Alabama NAF facility closes to avoid state action

Alabama Abortion Mill To Close Down Rather Than Clean Up:

Beacon Women's Center has announced on its website that their abortion clinic is now closed. The clinic remains open only for follow-up patients until June 18, 2010, when it will officially surrender its operating license.

Beacon Women's Center had a long history of health and safety deficiencies on record with the Alabama Department of Public Health.

Deficiencies included:

• Improper distribution of controlled substances without proper physician authorization
• Failure of nurses to administer the correct medication
• Failure to determine if patients had drug allergies
• Use of expired medication and supplies
• Being dangerously understaffed on abortion days
• Unlicensed administrator assisting with abortion surgeries
• Use of unsterilized medical equipment, including speculums and dilators
• Falsifying lab tests
• Improperly conducting urinary pregnancy tests, and reading results before prescribed time had expired – staff scored 60% failure for proficiency for conducting pregnancy tests
• Using faulty, uninspected lab equipment
• Broken suction machine that was not removed per order of inspector

....

According to sources in the ADPH, a consent decree was signed in June 8, 2010, agreeing to close the clinic in order to avoid a revocation hearing.

Ah, but this is just some seedy fly-by-night, right?

Wrong. The place is a member of the National Abortion Federation:




What exactly does it mean that Beacon is a member of the National Abortion Federation?

Well, let's quote the NAF web site (emphasis mine):

NAF is the professional association of abortion providers in North America. Our member clinics care for more than half the women who choose abortion each year in the United States. In order to become a member, a clinic must complete a rigorous application process. 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.

So, are NAF guidelines so slipshod that this seedy place was compliant, or is NAF lying when they say that their members comply with their standards?

UPDATE: I missed posting this NAF death yesterday. On a single day, a NAF clinic managed to fatally injure two teenage girls. Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of the first of the girls:

On June 11, 1979, 19-year-old Angela Scott died at Grady Memorial Hospital. The events that led to her death -- and also claimed the life of another teen -- began on June 2.

Angela was in the recovery room after her safe, legal abortion at National Abortion Federation member Atlanta Women's Pavillion. Somebody noticed that she wasn't breathing.

A nurse-anesthetist was administering anesthesia to 14-year-old Delores Smith while Dr. Jacob Adams was performing her abortion. The nurse-anesthetist ran to assist in efforts to revive Angela, leaving Delores unattended with her anesthesia drip still running.

After staff had resuscitated Angela and loaded her into an ambulance, they returned their attention to Delores, who had gone into cardio-respiratory arrest. Adams had accompanied Angela to the hospital, and staff refused to release Dolores to an ambulance until the physician had returned to discharge her. This resulted in a 30-minute delay, during which the ambulance crew was unable to attend to Delores or begin transporting her.

Angela lingered for a week in a coma before dying on June 11. Delores never regained consciousness and eventually was admitted to a nursing home, where she died of adult respiratory distress syndrome on October 24, 1979, some time after her fifteenth birthday.