomara Senesis and Belkis Gonzalez had knowledge that:
1. Robelto Osbourne's license had been revoked and he was allowed to continue to perform termination of pregnancies at A GYN of Miramar, Inc.
2. Kieron Nisbet did not have a license to practice medicine in the State of Florida and he was allowed to perform termination of pregnancies at A GYN of Mirimar, Inc.
3. Joselin Collado was authorized to perform duties as an employee of A GYN of Mirimar that were required by law to be performed by a licensed medical professional.
4. Adieren Jojas was authorized to perform duties as an employee of A GYN of Miramar that were required by law to be performed by a licensed medical professional.
The Board found a violation of the following in Case I: ... F.S. by failing to practice medicine with that level of care, skill and treatment which is recognized by a reasonably prudent similar physician ... by one or more of the following: failing to perform a pre-operative hematocrit/hemoglobin on patient; failing to recognize a severe uterine perforation; failing to make himself available to answer after-hours emergency telephone calls; failing to assess patient's post-operative pain and bleeding; and failing to remove and account for all products of conceptoin. Violation ... by failing to keep legible, medical records that justify the course of treatment of a patient.
Policy Statement: Most serious abortion complications are detectable in the immediate postoperative period. Appropriate and accessible follow-up care is essential to patients' well-being.
....
Standard 7: The facility must provide an emergency contact service on a 24-hour basis where calls are triaged in accordance with appropriate law. The facility must assure physician referral if indicated.
STANDARDS are intended to be applied rigidly. They must be followed in virtually all cases. Exceptions will be rare and are difficult to justify.
The facility provides all women with verbal and written information on discharge. There is a 24 hour contact number through which a woman can obtain emergency care, both physical and psychological, for any problem arising relating to an abortion.
Community-based abortion services must have such protocols to facilitate a rapid and appropriate response in emergent situations.
When I had the honor of testifying previously before the Senate, I took the liberty of referring to the universal fairy-tale of the man smaller than the thumb. At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb's length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there: hands, feet, head, organs, brain, all are in place. His heart has been beating for a month already. Looking closely, you would see the palm creases and a fortune teller would read the good adventure of that tiny person.
There was only one doctor in South Dakota who would perform abortions before Roe v Wade. He was a kind, generous,caring doctor who put himself at risk to help women in need because he knew it was the right thing to do: his name was Dr. Benjamin Munson. He was tried for murder because a women who had to travel in secret to western SD/Rapid City for an abortion was afraid she would be prosecuted so she returned in secret to the eastern part of the state where she lived. She bled to death because it was illegal in those days to check into a clinic or hospital for the procedure and stay until you were sure that nothing was going to go wrong afterwards—she would have been prosecuted even for going to an emergency room for help after her abortion! This is a famous case in South Dakota.
There was only one doctor in South Dakota who would perform abortions before Roe v Wade.... his name was Dr. Benjamin Munson.
He was tried for murder because a women who had to travel in secret to western SD/Rapid City for an abortion was afraid she would be prosecuted so she returned in secret to the eastern part of the state where she lived.
She bled to death because it was illegal in those days to check into a clinic or hospital for the procedure and stay until you were sure that nothing was going to go wrong afterwards—she would have been prosecuted even for going to an emergency room for help after her abortion!
This is a famous case in South Dakota.
This study in a Pedi. Heart journal talked about prenatal diagnosis of specific heart ailments; 19 out of 61 babies were aborted. In 9 of those cases, the autopsy confirmed the presence of the anomaly, and 1 did not have *that* anomaly, but did have another problem; the remaining dead fetuses were not autopsied. In discussing the difficulties surrounding the diagnosis (gestational age and fetal position, primarily), they gave an 80% accuracy of diagnosis. Some of the remaining 20% may have had some anomaly but not that particular one; but then, they possibly were not as bad as thought.
This European study (of which only the abstract is available free) has this tidbit which showed up on Google: "Among these misdiagnoses only 1 had a termination of pregnancy..." I wish I had access to see how many misdiagnoses there were, and how many women would have had an abortion.
This abstract says, "Excluding five cases with a secundum atrial septal defect, there was complete agreement between the ultrasound examination and the autopsy findings in 74 (73%) of 101 cases. In 18 cases, there were minor discrepancies between ultrasound and autopsy findings. The main diagnosis was thus correct in 92 cases (91%)." It doesn't say for certain that the other 9% of dead babies had a defect worthy of death.
This study (only the abstract is free, but you could purchase the full article), concludes, "Diagnostic accuracy has improved over time but may well be lower than many clinicians assume for some important conditions and may not match public expectations."
I perceive part of the problem of determining this question is a lack of study into it -- after all, what doctor who performs abortions wants to find out that he gave an incorrect diagnosis and killed a perfectly healthy baby? or who wants word to leak out that accuracy of ultrasound or other prenatal tests are not what one might expect? One BMJ article said that while abortions for suspected fetal anomaly have increased, autopsies have decreased (they suggested autopsies, to find out the likelihood of fetal anomaly reoccurring in a subsequent pregnancy, rather than as a way of verifying the original diagnosis). I would suspect that there has been improvement in the area of diagnosis since many of these studies were carried out, so what was true 10 years ago, may not be true now. However, if an abortionist talks a woman into an abortion because he says he thinks there's something wrong with her baby (like Dr. Tiller), the desire for fetal death outweighs the desire for accuracy. I would place higher faith in the average OB who truly wants an accurate diagnosis, than in a pro-abortion doctor.
So, in clinical studies, the rate of accuracy of ultrasound (which would typically be done by specialists, I assume, prior to termination -- or at least a second opinion) may be much higher than that which would be done in an abortion clinic or even a regular OB's office.
Munson believed women had the right to safely end a pregnancy, and he risked his medical practice and well-being by performing abortions at a Rapid City clinic in the late 1960s. At the time, he was the only physician in the entire state willing to perform the procedure.
In 1969, Munson was arrested and charged with performing an illegal abortion. He won his case at the circuit court level, but the state appealed, and the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled against him. His case was still in appeals when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade case.
Munson died on July 27 [2003?] of Alzheimer's disease. He was 87.
There was only one doctor in South Dakota who would perform abortions before Roe v Wade. He was a kind, generous,caring doctor who put himself at risk to help women in need because he knew it was the right thing to do: his name was Dr. Benjamin Munson. He was tried for murder because a women who had to travel in secret to western SD/Rapid City for an abortion was afraid she would be prosecuted so she returned in secret to the eastern part of the state where she lived. She bled to death because it was illegal in those days to check into a clinic or hospital for the procedure and stay until you were sure that nothing was going to go wrong afterwards—she would have been prosecuted even for going to an emergency room for help after her abortion! This is a famous case in South Dakota.
Dear Ms. Rose:
One of your featured clinics, Eve Surgical Center, is hardly an outstanding example of quality medical care. It was at Eve Surgical Center that Oriane Shevin was given RU-486 in an off-label manner, leading to her death from sepsis. At the time that Oriane went to the Eve Surgical Center for the abortion, Dr. Christopher Dotson (a staff physician) was still on Probation (1997 to June 16, 2005) for gross negligence and incompetence in causing the death of his patient, RJI, on February 3, 1992, according to California Medical Board records. Dotson was subjected to disciplinary action because "he was grossly negligent in the care and treatment of RJI." He failed to take an adequate exam, failed to classify her as a high risk pregnancy, failed to heed the risk of severe bleeding, failed to have appropriate equipment for monitoring, and failed to transfuse her in a timely way. He left the room while she was still bleeding.
The California Medical Board filed an accusation against Dotson in 1993. Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital of Los Angeles had reported Dotson for being negligent in the treatment of six young women.
In 2001 Dr. Dotson had his New York medical license revoked indefinitely based on his California discipline.
This is the kind of doctor working at Eve Surgical Center. How can you in good conscience refer women there?
When a facility wants to advertise, would it be so difficult to ask for a list of their physicians and look them up?
It might also be nice if you provided your visitors with links so that they could research the facilities themselves. There is the AIM DocFinder:
http://www.docboard.org/docfinder.html
I don't know yet of any clearinghouse of state health departments, but wouldn't that be a nice service to provide?
It's nothing but covering your own backside to put a tepid caveat to "check them out yourself." A woman can open the Yellow Pages and get the information you provide. Why don't you provide what's not readily available to women -- the information they need to do an adequate background check and learn if what's in those ads is really true?
I will post a copy of this email on my blog. I look forward to having a response from you that I can post. We have an ongoing debate about what, if anything, the prochoice movement should be doing to keep women away from seedy, dangerous, fly-by-night abortion mills. It certainly would be interesting to see what ACOL intends to do to see that women are steered toward facilities that actually adhere to safety standards, and away from places like Eve.
Christina Dunigan
Blogmistress, RealChoice Blog
http://realchoice.blogspot.com
It would be comforting to dismiss the dozens of clinics operated by these doctors as rogue "chop shops." But consider Atlanta's Midtown Hospital, the largest abortion clinic in Georgia. It is a member of the National Abortion Federation, gets Planned Parenthood referrals, and is advertised on the attractive Abortion Clinics Online website.
On May 22, 1998, Midtown Hospital was temporarily closed by a Superior Court judge pending the outcome of litigation to shut it down permanently. Repeated on-site investigations had shown the hospital's "complete disregard for, or the inability to care for, the health and safety of its patients." The Georgia Department of Human Resources had known of these conditions and nonetheless let the hospital stay in operation for the last two years. But the story still isn't well known; the only news coverage has been a short account of the clinic's closing in the local-news section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
On April 18, 1998, at approximately 7:00 a.m., I witnessed a patient deliver an intact fetus in the toilet of a bathroom in the waiting room area. After expelling the baby and the afterbirth, the patient walked to the operating room because there were no wheelchairs. I opened the fetal sac so that the fetus could be weighed. The weight was approximately 3029 grams [over 6 pounds, 10 ounces]. It was a very big fetus. My impression is that at Midtown Hospital a procedure will be done at any gestational age as long as the patient has the money.
When I left the counselor with a group of about six women to change clothes, I heard someone hollering "someone help me, Oh God, someone please help." As the nurse opened the door, I saw a woman on the floor with urine all over the floor. That patient's daughter heard her mother hollering and started banging on the door and shouting. Everyone in the waiting area appeared alarmed. Women started leaving. . . . I heard [another] woman shouting in pain. I saw her go to the bathroom because her water broke. She was hollering and she delivered in the bathroom. A nurse came and put the fetus in some kind of urine pan and carried it with the girl out of the area. This became a common thing, girls screaming, water breaking, and then delivering. There was no monitoring by staff. . . . There were times when there was blood and urine all over the place. . . . There were so many patients that staff had to step over them. The patient that delivered in front of me was on the floor with her head near one of the doors. She was screaming and asking God to help her.
A charming, witty and extremely knowledgeable feminist, Ms. Rose has worked with clinics over three decades, beginning with Midtown Hospital, the nation's first hospital specializing in late abortion services and women's health. Ms. Rose was instrumental in helping open Midtown and served at various times as Clinic Director, Counseling Director, Admission Supervisor and Community Relations between 1977 and 1989.
I have come up with some standards that a clinic must fulfill for me to do a Home Page or link them to my site. To date, I have refused a few clinics. I do check out my clinics.
Q: We know that there are some clinics that aren't up to the standards the pro-choice community would like. How do you think the pro-choice community should deal with this?
A: That's a really tough issue. I would like to see a national entity like the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Hospitals that would oversee the nation's clinics. It shouldn't be a government organization but a private group and the clinics would have to pay for its services. The board would be made up of people everyone could respect. There are some national clinic organizations, like NAF and NCAP, but they don't have a staff that is just devoted to clinic inspection.
Member clinics have agreed to comply with our standards for quality and care, updated annually in our Clinical Policy Guidelines, which set the evidence-based standards for abortion care in North America. NAF periodically conducts site visits to confirm that our clinics are in compliance with our guidelines (Emphasis mine).
Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard (T.R.M. Howard) (March 4, 1908 - May 1, 1976) was an African American civil rights leader, fraternal organization leader, surgeon, and entrepreneur. He was a mentor to Medgar Evers and Charles Evers, head of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, and played a prominent role in the investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. He was also president of the National Medical Association. Picture taken in 1955. Left to Right: Two witnesses at the trial on the murder of Emmett Till, Mamie Till Mobley (Till's mother), T.R.M. Howard, Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan, Amanda Bradley (trial witness). .... The RCNL mounted a successful boycott against service stations that denied restrooms to blacks and distributed twenty thousand bumper stickers with the slogan, "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." The RCNL organized yearly rallies future-lincoln-town-car in Mound Bayou f
