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Sunday, July 09, 2023

July 9, 2016: Another Woman Sent Home to Bleed to Death

Snapshot of the face of a young Hispanic woman giving the camera a Mona Lisa smile.
Jamie Lee Morales
On July 9, 2016, 30-year-old Jamie Lee Morales of Buffalo, New York, had her sister drive her to Liberty Women's Health in Flushing, Queens, for a an abortion. The doctor, 53-year-old gynecologist Robert Rho, specialized in "vaginal rejuvenation" but also did what his attorney described as "difficult" abortions.

Jamie signed in under her sister's name, Thaycha Ruiz, and underwent the procedure. Rho admitted to investigators that he he knew Jamie was using somebody else's identity, but "there was an issue with payment for the procedure which was handled by the receptionist." It's unclear if the clinic knowingly let Jamie fraudulently use her sister's insurance to pay for the $6,000 abortion.

It's unclear how Jamie found Rho, who was willing to abort a viable fetus of about 25 weeks of gestation after Planned Parenthood and another Queens abortion facility had turned her away. He was also willing to do it fast -- in only one day, rather than spending multiple days gently dilating the cervix, which was how his website described the procedures he did past 20 weeks.

Jamie reportedly was aborting her baby so late in the pregnancy because she had only recently realized that she was pregnant.

According to later testimony, Rho both performed the abortion and administered the anesthesia himself rather than having a qualified professional to properly monitor his patient.

The procedure was started at 1:40 pm. In the recovery room, Jamie was bleeding heavily. Rho performed another procedure that was intended to stop the bleeding.

Though Jamie was weak and woozy, and at one point collapsed in the bathroom, Rho discharged her in the care of her sister with instructions to go to a hospital if the bleeding resumed. She was discharged about 6:30 pm.

Jamie was riding in the back seat on the way to her sister's home in the Bronx when she lost consciousness, falling to the floor. Her sister took her to a hospital, where, in spite of being transfused with six units of blood, she died that night. It turned out that during the abortion, Rho had lacerated her cervix, put a hole in the wall of her uterus, and cut into her uterine aorta. 

A middle-aged Korean man with eyeglasses and a mustache
Dr. Robert Rho
Rho was charged with second-degree manslaughter in Jamie's death because he injured her so severely and then failed to provide necessary life-saving care. Adding to the unprofessionalism of the case is the fact that Rho disposed of Jamie's fetus in a black plastic trash bag outside the door of his clinic. He blamed his patient's death on the fact that she hadn't told him that she had lupus, which could affect her body's ability to stop bleeding.

Pending trial, Rho was freed on $400,000 bail. He was required to surrender his passport and was not to practice medicine until the case was resolved. His attorney said that Rho was "devastated" by Jamie's death and immediately and voluntarily closed his clinic.

During the three-week trial, the prosecution alleged that Rho took risks to save time and money, and rushed Jamie out of the office to make room for other patients. Witnesses noted that Rho had been investigated in the past for hiring staff without adequate training. 

At one point Rho almost caused a mistrial by approaching a juror near courthouse security to try to sway her.

After learning that the jury had reached a verdict, Rho surprised the court by changing his plea to guilty of felony negligent homicide. Troy Newman of Operation Rescue commented, "I suspect Rho took the plea deal once he realized the jury was about to convict him [of second degree manslaughter]." This charge could have resulted in up to 15 years in prison, while the guilty plea would result in a much lower sentence of 16 months to 4 years.

Newman added, "We have great sympathy for the Morales family for the loss they have suffered. Their grief was only compounded by Rho's selfish and erratic behavior that first denied them the life of a loved one, then denied them the closure a verdict would have brought."  As Operation Rescue's press release about the plea deal noted, "The Morales family was upset that they had endured a full three weeks of trial where the reputation of their daughter was attacked, only to be denied a jury verdict."

This last comment makes me think that Rho's attorney tried to use what's dubbed "the slut defense" -- dragging up the woman's sexual history, perhaps history of prior abortions, or in this case the fact that she had decided to abort a baby old enough to survive outside the womb, in order to paint her as somebody who just got what she deserved. This is a pretty typical defense, the threat of which, as Kitty Kolbert characterized it to the National Abortion Federation, means "beating the shit out of this woman to get her to drop her suit." It's staggering to think of what Rho's attorneys put Jamie's family through.

Predictably, abortion advocates blamed Jamie's death on the fact that, at the time, New York had limits on circumstances under which it was legal to abort babies past the age of viability. Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Clinic, which at the time did abortions up to 24 weeks, reportedly would refer women to other facilities willing to abort viable babies. It's unclear if they referred her to Rho.

Sources:

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