Saturday, December 28, 2019

A Point I'd Missed for Years

Her Medical Clinic wasn't even a real clinic. It truly deserved the name "fake clinic." If I'm reading it right, it was just Leo Kenneally's private practice, just a doctor's office.

Her Medical Clinic is where the fatal abortion were perpetrated on Donna Heim, Liliana Cortez, and Michelle Thames, and where Maria Soto died of injuries after being left unattended.


Donna was the first to die, in August of 1986. She was given medication that was not appropriate for a patient with asthma and then was not properly resuscitated. Her mother, Barbara Heim, told the Daily News of Los Angeles County, "I thought they'd close the door so no one else would die." But a month after Donna's fatal abortion Liliana Cortez, another woman with asthma, also died after an abortion at Her Medical Clinic. Eighteen-year-old Michelle suffered a seizure during her abortion at Her Medical Clinic on November 17, 1987. She died later that day. Her family filed suit, claiming that Her Medical Clinic staff had made inadequate attempts to resuscitate Michelle.

The battle over Kenneally's medical license turned political after it was suspended by the medical board over the appalling conditions at Her Medical Clinic. Former state medical board executive director Dixon Arnett's said that Leo F. Kenneally's case was "the most egregious I have seen, bar none." But a judge restored Kenneally's license on the grounds that he was doing a public service "providing abortions" in an "underserved area."

The investigation of patient deaths wasn't the first time Kenneally got in trouble. His license had been suspended in 1979 for Medi-Cal theft, and previously in 1975 for records-keeping violations.

No comments: