"California Trusts Women." Can Women Trust California?

California's proposed new abortion-rights license plate is to take an oblique angle, using a  "California Trusts Women" theme.

Proceeds from the plate will benefit the Family Planning, Access, Care and Treatment (FPACT) program, which provides family planning services to 1.8 million Californians every year. Currently, the FPACT program is overwhelmingly supported by federal funding, with the federal government picking up 90 percent of the tab. FPACT funding is also a vital source of funding for Planned Parenthood reproductive health care services.

Since the money is going to Planned Parenthood and not to actual women, isn't the issue whether or not California can trust Planned Parenthood? And if so, to do what?

Edrica Goode , a 21-year-old woman who dreamed of becoming an attorney, trusted a Planned Parenthood in Riverside, California, in late January of 2007. Despite clear signs of infection, a nurse practitioner inserted laminaria (seaweed sticks that absorb vaginal moisture and expand, thus dilating the cervix) and sent her home. Not surprisingly, Edrica was quickly struck with an infection so swift and severe that it left her incoherent and unable to communicate the cause of her illness to her family or the medical professionals who tried but failed to save her life.

Diana Lopez, age 25, was 19 weeks pregnant when trusted Planned Parenthood in February, 2002. Had her abortion been performed with due care and diligence, it should have taken between 10 and 20 minutes. The doctor rushed through it in only six minutes, leaving Diana with severe internal lacerations. Before the day was over, Diana had bled to death, and her two young children were left motherless.

Holly Patterson age 18, trusted a Planned Parenthood in Hayward, California in September of 2003. They provided the drugs for a medication abortion. Rather than instruct Holly to administer the second drug inside her cheek to dissolve, which is the recommended method, Planned Parenthood instructed Holly to insert the drug vaginally. For reasons that are still not understood, administering the drug this way had been shown to trigger swiftly-fatal Toxic Shock Syndrome. This is what happened to Holly. By the time she got to the hospital, it was too late to save her.

Vivian Tran, 22 years old, decided in December of 2003 to trust the Costa Mesa Planned Parenthood facility. She died just as Holly Patterson died, from TSS linked to the vaginal rather than buccal (inside the cheek) administration of the second of two medication abortion drugs. Evidently Planned Parenthood had chosen not to learn anything from Holly Patterson's death.

So, California, the question is not whether or not you trust women. It is whether they can trust you. Will you continue to turn a blind eye, or will you stop pumping money into Planned Parenthood and start demanding that they earn your trust before you give them another dime?

Doctor Still on the Run After Appalling 1994 Abortion Death

Fugitive Dr. Suresh Gandotra

On December 8, 1994, 23-year-old Magdalena Rodriguez went to Suresh Gandotra's clinic, El Norte Clinica Medica, for what she thought was a safe, legal second-trimester abortion. Gandotra later said, "I knew I screwed up," when he pulled out bowel instead of fetal parts.

Gandotra called a hospital and asked for directions to send Magdalena there by car. The staff at the hospital insisted that Magdalena should be transported by ambulance. They began to assemble an expert team for the expected catastrophic injuries.

In the mean time, Gandotra left Magdalena unattended while he did abortions on other patients. After a half-hour delay, he finally called an ambulance. When the ambulance crew arrived, they found Magdalena lying on the floor, in ventricular fibrillation, bleeding and pulseless. The ambulance crew was not informed about the hospital that was awaiting this critically injured patient, so they took Magdalena to another hospital, one that was not prepared to treat a patient with her specific injuries.

Gandotra sent Magdalena to the hospital without a medical history or any information about her condition or what he'd done to her. The staff were totally unprepared for what they found when they examined her. Magdalena had no vitals on arrival at hospital. She was unresponsive with fixed, dilated pupils.

When the surgeon at the hospital opened Magdalena's peritoneum, it was so distended with blood that the operating room was spattered with the escaping blood. Magdalena's uterus was ruptured, with a fetal limb protruding into her abdomen. Her cervix, uterus, bladder, and colon were lacerated. The mangled and partially dismembered fetus was of approximately 30 weeks gestation. As the autopsy describes it, "the body of the baby was not complete when autopsied. Both arms had been cut off; the heart, lungs, liver, and other organs had been cut out, the front of the chest and abdomen were missing, the right femur was fractured, the head was intact except for an area on the scalp which had been taken off from the back of the head."

Magdalena bled to death during surgery. Her death was attributed to "complications of the acute pelvic injuries which consisted of lacerations of the lower uterus, vagina, bladder and colon."

Gandotra told the medical board that he had delayed calling an ambulance because he had no admitting privileges and that the patient had asked to be released so she could walk home. Gandotra's attorney said, "We don't believe this was blow the standard of care nor do we believe it was malpractice." A nurse at the hospital that tried to save Magdalena's life said, "I've never seen anything like this before and I don't want to again." 

Gandotra's treatment of Magdalena was so appalling that he had to flee the US to avoid prosecution.

 

Remembering Douglas "Texas Gosnell" Karpen's Teenage Victim

Abortionists Douglas Karpen is currently under investigation after three of his empolyees came forward to assert that they'd seen him, Gosnell-like, routinely murder viable infants born alive during abortions.

But it's not only nameless infants that have fallen victim to Douglas Karpen. Today we remember a teenage victim.

Denise Montoya was fifteen years old when her parents brought her to Women's Pavillion in Houston for an elective abortion on May 13, 1988. Karpan performed an abortion to kill Denise's viable 25.5-week unborn child.

Denise suffered severe bleeding, and was admitted to Ben Taub hospital. Her condition deteriorated, and she died on May 29, 1988.

Her parents filed suit against Karpen and the clinic, saying that they had faied to adequately explain the risks of the procedure, and had not provided consent forms, or had the parents sign any informed consent document, prior to the fatal abortion. They indicated that they never would have subjected their daughter to a highly risky third trimester abortion had they been informed of how dangerous the procedure was.

According to their 1991 Annual Report, Women's Pavillion was a National Abortion Federation member.

Operation Rescue has made the complaint by Denise's parents available here.

Karpen also owned and operated the facility where Glenda Davis suffered multiple internal lacerations before being loaded into an employee's car rather than an ambulance for transport to the hospital where she died.

Abortionist Showery

In a Post-Roe Texas, it would likely be easier to take a quack like Karpen out of circulation -- provided, of course, the authorities actually cared enough about women to want to do so. So far the authorities in Texas are moving at an utterly glacial speed regarding the allegations his former employees have brought forth -- and what they have provided already far surpassed what was sufficient to convict Raymond Showery of murdering a live-born infant in 1979. But were the law that Norma McCorvey challenged as Jane Roe once again in effect, there would be no dancing around how many ultrasounds Karpen did or didn't perform, or whether he killed the baby with digoxin before ripping its throat out, or even whether the baby was in or out of the womb when the deed was done. Such niceties of law might determine precisely which laws he could be prosecuted for breaking, but "So what? Abortions are ugly and brutal." wouldn't provide any legal coverage.

As we move closer to a Post-Roe America, prolifes in individual states need to do an in-depth legal analysis of the laws that are currently enjoined by Roe and Doe, along with laws that have been  passed since then, and immediately move to close up any loopholes the likes of Douglas Karpen will be looking to wriggle through. The laws need to be tightened up to make it clear that killing a baby is killing a baby, and where that baby was when you ripped through its fragile flesh with your Bierers' forceps should have zero effect on how accountable an abortionist is held.