When journalists exposed the ‘abortion profiteers’: ‘We are in the business of selling abortions’

In 1978, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association initiated a five-month undercover investigation into Chicago’s “thriving abortion business.” In part four of the Times’ series, the reporters introduced their audience to abortionist Ming Kow Hah, who operated multiple abortion facilities but — as the investigation revealed — deliberately failed to administer anesthetics to his patients, making the procedure very painful. Parts five and six of the Times’ series focused on unsavory abortion staffers and so-called abortion ‘counselors’.

Ming Kow Hah

Abortionist Ming Kow Hah had an obvious disregard for women. Hah’s patients alleged that the abortionist just “jab[bed] the rod in” before starting abortion procedures.

“All Hah’s patients are in pain because he doesn’t take time to give them the [pain-killing] injections,” the paper’s investigative aide said she was told by an abortion staffer.

Another patient claimed that, instead of waiting for the Lidocaine to take effect, Hah, “just started right in – one, two, three. I was sobbing.”

Another claimed, “It’s painful, real painful. I know he never gave me no anesthetic….”

After Hah botched an abortion on another patient, she told reporters, “I don’t have a normal body. My abdomen looks like a sky map of the Grand Canyon. I don’t have a spleen… and I have a lot of psychological cars that will be with me forever. I’m lucky to have lived.” Of the abortion itself, the patient claimed, “It hurt so bad and I was screaming so loud, they stuck a tampon in my mouth.” After months in the hospital, the patient filed a lawsuit against Hah.

The abortionist eventually lost his license after he was charged with prescribing narcotics and handing out rarely used and dangerous drugs.

Ulrich Klopfer

Klopfer’s name became more well-known after his death in 2019, when his family found thousands of aborted babies in his garage and alerted authorities. But Klopfer had long been an unscrupulous abortion provider — and the abortion industry has been known to “circle the wagons,” so to speak, around even the worst abortionists. When Planned Parenthood was quoted in the 1978 Chicago Sun-Times exposé, the corporation supported the news outlet’s investigative findings; however, years later when pro-lifers exposed Klopfer’s failure to report abortions on minor girls, Planned Parenthood — guilty of the same thing — was silent.

According to the article, Klopfer and Hah would “compete” to see who could commit the most abortions.

“Klopfer would be having a cup of coffee and be on his last sip when he’d jump up and say ‘I’d better get going or Hah will have the whole recovery room full,'” an abortion facility nurse said. “When Hah is here, Klopfer really zips.”

Incompetent Abortion Staffers

Part five of the Sun-Times’ series begins by saying, “We were hired off the street as aides, medical assistants and counselors. Without checking our references or credentials, four of Chicago’s abortion clinics gave us jobs we were unqualified to hold and tasks we were untrained to perform. The clinics asked us to do everything but perform abortions. They wanted us to remove IVs, administer injections, give psychological counseling and assist in surgery.”

The paper took note of how untrained the facility staff seemed to be, finding:

• Abortion facility “aides routinely inventing vital signs, lab technicians mixing up crucial tests and counselors selling abortions to confused and frightened women….”
• “[V]ital signs as pulse temperature and blood pressure often are not measured – they’re made up.”
• “Laboratory technicians are so rushed, or so incompetent, that women with negative blood can be lost in the crowd, and their Rhogam shot may be forgotten.”

“Some of the ‘mistakes’ that occur in the clinics we investigated can be traced directly to the dearth of competent medical staffers,” the paper wrote.

Unsavory and Untrained Abortion ‘Counselors’

Part six of the series focused on an ethically questionable abortion-referral business, operated by twin sisters. “[O]ur investigators documented how, with bait-and-switch and sleight-of-hand the flamboyant sisters swindle women who come to them for help,” wrote the Times. “What those who call the hotlines don’t know is that behind the soft voice are ‘counselors’ hired off the street, women schooled more in sales than in subtleties of abortion counseling – counselors who must sell to be paid.”

“We are in the business of selling abortions,” one of the abortion referral service owners said. “When you are talking to these people, it’s important to use the positive approach. It’s not ‘Do you want a termination?’ but ‘When do [you] want a termination?’ Put the question to them as a sure sale. Limit their choices.”

According to a former hotline worker, there was no counseling. “What we were doing there is selling abortions. We got no training except in what not to say. How not to use words like ‘fetus’ or ‘kill’ that might scare the customers away. Don’t mention complications.”

And if the women were spooked by the cost of an abortion, the strategy was simple: just remind them of the cost of a baby. “Having a baby is a $410,000 question,” one hotline counselor stated.

The women in the Sun-Times piece had no idea that the number they called was not an actual medical staffer, medical facility, or hospital. The questionable nature of the abortion industry’s “counseling” hasn’t changed much over the years. According to the paper, those abortion “hotlines” diagnosed “three out of four samples of male urine as positively pregnant.”

Undercover journalism exposed these unscrupulous deeds in 1978, and they could do the same again, if today’s media cared to actually investigate. Instead, pro-abortion government officials and the abortion-friendly media have chosen to vilify undercover journalists attempting to expose this corrupt industry.

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