"Just sit on the toilet": NM abortionists send women to hotel rooms alone to await room-service abortions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY 1, 2013
CONTACT: MEDIA@LIVEACTION.ORG

“Just sit on the toilet”: NM abortionists leave women alone in hotel rooms to deliver babies, await room-service abortions

Arlington, VA – Live Action has released the sixth video in its latest undercover investigation, Inhuman: Undercover in America’s Abortion Industry.  The video, found at www.liveaction.org/inhuman, exposes abortion doctors at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico revealing disturbing aspects of the facility’s protocol, including the practice of leaving women alone in hotel rooms to deliver their dead children.

An unnamed counselor at the facility advises Live Action’s 27-week-pregnant investigator:

If we can’t catch it [delivery of the dead baby – the final stage of the abortion procedure] early enough, which has happened … then you’ll want to unlock the door to the hotel room, get your cell phone, and just sit on the toilet.  You don’t have to look at anything … you can stay on the phone with us until the doctor and nurse get there[.]

Dr. Carmen Landau echoes this advice, telling the Live Action investigator to “sit on the toilet” and “unlock the hotel room.”  “Just sit there,” Landau says, “and you would not move until we come and get you.”

Live Action President Lila Rose condemned Southwestern Women’s Options and what she calls the “abortion-first mentality.”  “Abortion corporations like Southwestern Women’s Options and Planned Parenthood will say and do anything to ‘close the deal,'” Rose said.  “Leaving a woman alone on the toilet in a hotel room and saying ‘call us and we’ll come get you’ – at a time when seconds can make the difference between life and death – is profoundly irresponsible and negligent.  We must never forget that abortion is a business first and foremost – a business willing to destroy a helpless, voiceless child for literally thousands of dollars.  We cannot be surprised when they send women off in the middle of a dangerous procedure for ‘room-service abortions.’  But we can be disgusted, and we can demand an end to it.”

Southwestern Women’s Options was a subject of Live Action’s previous video, titled “What is Human?,” in which Dr. Landau likened the lethal injection that kills the fetus to “a flu shot, really.”

The new video also presents an abortion counselor offering misleading information on whether the 27-week pre-born child will feel the lethal abortion injection.  “[If the baby]’s bottom-down, it’ll insert through the baby’s bottom, [and] if it’s head-down, it’ll be inserted through the cranium.”

“I don’t know if it’s developed enough to feel that,” she says.  “It might be.”  The Live Action video includes references to K.S. Anand, an expert on fetal pain, and the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, showing that pre-born children at 20 weeks and older definitely feel pain – likely more acutely than older children do.

Dr. Curtis Boyd, who co-owns Southwestern Women’s Options, also runs Southwestern Women’s Surgery Center in Dallas, Texas.  The facility offers abortions up to 24 weeks, the state’s legal limit.

Texas became an abortion battleground in June, with Governor Rick Perry calling a special legislative session to address the discovery of Douglas Karpen’s Gosnell-like “House of Horrors” in Houston.

Live Action has sent letters including the complete New Mexico footage, which is available online, to elected officials in both New Mexico and Texas.  Recipients include Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst and the twenty state representatives who called for an investigation into the Karpen facility.  Live Action is demanding investigations in both states of Curtis Boyd and his staff.

“We’re urging pro-life officials like New Mexico’s Governor Susana Martinez to put an end to the inhuman and brutal practices going on in these facilities,” Rose said.  “And as Texas legislators seek to vote on a bill that would protect pain-capable babies from an agonizing death, we pray that they will put an end to Curtis Boyd’s bloody handiwork as well.”

Live Action is a youth-led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending the human rights abuse of abortion. The group uses new media to educate the public about the humanity of the unborn and investigative journalism to expose threats against the vulnerable and defenseless. More information at LiveAction.org.