Women Want to Know Abortion Risks
Lawsuit Headed to Supreme Court to Overturn the Key Doe v. Bolton Decision
Planned Parenthood Training Abortionists at Yale
Medical Students for Choice
Hialeah & Orlando Abortion Sites Closed; Ocala Sites Allowed to Reopen
Cosmetic Clinics Use Aborted Human Tissue for Cosmetic Injection
Poland's First March for Life Draws 2000+…
HIALEAH FL ABORTION SITE VOLUNTARILY SURRENDERED ITS LICENSE to practice medicine to the state Agency for Health Care Administration in the wake of a police investigation concerning a fetus recently was discovered in a biohazard container. The business is effectively shut down.
Meanwhile, Hialeah officials revoked the clinic's occupational license late 8Aug06. Giving up the license makes A GYN Diagnostic Center, 3671 W. 16th Ave., ineligible to practice medicine, said Travers [city licensing administrator].
Last month, Hialeah police responded to a report that an 18-year-old who had come in for an abortion had given birth to a baby boy inside the site. The baby was found 9 days later. The mother was 23 weeks pregnant. Hialeah Police Chief Rolando Bolaños ordered the business shut down 29July, while the case was being investigated. Charges may be filed, police said. Meanwhile, Hialeah police and the state attorney's office say the investigation at the site continues. An autopsy has been performed, but the results have not yet been made public.
This isn't the first time the business, which is among a group of abortion sites in South Florida, has been in trouble. A complaint was filed against it, as well as another site with the same name in East Hialeah on Dec. 27, 2004. The East Hialeah site — which is still open — is under the same management: owned by Belkis Gonzalez of Miramar and managed by Siomara Senises of Davie, according to state records. Another complaint was filed against A GYN Diagnostic Center, at 267 E. 49th St., less than a year after the first, said Moody, of the AHCA. Records weren't immediately available as to the nature of the complaints. The A GYN site in Miramar was shut down last year, after 3 employees were charged with practicing medicine without a license, according to state records.
One employee, Adieren Rojas, who was hired to clean the Miramar site, was promoted to medical assistant. She has pleaded guilty to nursing without a license. After the closing of the Miramar center, a new business opened at the same location with a new name and new corporate officers, according to state records. [http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/15238361.htm, [email protected], 10Aug06; ple-news, digest #697, 12Aug06]
OCALA FACILITIES REOPEN. There were no abortions done 19Aug-28Aug06, with owner Dr. Pendergraft under state investigation. On 16Aug, the Florida Department of Health indefinitely suspended Pendergraft's medical license in an emergency order that says he showed a "flagrant disregard for the laws of the state of Florida and a willingness to endanger the lives and health of pregnant patients" because he allegedly performed 2 illegal third-term abortions at 2 Orlando centers he owns.
The Agency for Health Care Administration indefinitely prohibited any doctor from doing abortions at the Orlando locations. Abortions at 3 other sites Pendergraft owns, including the 2 Ocala locations, reopened 28Aug. Pendergraft's lawyers are in the process of preparing his appeal, arguing that the accusations against Pendergraft are politically motivated. FL law bans 3rd-trimester abortions, unless physicians certify in writing the pregnant woman's life or health is at risk and the procedure takes place in a hospital.
The DOH order suspending Pendergraft gave the Legislature's rationale for the ban: "By the third trimester, it becomes significantly more dangerous to the mother to have an abortion outside of a hospital; even to remove a deformed fetus…Specific increased risks to the mother are hemorrhage, perforation of the uterus, retained placental tissue, and death." The DOH order focuses on one abortion Pendergraft reportedly conducted in 2004 and one in 2005. In the 2004 case, Pendergraft reportedly prescribed a 22-year-old patient the drug Cytotec, used to initiate abortions. She later gave birth to the fetus on her living room floor and went to the emergency room at a local hospital suffering abdominal pain and bleeding, according to the DOH complaint. According to Pendergraft's records, the woman was 22 weeks pregnant, before the start of the third trimester. The DOH order is based on a hospital physician's determination that the fetus was 24 to 26 weeks in gestational age, which is in the third term. The 2005 abortion involved a 28-week pregnant woman carrying a fetus that no hospital physicians would perform; Pendergraft did, according to the DOH complaint.
The DOH also alleged that Pendergraft was prescribing prescription drugs without a valid Drug Enforcement Agency number, required for the distribution of controlled substances. Pendergraft owns abortion sites in Orlando, Ocala, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale. Pendergraft was convicted in February 2001 after he and a business associate filed a lawsuit against Marion County, saying his Ocala clinic was not given adequate protection against abortion protesters. The county claimed the lawsuit was part of an extortion plot to get it to pay the two to close the clinic. Pendergraft spent seven months in prison before an appeals court overturned his conviction in July 2002. He later pleaded guilty in 2004 to a single count of accessory after the fact to making false statements. [19Aug06,Star-Banner, Ocala.com, C. Curry [email protected] or 867-4115; Orlando Sentinel, 17Aug06]
WOMEN WANT TO KNOW ABOUT ABORTION RISKS: New Study Underscores Need for Informed Consent Legislation. A new survey has found that women want to be thoroughly informed of all possible
risks associated with elective medical procedures, and they generally want as much or more information when it comes to abortion. The survey of 187 women seeking obstetric and gynecological services at a Wisconsin women's health clinic was published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in July. The women were given a short survey in which they were asked to state their preferences for information about elective medical procedures. They ranked the degree of information they preferred regarding alternative treatments and complication rates, and rated the severity of different types of complications, ranging in severity from headaches to death.
The results showed that 95 percent of patients wished to be informed of all the risks of a procedure and 69 percent wanted to be informed of all alternative treatments, not just the alternatives preferred by their doctor. Moreover, in their ranking of the seriousness of complications, mental health complications ranked as very serious, only slightly below the risk of death or heart disease.
This finding may be especially important to the abortion debate since recent peer-reviewed studies have linked abortion to increased rates of mental health problems, such as suicidal behavior, clinical depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and sleep disorders. "Doctors should anticipate that most women desire information on every potential risk, even risks that doctors may judge to be less serious or inconsequentially rare, and they will generally consider this information to be relevant to their decisions regarding elective procedures," the authors wrote.
Dr. David Reardon [dir, Elliot Institute, co-author of the study]: the survey "demonstrates that women have a high level of interest in being informed of any risk that is statistically associated with the procedure, including psychological risks. It also reveals that while some experts may consider some associations, such as a 10 percent higher risk of breast cancer, as relatively unimportant, most women would consider it to be very important to their decision making process." Reardon also said the study refutes the claim doctors should withhold information about studies identifying abortion risks simply because the abortion provider personally believes that future studies may someday disprove the earlier findings.
"Our survey shows that most women don't want doctors to screen which information they are told about risks," he said. "They want to judge the evidence for themselves. They clearly prefer to be fully informed about all possible complications, even if abortion providers insist that the causal links between abortion and these statistically linked complications have yet to be fully proven to the abortionist's satisfaction." [PK Coleman, DC Reardon, MB Lee, "Women's preferences for information and complication seriousness ratings related to elective medical procedures," Journal of Medical Ethics, 32:435-438 (2006); Elliot Institute, 29Aug06]
LAWSUIT HEADED TO SUPREME COURT TO OVERTURN KEY DOE ABORTION DECISION. Sandra Cano, the "Mary Doe" of the Doe v. Bolton decision, which entrenched Roe v. Wade by declaring abortions should be allowed to protect a woman's health and that health could be any reason at all, wants the high court to overturn the decision. The lawsuit is similar to one Norma McCorvey filed seeking to reverse Roe itself and it will likely face dim prospects as the high court denied McCorvey's appeal last February. The Justice Fdn law firm, represented McCorvey and represents Cano in her case.
According to lead Justice Fdn attorney Allan Parker, "significant changes in the factual conditions surrounding abortion" make it so the facts of the cases have changed and the court should re-examine its decisions. He says new information the court didn't have at the time shows abortion hurts women. That's evidenced by "the sworn testimony of women harmed by abortion; medical articles and studies since 1973 documenting abortion injuries; and, sworn evidence that abortion clinics [sic] in fact do not provide the normal doctor-patient relationship anticipated by Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton."
Over 1,000 women have provided sworn statements for the lawsuit saying they regret their abortions or were hurt physically or emotionally from it. "Significant changes also occurred in legal conditions, including changes in the law of 46 states that have enacted 'Baby Moses' laws which transfer the burden of unwanted child care to society, and this Court's Federalism jurisprudence restoring more autonomy to the states," Parker added.
Like the McCorvey case, the Cano lawsuit relies on a federal court rule as the basis for reopening the decades-old case. The rule allows a court to re-examine its decision if new evidence has been found, or "it is no longer equitable" for the judgment to remain in force. The Supreme Court has reversed its own precedents using Rule 60(b)(5) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, most recently in the 1997 decision of Agostini v. Felton. In that case, the high court used a post-judgment motion by a party to reverse two of its own 12-year-old precedents. The courts have reversed precedents by as long as 41 years, according to Parker. It also used the rule in Aguilar v. Felton in 1985. Cano's case comes to the high court after the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January that lower courts could not overturn Roe v. Wade or Doe v. Bolton and that it was a decision only the Supreme Court could reverse.
Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, also commented on the case and compared it to the McCorvey lawsuit. "In both cases, you have the original plaintiffs, who have had a change of heart in the matter," Johnson told Family News in Focus. "They are now petitioning the court to reopen their case and re-examine the rulings."
Cano most recently commented on the situation in a 2005 Senate committee hearing. "Using my name and life, Doe v. Bolton falsely created the health exception that led to abortion on demand and partial-birth abortion," Cano told lawmakers. "How it got there is still pretty much a mystery to me. I only sought legal assistance to get a divorce from my husband and to get my children from foster care," she explained. "I was very vulnerable, poor and pregnant with my fourth child, but abortion never crossed my mind. I did not seek an abortion nor do I believe in abortion," Cano added. "Yet my name and life are now forever linked with the slaughter of 40 to 50 million babies." The case is Cano v. Baker, docket 06-162. Related: The Justice Foundation's Operation Outcry – http://www.operationoutcry.org [Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com 8August06]
CLINICS USE TISSUE FROM BABIES KILLED IN ABORTIONS FOR COSMETIC INJECTI
ON. Women from around the world are traveling to clinics in various locations that are now offering face lifts and cosmetic surgery using tissue from babies who have been killed by abortions. Pro-life advocates are strongly condemning the practice and saying the taking of human life is never warranted — especially for such a self-serving purpose.
Women like Susan B., a 52-year-old housewife from England, are heading to places such as Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Moscow and Rotterdam to obtain the treatments. She has been given the final go-ahead to travel abroad for the treatment that promises to make her look 10 years younger and doesn't mind that lives have been sacrificed to enhance her beauty.
To produce the treatments, clinics are using tissue from babies killed in abortions from 6 to 12 weeks into pregnancy and stem cells obtained from destroying human embryos to inject into a client's face. The fetal cells then begin a supposed rejuvenation process that makes the skin look younger. To obtain the cells, women in underdeveloped nations are paid up to $200 to carry a baby up to the optimum 8- 12 week period when the fetuses are “harvested” for their stem cells which are then sold to exclusive cosmetic clinics. [London, England, 9Aug06 LifeNews.com]
POLAND’S FIRST MARCH FOR LIFE DRAWS 2000+ who marched through Warsaw on 4June06 for the nation’s First National March for Life and Family. the march served to show Polish opposition to abortion, same-sex “marriage” and other modern day threats to the family. Polish officials and politicians including the Minister of Education were also present at the march. Abortion is still legal under very restricted circumstances such as when the pregnancy results from a crime, when the baby is diagnosed with a genetic imperfection, or when the mother’s life/health is in danger. About 150-200 such abortions are committed each year. Homosexual “unions” are also not legal but leftist radicals, feminists and those in the homosexual movement are trying hard to impose acceptance of their lifestyle on society and even target young children with pro-homosexual textbooks. [www.tfp.org]
PLANNED PARENTHOOD TRAINING ABORTIONISTS AT YALE. Planned Parenthood of Connecticut (PPC) is training abortionists at Yale Medical School. Ob/Gyn residents at Yale’s School of Medicine must undergo training in abortion procedures in a required residency program established by PPC. Second year ob/gyn residents will have to complete 2 four-week rotations with PPC for training in abortion techniques such as vacuum suction, medical abortions, and other “family planning” services in a program entitled Family Planning/Ambulatory Surgery.
"Yale is very satisfied with the experience and training the residents are receiving at PPC and are especially happy with the number of patients the residents see," said Mary Bawza [COO, PPC, to Planned Parenthood’s Choice magazine]. Although the course is required in the residency curriculum, ob/gyn residents may opt-out of participating in abortions if they sign a paper that states they believe abortion is against their “personal/religious” beliefs. However, residents cannot opt-out of learning the theoretical applications of the program, including techniques related to still-birth, miscarriage, and complications related to abortion.
Students also cannot opt out of performing ultrasounds on women intending to have abortions. PPC established the course last year to replace the imploding and aging population of abortionists, whose numbers have declined 37% since the 1980s. Although worried about their population decline, PPC seems determined to spread abortion practices deeper into the heartland of the USA, claiming studies indicate 87% of US counties and 97% of rural counties have no abortionists. Charles Lockwood, M.D., Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences [email protected]; Patti Johnson, Residency Program Coordinator [email protected]
[NEW HAVEN, CT, 23Aug06 LifeSiteNews.com; Wed STOPP Report, 30Aug06]
MEDICAL STUDENTS FOR CHOICE (MSC) claims membership of ~7,000 medical students, 116 chapters in the USA/Canada, and 8 national staff members. MSC works to place “abortion education & training on the class syllabi of medical schools throughout North America” as now evidenced at Yale. It seeks to fill vacancies left by retiring abortionists with those who are newly trained to kill and to place abortionists in those areas where one does not currently exist. [The Caleb Report, May-June 2006]