'Most egregious'

A doctor who owns abortion facilities in Fairfax and Virginia Beach had his medical license suspended recently in New Jersey, the Virginian-Pilot reported last week.

Dr. Steven Brigham, the owner of Virginia Women's Wellness, had his license suspended for starting late-term abortions with medication at his New Jersey clinic, then transporting patients to Maryland to complete the procedure. He is not licensed in Virginia.

Victoria Cobb, president of the Virginia Family Foundation, said she was "concerned" by what her organization has discovered about Brigham. A Family Foundation press release claims Brigham's Virginia abortion centers advertised they would begin illegal second trimester abortions in Virginia and then transport patients to other states "for the completion of the procedure."

"I think we need to know what those clinics do and who works there," Cobb said in a telephone interview last month.

Brigham owns American Women's Services, which also has offices in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Since 1992 his medical license has been revoked, suspended, or relinquished in five states, according to a July 21, 2010 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and at that time he owed the IRS over $234,000 in payroll taxes.

"Abortion remains in any situation risky and dangerous for women because of these unscrupulous doctors who are willing to put women's lives and health at risk to continue the abortion business," said Olivia Gans, president of the Virginia Society for Human Life.

Brigham does not practice medicine and has no day-to-day interaction with the centers, Dr. David R. Peters told the Virginian-Pilot. Peters, the medical director for the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, worked at the center for 13 years. He resigned in November when Brigham's New Jersey license was suspended.

Peters denied that the doctors working for Brigham transported patients to his other out-of-state clinics. However, Peters said Virginia Women's Wellness would refer patients who wanted second-trimester abortions to centers in North Carolina and Maryland, where laws are more relaxed.

The New Jersey attorney general's office said Brigham was "grossly negligent" in transporting patients from one center to another. Brigham's lawyer told state regulators it was more "economical" for patients to have their late-term abortions performed at his office in Maryland rather than a hospital, as would have been required in New Jersey.

"The protection of abortion supersedes the protection of women who are approaching these individuals for care," Gans said. "The idea that these clinics would continue without oversight is at the least scandalous, and at the worst potentially deadly."

Brigham was cited after a patient at a center he owned in Elkton, Md., was critically injured during an abortion. The patient was driven in a rental car from the clinic to a nearby hospital, where she had emergency surgery to repair a ruptured uterus and small intestine.

In that case, Brigham gave the woman labor-inducing drugs and inserted a device to help dilate her cervix, but removal of the fetus was done by another doctor, documents show.

Many of the women who had the procedures done in Maryland said they were unaware of where they were going until they arrived at Brigham's office for the second part of their abortion procedure. Brigham said he didn't give patients the address to avoid tipping off abortion protesters.

Brigham was also found to have botched two abortions in New York. Authorities in Maryland have ordered him to stop practicing medicine.

"His record is the most egregious one I know of in the field," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion providers, which has been warning authorities about Brigham's practices since the mid-1990s. "He operates in his own economic interests and not in the best interests of the women who seek his care."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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