Sunday, February 04, 2007

My email to Anna Rose

My post about Midtown Hospital addressed Anna Rose, founder of Abortion Clinics Online, former employee of the notorious Midtown Hospital.

I sent her the following email:
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

Anybody want to speculate as to what answer, if any, I might get, and what action, if any, Ms. Rose might take to give women the actual tools they need to investigate abortion facilities before they go there?

4 comments:

Christina Dunigan said...

So far, no response.

Christina Dunigan said...

Still no response. Anybody surprised?

Christina Dunigan said...

Still no response. And Eve Surgical Center is still a featured "provider."

Christina Dunigan said...

Yet another piece of evidence that for some activists, it's all about ensuring that abortions happen, and not at all about the women's well-being or even the women's ability to make an informed choice.