New report details abortion center safety violations

Abortion centers in the United States often are far from safe and sanitary, according to a recent report by the pro-life group Americans United for Life.

The 140-page report cites 1,400 health and safety violations given to 227 abortion centers in 32 states between 2008 and 2016. It also tells 11 stories of maternal injury or death due to abortion.

Examples of health and safety violations gleaned from public records include rusty, blood-encrusted surgical instruments; failure to teach employees how to properly wash their hands; allowing administrative assistants or other unqualified persons to help with abortion procedures or take blood pressure in the recovery room; and failure to keep medical equipment like defibrillators and sterilizers calibrated.

“Really, this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and it’s also just a snapshot of time, because we’re only covering an eight-year period,” Denise Burke with Americans United for Life (AUL) told me. “Given those two things, we can probably deduce that the problem is worse than even our report shows.”

The organization hit multiple road blocks while gathering data: Many states don’t regulate or inspect abortion facilities. Some regulate but don’t conduct inspections, and some conduct inspections but don’t publish findings.

“Everything we know about the abortion industry, we know because they allow us to know, or there was a police report,” AUL spokeswoman Kristi Hamrick told me.

Maternal deaths or 911 calls due to abortion complications not only generate police reports, they often make news. In one such instance, Maryland schoolteacher Jennifer Morbelli died after abortionist LeRoy Carhart performed a third-trimester abortion that sent amniotic fluid into her bloodstream. Her blood was unable to clot following the procedure.

Another case involved a botched abortion at a New Jersey clinic that led to an investigation and a $1.9 million settlement with Rasheedah Dinkins, whose uterus abortionists perforated beyond repair. After returning home, Dinkins had to be rushed to the hospital where doctors discovered blood loss had caused a stroke and a collapsed lung. She received blood transfusions and a hysterectomy, and spent three weeks in a coma.

Some botched abortions come as a result of negligence from abortionists such as Carhart, named in the report as one of many “circuit-riding” abortionists who fly in and out of cities to perform procedures. In Morbelli’s case, Carhart was already headed back to one of his other abortion facilities in Nebraska or Indiana when she started having complications. Morbelli’s family members and staff at the hospital where she died repeatedly tried to reach Carhart, who never picked up his phone.

The AUL report also details the history of abortionist Steven Brigham, who lost his medical licenses in New York, New Jersey, and Florida over negligence claims. Brigham also operated abortion centers in three other states where he did not hold a medical license. In 2014, the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners found Brigham endangered his patients with illegal activities and further exposed them to harm because he didn’t have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

Women leaving his centers often turned up later at emergency rooms with uterine perforations that required hysterectomies, The New Yorker reported.

Many safety violations cited in the AUL report are for repeat offenses, showing abortionists gave little regard to state regulations. In Florida, 31 of its 82 abortion facilities received citations for health violations between 2009 and 2014, and 14 of those centers received multiple citations in the same year for the same type of violation.

In one Texas facility, the number of citations in a 2010 review is alarming: Staff did not have active CPR certification; thick layers of dust coated treatment rooms, scrub sinks, and an anesthesia cart; biohazard boxes were left uncovered and full of bloody supplies; a mop was sitting in brown water in a utility closet; the facility did not have a contract with a cleaning service; staff were observed failing to wash hands or change gloves between abortion procedures and improperly washing surgical equipment.

The AUL report follows the June U.S. Supreme Court decision in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which struck down a Texas law mandating abortionists have hospital admitting privileges and that abortion facilities meet surgical center standards.

Burke said she hopes her organization’s work will challenge the Supreme Court’s assumption that abortion is always safe.

“And it’s also going to go a long way toward educating the American public about the true state of the abortion industry, and exposing the lies that abortion is between a woman and her doctor, that abortion is somehow safe, that these facilities are somehow safe, or that any single incident that we might hear about is an aberration instead of revealing the true state of the abortion industry,” she said.