The Not-a-First First: Abortion/Birthing Center Combo

"Nation's First Birthing Center/Abortion Clinic Opens in Buffalo. This Is Huge."

Thus gushes Amanda Marcotte in her blog on Slate.com. You can read her piece for yourself to get her spin on it. Prolifers, myself included, find the idea every bit as revolting as Marcotte finds it refreshing.

Either way, though, this "first" is not a first. It's been done before.

Abortionist Raymond Showery

Raymond Showery ran a bi-named facility, Southside Medical Clinic or Family Hospital of El Paso. It was an inpatient facility where women could go to have their unborn children either delivered alive, aborted, or, a jury found, both. Showery was convicted of the murder of a baby born alive during an abortion. Shower was out on bail appealing the murder conviction when he performed the safe, legal abortion that killed 28-year-old Mickey Apodaca in 1984.

Ronald Tauber ran Orlando Birthing Center, a combination abortion/birthing facility, where he performed a fatal abortion on Gloria Small in 1978.

There might actually have been others. But the abortion/birthing combo in Buffalo is not breaking new ground. Others have dug that grave before, and buried many a child along with some mothers.

So, Buffalo Women's Service / Birthing Center of Buffalo, pride yourselves if you will on being a one stop fetus-disposition center. But you're not the first. And that's some interesting company you've chosen to keep.