Abortion Discussion

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August 18, 2010

The Donohue Show

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion Blog, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Information, Abortion Late, Abortion Medical, Abortion Pill, Late Term Abortion | Tags: , , , , , |
[27] Comments 
Abortion Pill

Abortion Pill

I follow the discussion on the Abortion.com Facebook page very closely and I appreciate the moderator posting some of my pieces.  From what I can see, a number of people are interested in some of the more unique stories about the days when I was at the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.   I’m not sure if this will be to your liking, but…..

At about 2:00 p.m. on March 10, 1993 I learned that Doctor David Gunn had been murdered as he approached his clinic in Pensacola, Florida.  For months, those of us in the abortion provider world knew something was going to happen.  Anti-abortion terrorism was spreading everywhere, folks were on edge.  I have to say that when I got the call, I was not in total shock.

The murder was front page news for several days.  A short time later, I got a call from a producer from “The Donohue Show.”  For you youngsters out there (or you oldsters who can’t remember where your bathroom is anymore), Phil Donohue was basically the first “Oprah.”  The producer said they wanted me to join Susan Hill, Doctor Tom Tucker, David Gunn, Jr. and a Mr. Paul Hill on the show a few days later.  I readily accepted the invitation.  Unfortunately, Doctor Tucker got stuck in a snow storm but Doctor Takey Crist, an abortion provider from North Carolina, chartered a private jet at the last minute to fill in for Tucker.  Susan Hill owned 8 clinics at the time and employed Doctor Gunn.  David Gunn, Jr., the son of the murdered doctor, had already become a celebrity of sorts by that time.  None of us knew who Paul Hill was.

When we got to the television station, we were escorted to the “Green Room” which is where we all met Paul Hill.  By that time, we had learned that he would represent the anti-abortion side on the show.  I shook his hand, he was very cordial.  When we went up to the stage, I was seated next to him.  Then, once the show started, Paul quickly told the world that it was “justifiable homicide” to kill an abortion doctor.  The crowd, a liberal New York crowd, collectively gasped.  They had never heard such a thing (neither had I).  I thought the audience was going to lynch him.  His remarks were especially outrageous in that the son of the murdered doctor was sitting three chairs from him on the stage.

I answered a few easy questions, although later on my friends said I had the “deer in the headlight” look about me.  At one point, I was talking about how some police were letting protestors block the clinics and I said that “we HAD a sheriff in Corpus Christi, Texas, who testified that he would never arrest the protestors because he was pro-life.”  Unfortunately, millions and millions of people across the country thought I said we “HAVE” a sheriff down there.  The next day I got a call from the sheriff of Corpus Christi who, screaming in my ear, told me that his office was being barraged with phone calls from angry pro-choicers.  I felt terrible when he told me he was actually pro-choice – but the damage had already been done.

During one commercial, Phil Donohue himself came over to me and said “Okay, someone is going to call in and ask you about that abortion pill.  What is it called, RU-483 or something?”    I told him it was RU-486.  Minutes later, “Marianne from Brooklyn” called to ask about the abortion pill.  I found out later that “Marianne” was actually one of the co-producers of the show calling from backstage.

Then there was Doctor Crist.  He was a large, dashing bearded doctor of Greek descent who on that day was not going to take any crap from Paul Hill.  He massacred him verbally, got more applause from the audience than anyone.  After the show, over the course of the next few weeks, his clinic received hundreds of calls from women who wanted to meet Doctor Crist personally.  He told me later that he received at least 50 proposals of marriage in the mail after his appearance.  Ah, the power of television.

During the commercials, I talked to Paul Hill and over the next year I saw him at a number of anti-abortion protests.  He became the national spokesman for the “justifiable homicide” doctrine.  Then, about 15 months later I got another call that Doctor Baird Britton and his bodyguard had been assassinated in Pensacola.  They were both shot by Paul Hill.

 

August 16, 2010

Pendergraft Abortion

Posted by Elena Carvin under Abortion Blog, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Pendergraft Abortion | Tags: , , , , |
[17] Comments 
Pendergraft Abortion

Pendergraft Abortion

A Florida abortionist’s medical license has been suspended a fourth time — and a prominent pro-life group is outraged the man hasn’t been drummed from the practice altogether.

Operation Rescue president Troy Newman has tracked abortionist James Pendergraft — a “proven quack,” as Newman describes him — for years and tells OneNewsNow that a fourth suspension is not enough. The medical board, says the pro-life spokesman, is apparently missing the point: the impact on people.  “[He has] endangered women [and] killed women,” Newman states. “And so Operation Rescue is calling for not just a suspension of his medical license, but finally and completely an absolute revocation of his license before more women and children die.”

The pro-life leader describes Pendergraft’s five abortion clinics in Florida as “a menace to the public” that should be shut down. “The Florida Board of Medicine seriously dropped the ball by not revoking Pendergraft and forcing the closure of his clinics,” he says in a press release.

While outraged that Pendergraft’s license was not permanently revoked, Newman says people can have the last word on the subject.

Operation Rescue’s website contains contact information for Florida officials, and Newman is urging people nationwide to use that information to deliver a clear message to the Florida Board of Medicine that Pendergraft should be pushed out of the profession for good.  According to Operation Rescue, Pendergraft’s clinics — manned by other abortionists — continue to operate while he is on suspension.

 

August 12, 2010

Guaranteeing Access to Abortion Clinics – The Time the Government Helped

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Blog, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Heroes, Abortion Information, Abortion Late, Abortion Law, Abortion Medical, Abortion Pill, Abortion Rates, Abortion Rights, Community Development Block Grant, Cranston, Late Term Abortion | Tags: , , , , , |
[29] Comments 
Cranston Abortion

Cranston Abortion

This past weekend, I got a great treat.  I was alone in my house.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I absolutely love my family.  But I have to admit it was fun to just putter around the house, drinking wine at 1:00 in the afternoon, taking a nap, drinking wine at 5:00.  At one point, however, I found some old newspaper clippings and noticed an article about something I was involved in when I worked for the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.

In the 1990’s the anti-abortion movement would hold massive demonstrations in front of abortion clinics.  It seemed like they could get hundreds of people at the drop of a hat to converge on a local facility.  They would march to the front door and sit down, preventing women from entering the clinic.  Of course, the clinic staff would immediately call the police but in conservative cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana or Birmingham, Alabama the police would just watch the demonstration.  That’s right – they would do absolutely nothing.  Hundreds of protestors were clearly trespassing but the police would just sit on their hands and let the demonstrators do their thing.  It was totally outrageous.

One day I was talking to a friend of mine who worked for Senator Alan Cranston of California and I told her about this problem we were having.  We started to think about how we could get local police to enforce the trespassing laws in those cities.  We came up with a brilliant idea.

In those days, just about every city in the country received “Community Development Block Grant” (CDBG) funds from the federal government.   These CDBG dollars were used for all kinds of projects:  to build affordable housing, construct new sewer lines, repair roads, etc.  Cities got millions and millions of these dollars (I know, those were the good ole days).

So, one night, when the U.S. Senate was in session Senator Cranston proposed an amendment to a bill saying in so many words that if the police did not do their job and arrest the trespassers, then that city would lose its CDBG funds.  Before the anti-abortion Senators knew what was going on, the amendment passed and ultimately became law.

The first thing we did was write a letter to every mayor of every major city in the country to tell them about this new law, just to put them on notice.  Our announcement caused an explosion around the country.  For example, within two days of the letter going out, I got a call from the Mayor of Philadelphia asking me about the new law.  No, that’s not entirely accurate.  What he actually said was “What the *%$)(#*@&% is this new law all about?   What the *#%()@#*%$# are you doing?”

After picking myself off the floor, I politely told him that he just had to make sure the police did their job and he would have nothing to worry about.  “*$()@*@(#%$,” he concluded and hung up the phone.  We never had a problem in Philadelphia again with protestors.

Also, whenever we heard about a demonstration that might take place, just to make sure I would call the Mayor of that city and warn him or her that they stood to lose a crap-load of money if the police ignored the protestors.  All of a sudden, police started making arrests in the most conservative of cities.

A lot of people are down on government.  They say there’s too much of it, it’s broken, keep it out of my face.  I get the argument.  But there are times like this one when government actually helped us guarantee that women would be able to exercise their constitutional right to have an abortion.

Is this a great country, or what?

 

August 12, 2010

Aborticentrism

Posted by Elena Carvin under Aborticentrism, Abortion & Religion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Pill, Abortion Rights, GAL | Tags: , , , |
[7] Comments 

Aborticentrism –

Learn More

Abortion.com
FaceBook Page


http://www.FaceBook.com/abortion.com.opine

http://www.Abortion.com


 

August 9, 2010

The Anti-Abortion Strategy

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion Advocates, Abortion Candidates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Doctor Murder, Abortion Heroes, Abortion Information, Abortion Medical, Abortion Pill, Abortion RU486, Late Term Abortion, morning after pill | Tags: , |
[59] Comments 
Abortion

73% of America is Pro Choice

For years, there has been a raging debate within the anti-abortion movement about whether to take an incremental approach to restricting access to abortion versus going for the whole enchilada, i.e., banning abortion outright in the Congress or through the courts.  Fortunately, they’ve taken the wrong approach.

For years after Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, the anti-abortion movement focused most of its energies on trying to pass the “Human Life Amendment” and/or the “Hatch Constitutional Amendment.”    The HLA was a non-starter from the beginning.  That legislation, introduced by the late Senator Jesse Helms, simply declared that “life begins at conception” and that the fetus was a “person” from the moment of conception.  That one was laughed out of the room.  The more serious effort was the Hatch (as in Senator Orrin Hatch) Amendment which basically overruled Roe v Wade, thus sending the issue of the legality of abortion back to the individual states.  After years and years of furious lobbying, however, that measure was handily defeated in 1981.

Badly beaten, the anti-abortion movement started coming up with ways to make it more difficult to obtain an abortion in this country.   They were successful early on in restricting the use of federal funds for abortions.  Then they started looking to the state legislatures for help.  They came up proposals imposing 24 hour waiting periods, requiring minors to get the permission of their parents to get an abortion, mandating that clinics show women pictures of fetal development and others.  Then there was the famous “partial birth abortion” campaign that took place on both the national and state level.

In many states, these efforts were successful.  Or I should say they were successfully enacted into law.  But if the goal of the anti-abortion movement is to “save babies,” well, these laws hardly had an impact.

The fact is that the desire to have an abortion can be so strong that most women will walk over burning coals to get one.  So, having to jump through some additional hoops and fires is not the deciding factor for most women.  And before you pro-choicers start jumping all over me, I will say that, yes, having to wait 24 hours when you’ve traveled across the state will mean an extra expense.  And the minor who feels she cannot talk to her parents might wind up going to an adjoining state that doesn’t have any restrictions.  These are very unfortunate situations, but while it’s impossible to prove a negative, my gut tells me that the number of abortions has not dropped dramatically because of these laws.   Babies have not been saved, folks.

Then there’s the “partial birth” abortion law.  That one is the biggest joke and biggest scam.  I can tell you for a fact that this law has had no effect whatsoever.   That’s because abortion doctors have other procedures at their disposal to do late term abortions.  Yes, the pro-choice groups argued that the “partial birth” abortion procedure as defined in the legislation was so vague that it could apply to most abortion procedures but, guess what, not one doctor has been prosecuted under this law.  Geez, were our friends hyping things a little?

The fact is that the number of abortions has been decreasing every year, but lemme tell you honey, it ain’t because of these pesky little laws.  It’s because young people are getting smarter, pure and simple.  Just sit in on an 8th grade sex education class in your local high school and you’ll see what I mean.

If I were running some anti-abortion organization, I’d be looking at the Supreme Court.  I’d be anticipating a one-term Obama presidency and I’d be trying to pass some outrageous anti-abortion legislation, just outlawing it outright, in the hopes that 10 years from now it would reach a possibly more conservative Court.  But if the anti-abortion movement wants to waste their time on 24 hour waiting periods, I say go for it…..

 

July 31, 2010

Do Anti-Abortion Laws Cause More Late Term Abortions?

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion & Religion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Doctor Murder, Abortion Information, Abortion Late, D&E, Hyde Amendment, Late Term Abortion, Not Informed | Tags: , , , , , |
[23] Comments 
Henry Hyde Abortion

Henry Hyde Late Abortion Creator

The anti-abortion movement thinks abortion should be illegal.  Good for them, go for it, knock yourself out.

I would guess, however, that if they had their druthers, the anti-abortion crowd would also say that if you’re gonna have an abortion you should have it as early as possible.  I mean, it goes without saying that if you wait too long, the fetus will grow and grow and grow.  And no one likes the idea of abortion at 23 or 24 weeks.  Meanwhile, the vast majority of women who get “later” abortions are minors or poor women.  But here’s the irony – it might be the anti-abortion movement that is responsible for a lot of these late term abortions.

Hey, Pat, are you off your rocker?   Have you totally lost it?

Chill out, folks, lemme explain.

A woman receiving Medicaid assistance gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion.  She calls the local clinic and they tell her that the price for a first trimester abortion is $400.  That’s a lot of money for this woman.   Years ago, the anti-abortion movement enacted the “Hyde Amendment” which says that you cannot use your Medicaid card to get an abortion unless your life was endangered.   Now, if there was no such thing as the Hyde Amendment, this woman would just go to that clinic, give them her Medicaid card and have the abortion right away.    But, instead, she is now looking for $400 that she didn’t anticipate needing.  She doesn’t have a credit card, no bank account to speak of, no rich friends.   So, she has to spend precious time finding the $400 somewhere.  Meanwhile, the baby is growing.  Ultimately, she might get the $400 but by that time she is more advanced and abortions cost more money the later they are performed.   It’s a viscous cycle.  Ultimately, she might get the cash but she’s now in her 19th week.

Were it not for the Hyde Amendment, the abortion would have been performed within days of her discovering her pregnancy.

Then there are the minors.    A 15 year old girl discovers she is pregnant.  Now, at that age she might delay any conversation about her situation because she just might not be sure that she is pregnant.  But once she verifies it, the chances are that she lives in a state that requires her to get the permission of her parents.   These laws, of course, are all courtesy of that anti-abortion movement again.   But the girl’s family is not Ozzie and Harriet land.  In fact, she is petrified of going to her parents, one of whom beats her on a regular basis. So she waits and waits, perhaps thinking she might have a miscarriage and the issue will just go away.  In denial, she remains mum.  Then, her stomach starts to expand and, despite her wearing loose clothes, she ultimately is panicking that her parents will notice.  Only at that point, perhaps now in her 18th week, does she reluctantly go to her parents to give them the news and, hopefully, get their permission for an abortion.

If there were no parental consent laws in her state and she felt she could not talk to her parents, she would have found a good friend or close relative that she could confide in and secured the abortion much earlier.

Ironic, isn’t it?

 

July 27, 2010

Steven Chase Brigham, a physician whose medical license has been revoked

Posted by Elena Carvin under Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Doctors that Have Lost Their Medical License | Tags: |
[52] Comments 
Abortion Brigham

Abortion Brigham

Steven Chase Brigham,

a physician whose medical license has been revoked, relinquished, or temporarily suspended in five states, is now facing regulatory and tax troubles that could jeopardize his chain of 15 abortion clinics.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health this month ordered Brigham to permanently shut his four clinics in the state for repeatedly employing unlicensed caregivers.

Lawyer Julia Gabis, who represents Brigham in the Pennsylvania case, contends that the order violates his constitutional rights and reflects selective enforcement against abortion providers. The department rejected those arguments.

“We intend to appeal this decision to the Commonwealth Court,” Gabis said in an e-mail.

Brigham also has to deal with the IRS. In April, it placed $234,536 in liens against him for failing to pay payroll taxes from 2002 to 2006. His company, which does business as American Women’s Services, has six clinics in New Jersey, including the headquarters at 1 Alpha Ave., Voorhees.

John Zen Jackson, a lawyer in Warren, N.J. who represented Brigham in a lawsuit against him by his accounting firm, did not respond to requests for comment on the liens.

Brigham, 53, has rarely given interviews about his legal scrapes, which go back as far as 1989 and have pitted him against medical boards, creditors, landlords, patients, and others. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Brigham graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1986. By 1990, when abortion became the focus of his practice, he was licensed in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, California, Florida, and Georgia, public records show.

Pennsylvania was the first setback. In a confidential 1992 settlement, Brigham agreed to permanently give up his license amid an investigation of his practice in Wyomissing.

Despite this restriction, Brigham continued to own and expand his abortion business in the state.

In 1994, New York took his license, finding him guilty of “gross negligence” and “inexcusably bad judgment” involving two late-pregnancy abortions. The patients suffered life-threatening bleeding and required emergency hospital operations, public records show.

Brigham maintained offices in New York through 1995 but failed to file state business taxes, a misdemeanor for which he was sentenced to 120 days in jail and $8,188 in restitution, public records show.

In Florida, Brigham lost his license for not disclosing New York’s action. California put him on probation and ordered extra training; instead, he let his license lapse, as he did in Georgia.

New Jersey suspended Brigham’s license in 1993, citing the same botched abortions as New York, plus other charges. After three years of defending himself against an action by the state Attorney General’s Office, Brigham won full reinstatement of his medical privileges.

Pennsylvania’s latest disciplinary action came July 7 when Deputy Secretary of Health Robert Torres permanently banned Brigham and any corporation in which he has a controlling interest from providing abortions in the state. Torres’ order cites repeated violations of the state’s medical licensing rules.

American Women’s Services does about 3,600 abortions a year in Pennsylvania, state records show. It has clinics in Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, and State College. Until last month its website also listed 11 locations in Philadelphia, Bristol Borough, King of Prussia, and Willow Grove where patients could rendezvous for “free transportation” to a clinic.

Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, said this week, “We applaud Pennsylvania’s decision.”

Her trade association, which has 400 abortion providers that meet its clinical standards, has long criticized the quality of care at Brigham’s clinics.

The most recent violation cited in the July 7 order occurred in 2008, when a woman who was not a nurse worked as one in the Pittsburgh clinic, according to Health Department charges.

During hearings early last year, Brigham contended he had been duped. He testified that he did not know the applicant’s name when he verified the license number she provided to his office administrator. As a result, he verified the wrong person’s license.

Asked why he did not specifically check the applicant’s name, he said, “It didn’t dawn on me. I mean, I just, I didn’t. . . . I don’t know. I guess I don’t have a good explanation.”

In his legal pleadings, Brigham argued that even if there were a licensing violation, it was minor. Shutting him down, he contended, would be “excessive” and “drastic.”

But the 2008 violation was far from minor, health officials decided, in the context of his previous lapses.

In 1997, Brigham employed an obstetrician-gynecologist who was under suspension for, among other things, sexually molesting patients.

“We contacted Dr. Brigham, and he said he wasn’t aware that the license was suspended,” recalled Kenneth Brody, the department’s chief counsel. The department accepted that explanation and did not discipline Brigham.

In 2004, Brigham again pleaded ignorance. He said he was unaware that a physician who had done more than 1,600 abortions at American Women’s Services clinics in Pennsylvania had previously retired his license and thus was not paying into the state’s medical malpractice insurance fund.

That time, Brigham had to promise the department that from then on, his company would go to special lengths to verify medical credentials. He agreed that any further slip-ups would be grounds for barring him from having abortion facilities “directly or indirectly” in the state.

In issuing the shut-down order last week, Torres rejected one last legal argument that Brigham added to his pleadings early this year: He claimed the case had become moot because in January, he transferred ownership of his Pennsylvania clinics to a newly created company headed by a 70-year-old woman in Toledo, Ohio.

Permission to run abortion clinics “may not be transferred as part of a sales transaction,” Torres ruled. Any transfer “would be void.”

During Brigham’s travails, his enterprise has continually evolved. Over the years, he has created at least 20 corporate entities – some with names such as Peaceful Corp., Goodness Inc., and Kindness Corp. – and added clinics in Virginia and Maryland.

The IRS now has a big claim against all of it.

“We have made a demand for payment of this liability, but it remains unpaid,” say April IRS notices demanding $234,536 for unpaid payroll taxes. “Therefore, there is a lien in favor of the United States on all property and rights to property belonging to this taxpayer for the amount of these taxes, and additional penalties, interest, and costs that may accrue.”

 

July 25, 2010

My Son and Abortion

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion & Religion, Abortion Candidates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Doctor Murder, Abortion Doctors that Have Lost Their Medical License, Abortion Heroes, Abortion Information, Abortion Late, Abortion Medical
[64] Comments 

My twenty year old son is an amazing kid.   He graduated number three in his high school class, he is an accomplished musician (he has played with the National Symphony Orchestra) and he is a great golfer (shoots in the 70’s).  In his first two years of college, he made the Dean’s List every semester.   Knock on wood, has never gotten into any serious trouble.    And, having said all of that, I feel a need to add that he is not a nerd!   Indeed, he is 6’4” tall, blond hair and blue eyes.  The girls love him.  This fall he will be attending the University of Virginia where he is majoring in political science.

For the last few months, my son has been dating a woman his age who attends the University of Maryland.  She is majoring in music (she plays the harp).  She is a carbon copy of my son, just another kid who has an incredible future.

Although they don’t want to admit it, come this fall they will probably start to go their separate ways.  Despite the future (or perhaps because of it), it is obvious that things are heating up for them sexually.   Indeed, my son has told me as much.  It’s his first real serious affair.  Several weeks ago, when she visited our house overnight, they slept in the same room.  Yes, it made me feel very weird.   No, check that.  I was FREAKED OUT.   But, I told myself that they are both twenty years old and I gotta just get used to the idea that they are going to have some kind of sex.   So, I didn’t say anything.

Okay, I can hear you born again types screaming:  “They should not be having sex!  What kind of parent are you?”    Well, until you are in my shoes, don’t give me any crap.  Maybe in your day it was normal to not have sex until you married that person but get real, folks.

Actually, my son learned a lot about sex in high school, certainly more than I ever did.  Because they taught him so much, my spouse and I never really had “the talk” with him because he is light years ahead of where I was at his age.  Yes, I have told him that if he ever gets his girlfriend pregnant I will absolutely kill him and he just laughs, as if to suggest that it’s something that would never happen.

The other night he informed us that he was going to her house and that he had to buy some condoms.  I almost lost my lunch, but I kept my cool, being the 21st century hip parent, and just mumbled something like “well, go to the pharmacy.”   He hesitated and asked how did he actually buy the condom, that is, was it on the shelves or did he have to ask the pharmacist?  We told him he could just pick them off the shelves and he left to get them.  I had a quick gin and tonic.

Now, I don’t know if anything happened that night.   And I didn’t ask.  I remember him telling me that his girlfriend was on birth control pills, so I was proud of him that he would be using “double protection.”  But then I started thinking….

What if 7 weeks later, he came to me and said that his girlfriend was pregnant?   For one thing, I know he would be in tears while he told me the news.  But, as we know, accidents do happen.  And, yes, I know, I know, I know – they probably should not be having sex to begin with but these are two amazing kids who, like so many others, are merely acting on their urges and who took extraordinary precautions.  They actually felt they were being responsible.

And the anti-abortion movement would have me look into my son’s eyes and tell him that he is going to be a father and so he better start thinking  about leaving school and finding some kind of job?    Of course, the decision would ultimately be up to his girlfriend, but what if her parents had the same opinion?  It would mean that these two young children who, yes, took a risk, but also took extraordinary precautions would now have their lives changed forever.    And that would happen because some people out there think that a 7 week fetus is worth “saving?”

Are you folks out of your friggin minds?

 

July 23, 2010

Dr. Brigham Abortion Offices

Posted by Elena Carvin under Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Doctors that Have Lost Their Medical License, Abortion Pill, Catholic Murder, RU486
[22] Comments 
Abortion

Abortion by AmericanWomensServices Dr. Brigham

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, July 23, 2010  – A Pennsylvania abortionist whose repeated violations of state law prompted the health department to close down his facilities has managed to keep two of them in operation by transferring ownership to another entity; but the other two sites will cease performing abortions for good, reports Operation Rescue.

The pro-life watchdog group says the Pennsylvania Health Department’s order for Dr. Steven Chase Brigham’s clinics represents a “partial victory for life” as Brigham’s facilities in Erie and State College are barred now from performing abortions. They are, however, permitted to remain open for other services.

At the same time, Brigham successfully transferred ownership of his Pittsburgh and Allentown abortion clinics to Rose Health Services, an entity in which he has no controlling interest, in order to stave off their closure. Deputy Secretary of Health Robert Torres has banned Brigham, 53, and any corporation he controls from operating abortion clinics in Pennsylvania, because of his persistent infractions against state medical regulations.

“This is a partial victory for life,” said Troy Newman. “We are thankful that babies are not being killed at the Erie and State College clinics.”

“At the same time we are very disappointed a shady business transfer has kept the other two clinics open. After all the trouble that Brigham has had and continues to face, he is not fit to operate in Pennsylvania or any other state.”

Brigham owns a chain of 15 abortion facilities with locations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. However the abortionist is licensed only to practice medicine in New Jersey. Brigham let his medical license lapse in Georgia, California, and was suspended permanently in Pennsylvania, Florida, and New York.

Brigham was run out of New York after he performed two botched abortions in which state officials found him guilty in 1994 of “gross negligence” and “inexcusably bad judgment” that threatened the lives of his clients. New York also found him guilty of tax evasion in 1995.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Brigham’s offenses have been so egregious that even the National Abortion Federation (NAF) has disavowed him and applauded the PDH decision to shut him down.

Brigham’s latest offense in Pennsylvania happened because he again was employing unlicensed medical staff to work in his abortion clinics.

The Inquirer also reports that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is knocking on Brigham’s door, and has filed a tax lien against all his clinics for payment of $234,536 in unpaid payroll taxes for the years between 2002-2006.

 

July 19, 2010

The Number of Abortion Doctors

Posted by Pat Richards under Abortion & Religion, Abortion Advocates, Abortion Candidates, Abortion Discussion, Abortion Doctor, Abortion Documentary, Abortion Heroes, Abortion Information | Tags: , , |
[36] Comments 
Abortion

Abortion NYT

This Sunday’s New York Times featured a story about the next generation of abortion doctors.  Generally speaking, it was a rather positive report on how more doctors are incorporating abortion services into their regular practice.  Good stuff.

I always found the discussion of the declining number of abortion doctors very interesting.  We all know that for many years, pro-choice groups were very concerned about the “graying” of the abortion doctors, i.e., how so many of them were getting up there in years.  Working in the field, I was aware of those doctors and, frankly, sometimes it almost scared me to see how old some of them were.

Some of those doctors were hanging in there because they knew that if they left, the clinic would close.  Or at least they thought that’s what would happen.  But other doctors kept performing abortions because that was all they knew and it just kept them busy.  Like so many American workers, they did not want to retire and fade into the distance.  And, yes, some abortion doctors still wanted or needed to make money, so they kept putting off retirement.

Now, when a doctor did retire it may have resulted in a clinic closing.  But, that doctor may have retired because the number of patients going to that clinic kept decreasing and it was getting hard to make ends meet.   That clinic may have soon closed anyway.  And in my experience it was very rare that a doctor retired and the clinic wound up closing because they could not find a replacement.

Indeed, there was the other side of the coin – cities where there were too many abortion doctors.  I can recall vividly getting calls from doctors who were looking for work in abortion facilities in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.  In those parts of the country, there was a surplus of doctors.  At times, I was able to convince those doctors to take a position on some more isolated area and fly in for two or three days work.  But others just couldn’t find work.

One interesting thing to me regarding this whole debate was the statistic put out by the pro-choice groups which said something like “87% of the counties in the country do not have an abortion provider.”    Well, that was probably true, but abortion is such a specialized field and it should come as no surprise that you’re not going to find a doctor or a clinic in every Podunk town in America.  After all, think about other specialties.  Do you think there are retinal surgeons in every town or even a dermatologist?

To me, the issue was always access.  If a woman wanted an abortion, could she get one?  Of course it is hard to prove how many women did not get an abortion because there wasn’t a doctor nearby but my educated guess is that most women who wanted an abortion got one.  Yes, they may have had to travel a few hours to a clinic, like in states like North Dakota, but my sense also is that these women also often had to travel great distances for other services.  That is just the nature of the beast in rural parts of the country.

So, I’m certainly encouraged that there may be more abortion doctors coming up the chain but I also have the sense that they might wind up gravitating to where the patients are.  Meanwhile, we will still have issues in Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, but for the most part women who are looking for abortion services will be able to get them.

 

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