While the abortion industry continues to claim that abortion survivors “don’t exist,” one abortionist’s ongoing legal dispute with the family of a girl born alive in an abortion at his facility is proof that babies do sometimes survive the “procedures” meant to kill them. Operation Rescue reports that Florida abortionist James Scott Pendergraft IV allegedly hid financial assets in order to avoid paying the family of a girl born alive in a botched abortion. Of the almost $37 million malpractice judgment against Pendergraft, Operation Rescue reports he is personally responsible to pay almost $12 million.
The case involves a woman identified in court documents as C.H. who went to Pendergraft’s Orlando Women’s Center on November 15, 2001. Then 20 years old, C.H. was seeking an elective abortion at what she thought was around 18-20 weeks. She was actually more than 22 weeks pregnant. Unlicensed clinic staff administered the abortion pill RU-486 — which is not approved by for use after the tenth week of pregnancy — and other drugs, despite the fact that she was more than 22 weeks pregnant.
C.H. was in severe pain and having contractions. Allegedly, abortion workers told C.H. to “walk off her labor in the parking lot, and if she didn’t like that, she could leave.” C.H. did leave and later went to the local hospital where her daughter J.F. was born via caesarean section.
READ: 16 infants in Florida born alive after surviving abortion attempts
Today, J.F. is 17 years old and reportedly continues to suffer effects of the botched abortion — a seizure disorder and physical and mental developmental delays. Although Pendergraft was serving a prison sentence for extortion at the time of J.F.’s birth, jurors decided that he was responsible for the horrific injuries suffered by C.H. and her daughter because his staff was following the illegal and dangerous protocols he had established.
There is evidence that C.H.’s case was not an outlier, and there may have been countless other babies born alive at Pendergraft’s abortion facility. In fact, the website for the Orlando Women’s Center states, “If the labor induction method is used, there is a small chance that the baby could live for a short period of time.”
Operation Rescue outlines how Pendergraft has failed to pay J.F. and her family for the cost of her medical treatment and setting up a medical trust to ensure her future care. Pendergraft appears to still be involved in multiple abortion businesses and a marijuana dispensary.
Pendergraft, in addition to his apparent ongoing involvement with these businesses, was arrested during a traffic stop in South Carolina. He was found to be selling illicit drugs and committing abortions from his van. The van contained bloody surgical instruments with human tissue on them. This illegal activity generated a cash income that could not be rightfully seized and given to J.F. and her family.
Operation Rescue also reports that C.H.’s lawyers allege that Pendergraft transferred money to his attorneys as part of a money-laundering scheme.
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