Late-term abortionists are trusted by women desperate and afraid enough to abort their unborn babies so late in term, even when their baby may be viable. These abortionists prey on these vulnerable women, and instead of legitimately assisting these women, they are often operating with expired or no licenses, charging a high amount of money in a shady manner, and even forcing women into having abortions.
Late-term abortions are supposedly performed for the health of the woman, because if she continued her pregnancy, even for just a few more months, she would be in danger. Unfortunately, most of these abortions are actually elective, as some studies show. It has also been suggested by Dr. Martin Haskell, who was a late-term abortionist in the 1990s, and who said so about the abortions he performed.
Back in May, late-term abortionist Willie Parker said something rather puzzling about banning late-term abortion: that “[p]eople feel morally justified to say ‘this is wrong’ because they’re led to think it’s close to murder. I think that jeopardizes us, by conflating abortion with an issue that would cause moral outrage.” The statement was so puzzling that I wrote an article highlighting these remarks and pointing out why Parker was wrong.
But ridiculous statements pale in comparison when we look at three late-term abortionists and, in some instances, their associates.
Ann Kristin Neuhaus
Here at Live Action News, Cassy Fiano has already covered reports of the associate of the now deceased late-term abortionist, George Tiller, Ann Kristin Neuhaus. At the end of July, it was reported that Neuhaus had her medical license removed. However, on the last day she was legally entitled to do so, Neuhaus appealed this ruling.
As Cassy’s article states:
Neuhaus has previously been in trouble with the KSBHA, both in 1999 and 2001, for medical abuses. These included an alleged forced abortion, performed after the woman had withdrawn consent; poor record-keeping; and improper patient care.
The issue that caused her license to be revoked, though, was over the records of 11 girls, aged 10 to 18, who were taken to George Tiller for late-term abortions. Neuhaus used shoddy mental health reporting to make sure the girls could get late-term abortions, such as saying the girls were suicidal because of the pregnancy. She never recommended follow-up treatment for the supposedly suicidal girls, though. She also failed to conduct proper mental health evaluations and merely checked “yes/no” on a computer program, assigning whatever diagnosis the computer gave her. The records for five of the patients were also dated and time-stamped after the abortions had already begun. All of the evidence has come to show that Neuhaus merely rubber-stamped the forms to allow herself and Tiller to collect the massive sums of money that late-term abortions rake in.
Oh, and there’s even more disturbing information! This is an abortionist who has been in trouble with the state of Kansas before. It really makes me think that the last thing this woman needs is to have her license reinstated.
While suicide is a serious issue that should be addressed whether a young woman is pregnant or not, some reporting includes that reasons for signing off on a late-term abortion included stress over attending prom or hiring a babysitter in order to be able to attend a rock concert. If an abortionist, who is supposed to be considered a professional, decides that such reasons are worthy enough to cause danger to a young woman should she continue her pregnancy, then this failure to take one’s job seriously in determining cause for mental stress should be reason enough why such a person does not deserve a license.
The fight to regain her license is to be a “lengthy” one for Neuhaus. It need not be so lengthy, though. Neuhaus was in the wrong. The decision to strip her of her license was unanimous, and for good reason. Whether one supports abortion or not, this is not the kind of person who should be performing a late-term abortions on young women.
James Pendergaft
There is a lot to say about James Pendergraft. In searching his name on the LifeNews.com, there are four pages of articles relating to the late-term abortionist, some of them dating back to 2005. LifeSiteNews.com has a tag with articles on Pendergraft, as well as several more articles when his name is searched.
Pendergraft had his licensed suspended four times by January 2011 and in July of 2011 was court-ordered to pay a survivor of abortion $36 million for his negligence.
But the reason why James Pendergraft has been in the news lately is because of the findings of undercover projects done by AbortionWiki and Operation Rescue.
Despite not being licensed in the state of Maryland, Pendergraft still is operating in the state, where he provides his shady and lucrative late-term abortions. He also owns five abortion businesses in the state of Florida, where he operates despite being currently under probation.
In the project conducted by AbortionWiki, an undercover investigator from the site, Susan Tyrell, e-mailed Pendergraft under a different name seeking an abortion. Though she was initially rejected since there was no legal justification, Pendergraft did agree to the procedure once a supposed letter from a counselor was scanned and e-mailed, with a phone number being provided in a subsequent e-mail. The investigators know that Pendergraft did not follow up and that the facts were not verified because the phone number was actually Susan’s own secondary phone number. It would have been a commonsense move for Pendergraft to check up on Susan’s statements – that is, if he were a commonsense abortionist who wanted to be sure he was providing a legal late-term procedure. This would be if Pendergraft is even legally allowed to perform an abortion procedure, which he is not, since he does not have an active license in any state. The back-and-forth e-mails of the investigation are provided in the article.
Operation Rescue provides a helpful report as well as a video of its findings. This undercover video project shows the findings of a seven-month-long investigation and only further highlights Pendergraft’s primary focus of receiving funds. Also, with the late-term abortion procedure taking so long, even days, Pendergraft and his associate would begin the procedure, but then send the woman to another state or country for another doctor to finish it. Thus, Pendergraft is not even there for the final step.
Some good news has come out of such investigations, however. Pendergraft’s associate, Harold O. Alexander, has been suspended by the Maryland Board of Physicians. He has also been charged with illegally shredding a medical record. Operation Rescue also reported that “charging documents listed a number of shocking allegations including ‘sexual boundary’ violations, botched abortions, shoddy or non-existent record keeping, and the illegal prescribing of large amounts of Viagra and other drugs to himself and non-patients.” It is hoped that further investigation will lead to preventing Pendergraft from performing shady abortions for good.
Kermit Gosnell
I have perhaps saved the worst for last. Kermit Gosnell and his “House of Horrors” have been brought to the public’s attention for many months now, but prosecutors continued to uncover crimes committed by Gosnell in his clinics months after initially charging him.
What got Gosnell caught in the first place is his having written one million bad prescriptions, which earned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. While writing so many bad prescriptions to make such an amount of money is by no means something to take lightly, Gosnell is also standing trial for murder, something his clinic workers have already pled guilty to. His wife pled guilty to third-degree murder as well. This desire to earn so much money from bad prescriptions also further demonstrates Gosnell’s greed and his complete disregard for women’s health and safety.
The list of Gosnell’s wrongdoings is extensive:
Health investigators initially raided the run-down facility in a minority neighborhood on the belief Gosnell was running a pill mill. They discovered urine and blood-stained chairs, cats that roamed the premises freely, unsanitized instruments that spread venereal diseases, and jars of dismembered babies.
Gosnell is charged with killing seven children who were delivered alive only to have their spines severed or throats slashed with scissors.
But clinic workers have testified that this happened to “hundreds” of victims. Tina Baldwin, an ex-employee, told the investigators that Gosnell once joked about a baby that was writhing as he cut its neck: “that’s what you call a chicken with its head cut off.”
And further adding to the tragic occurrences of what went down at Gosnell’s clinic, victims have stepped forth and said that Gosnell forced them to have abortions, even after they had changed their minds:
Robyn Reid said after she was taken to Gosnell’s clinic in 1998, when she was only 15. She said when she asked Gosnell to stop the abortion, he “got upset and he ended up taking my clothes off, hitting me, my legs were tied to the stirrups.”
Another woman, Davida Johnson, told the bench she had a similar encounter in 2001.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and he smacked me,” Johnson said. “They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication.”
Gosnell pled not guilty in January. Arguments are to resume in a little over a month from now, on October 29. Gosnell is being held without bail.
Certainly not every single abortionist out there is operating without a license, in unsanitary conditions, or forcing women to have abortions. But the fact that at least three abortionists have done the preceding and have issues with their licenses should be troubling enough. There certainly are more than three.
Whether pro-choice or pro-life, we should all agree that people with shoddy records do not have any place performing abortions on vulnerable women, who are also unfortunately not always informed about the abortionist’s record. Women deserve better than to have such abortionists operate on them. The abortionist’s desire for money should not trump a woman’s safety.
