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Woman Comatose Month After Botched Abortion Gets $1.9 Million Settlement

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 13, 2009

Englewood, NJ (LifeNews.com) — An abortion business in New Jersey has settled a $1.9 million lawsuit out of court filed by a woman who was comatose for one month following a botched abortion. Metropolitan Medical Associates, based in Englewood, New Jersey and a center that does thousands of abortions annually, was responsible.

Newark resident Rasheedah Dinkins had an abortion in January 2007 at the Metropolitan Medical Associates abortion business that went horribly wrong.

Dinkins, who is now 22, became severely ill following the abortion and was transferred to Newark Beth Israel Medical Center where she needed blood transfusions and had her uterus removed. She also suffered a stroke due to the serious blood loss and had one of her lungs collapse.

“I was laying in my bed and I got the cold shakes,” Dinkins told AP in March 2007 about her ordeal. “My body kept going numb. After that, I don’t remember anything.”

“I think it’s horrible what I had to go through,” she said at the time.

Dinkins said her mother and hospital officials told her she died en route to the medical facility from the abortion center but medical personnel were able to revive her. She told AP she regards her decision to have an abortion as a bad one, saying “I probably wouldn’t have made this choice.”

Adam Slater, Dinkins’ attorney, filed a lawsuit against Metropolitan Medical Associates on her behalf and said he hoped it would help to “get to the bottom of why this incredibly horrible result could have happened.”

He told The Record newspaper yesterday that the high number of abortions MMA does was a factor.

“We learned from the case that their volume of procedures was one factor that led to this problem,” he said. “When you do too many procedures, you start to lose sight of the fact that these are all separate patients and separate procedures.”

Dinkins had “greater-than-expected bleeding, they couldn’t stop it, they eventually took extraordinary measures to stop it, and then they sent her home,” Slater said.

“They should have sent her to Englewood Hospital, which is less than a mile away, where they would have examined her and found she had a uterine rupture. They would have treated her, and she would have been fine. But the damage from her excessive bleeding led to catastrophic injuries,” he added.

Now, MMA has settled the $1.9 million lawsuit and its lawyer, Frank Capese, told AP yesterday that he couldn’t comment on the details of the settlement because the abortion center’s insurance carrier set a strict confidentiality agreement.

He claimed the abortions done at Metropolitan Medical Associates are safe.

The Record newspaper indicates the settlement includes $1 million from the abortion business, $575,000 from the main abortion practitioner in the case, Keith Gresham, and $325,000 from another abortion practitioner who assisted, Nicholas Kotopoulos.

However, the botched abortion caused so many medical complications that Newark Beth Israel Medical Center filed a complaint with state officials.

The Department of Health and Senior Services investigated the abortion facility and found dirty forceps, rusty crochet hooks used to remove IUDs, and a quarter-inch of dirt and debris under an examining table.

In ordering the abortion business to close, the Department said the abortion facility had poor infection control, and did not properly sterilize instruments and equipment.

Health inspectors said the violations at the abortion business pose “immediate and serious risk of harm to patients.”

It was only the second time state health officials ordered one of the state’s 650 ambulatory health centers closed.

Dinkins isn’t the only woman who had an abortion at MMA and experienced problems.

Gloria Mozas of Cliffside Park also sued the abortion center saying staff there misdiagnosed a tubal pregnancy and told her she miscarried the baby when she was actually pregnant with twins.

She told AP an abortion practitioner there did an abortion on her and told her he was just removing dead tissue. But a week later she had to undergo a medical procedure to remove the babies who had implanted into her fallopian tubes, causing her severe internal bleeding.

“I’ve been waiting for those doors to be locked for 3 1/2 years,” she told AP in 2007.

Metropolitan Medical Associates is one of the biggest abortion facilities in the nation, having done 10,000 abortions last year alone. It was also closed down in 1993 for health and safety issues.

While it was closed, the abortion center referred women to the Women’s Choice abortion center in Hackensack, run by the same owners as MMA. During its closing, it told callers it was “closed for renovations.”

MMA has reopened and advertises its abortions prominently on the Internet.

Undercover Video Shows Planned Parenthood Staff Lying to Woman About Abortion

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 9, 2009

 

Appleton, WI (LifeNews.com) — A new undercover video released by the group that exposed Planned Parenthood staffers turning a deaf ear to potential cases of sexual abuse finds staff at a Wisconsin Planned Parenthood abortion center lying to women in abortion counseling about the development of their unborn child.

The undercover footage released by Live Action also shows abortion center staff, including the abortion practitioner, encouraging the one who is pregnant to obtain an abortion because “women die having babies.”

In the undercover video, two women posing as potential abortion customers ask a Planned Parenthood counselor if the pregnant woman’s 10-week-old unborn child has a heartbeat.

The counselor emphasizes “heart tones,” and answers, “Heart beat is when the fetus is active in the uterus–can survive–which is about seventeen or eighteen weeks.”

However, biology textbooks and embryologists point out that the heart of an unborn child begins beating at around three weeks into the pregnancy, before most women realize they are pregnant.

The Planned Parenthood counselor then says, “A fetus is what’s in the uterus right now. That is not a baby.”

Dr. Polhaska, the abortion practitioner, insists “It’s not a baby at this stage or anything like that.”

He goes on to say that having an abortion will be “much safer than having a baby,” warning, “You know, women die having babies.”

While Wisconsin informed consent law requires that women receive medically accurate information before undergoing an abortion, Lila Rose, the 21-year-old UCLA student and Live Action president, says the Planned parenthood center is clearly deceiving women.

She told LifeNews.com today that medical lies and manipulative counseling are routine at Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business.

“They will do or say anything in order to sell more abortions to more women, whether it is covering up sexual abuse or lying to women about medical facts,” says Rose. “Our team has visited dozens of Planned Parenthood clinics undercover. Planned Parenthood, while claiming to support patient self-determination, operates with an ‘abortion-first mentality.'”

The video is the first in Live Action’s new a multi-state undercover audit documenting Planned Parenthood’s abortion counseling that is illegal, unethical or not factual.

Planned Parenthood has come under fire recently after Live Action’s investigations found them willing to conceal sexual abuse and accept donations targeted to abort African-Americans only.

Videos of abuse cover-up prompted state investigations of Planned Parenthood and diversion of the abortion giant’s public subsidies.

“Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar organization with nearly $350 million of government funding, and stands to gain hundreds of millions more from national health care,” says Rose. “Do we really want to subsidize an organization that gives women in need atrocious misinformation and predatory abortion practices?”

The video comes one month after the widely reported resignation of Planned Parenthood center director Abby Johnson.

She said during a recent interview, “Planned Parenthood really tries to instill in their employees and the women that are coming in for abortions that this is not a baby.”

In another interview, she noted, “They don’t want to talk about when your baby has a heartbeat,” because “they don’t want to give the woman information that could give her a connection with her baby.”

Abortion at Charlotte, North Carolina Center May Have Killed Woman, Video Taken

 

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 10, 2009 

Charlotte, NC (LifeNews.com) — A legal abortion on a woman at a Charlotte, North Carolina abortion center may have clamed her life. Local pro-life advocates shot video footage of an ambulance taking a woman from the A Preferred Women’s Health Center abortion facility on Sunday. 

The video shows a woman taken on a gurney from the abortion center to a waiting ambulance. 

However, she was completely covered from head to toe with no sign of movement and the man who took the video says this is different than other women who have suffered from botched abortions who have been transported to local medical centers. 

The pro-life advocate who shot the video provided it to the pro-life group Operation Rescue and said the ambulance drivers showed no sense of urgency and took nearly 10 minutes to place the patient in the ambulance. 

That leads OR president Troy Newman to believe the young woman may have died from the abortion. 

“Based on the footage, it is our concern is that this patient may not have survived,” he told LifeNews.com today. 

“Abortion clinics just don’t call ambulances unless there is a life-threatening emergency. If indeed this patient succumbed to her injuries, there is concern that the incident will be covered up,” he added. “That will only endanger the lives of other women who are not aware of the dangerous history of this abortion clinic.” 

“Once again, we have an incident that proves that abortion is not safe and that abortion clinics injure women,” he said. 

Newman says the actuality of how women are injured, and even killed, by abortions is a stark contrast to the pro-woman claims of members of Congress who recently voted for more taxpayer funding of abortions. 

And now we have a Congress that wants to fund with our hard earned tax dollars dangerous abortion chop shops like this instead of working to close them down in the interest of public safety. It is an appalling situation,” he said. 

Related web sites:
See the video at

Pro-Life Groups Disappointed Obama Admin Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Lines

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 3, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Obama administration’s announcement yesterday that it will force taxpayers to spend $12 million to fund embryonic stem cell research isn’t going over well with pro-life groups. They say the decision funds the destruction of human life and takes away from successful adult stem cell studies.

Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest noted how, “Despite years of research, human embryonic stem cells have yet to be used in real therapies for patients.”

“On the other hand, adult stem cell research– ignored by the Obama administration– has proven effective and is already being used to treat over 70 different diseases and conditions,” she added.

“The NIH’s authorization to use human embryonic stem cells expands the destruction of lives at the earliest stage of development and continues the Administration’s practice of ignoring ethical research that is already saving the lives of Americans,” she told LifeNews.com.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell chimed in with his thoughts and said the decision upset numerous pro-life members of Congress.

“Today’s announcement that the National Institutes of Health is ready to implement the Obama administration’s policy on embryonic stem cell research marks an historic departure from our nation’s longstanding position of neutrality on embryo-destructive research,” he said.

“For the very first time in U.S. history, the federal government will now use taxpayer dollars to pay for research that relies on and promotes the destruction of human life at its earliest stages,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, added.

“Americans may disagree about the morality of embryo-destructive research. But one thing we should all agree on is that taxpayers should not be compelled to pay for it,” he concluded.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue also addressed the Obama administration’s decision to ignore the science and moral issues behind ESCR.

“When Barack Obama was in the Illinois State Senate, he fought passionately to deny little babies born alive as a result of a botched abortion the medical care they needed to survive. It is not surprising, then, that it took this ethically challenged man only seven weeks to overturn President Bush’s executive order limiting government money to research on existing embryonic stem-cell lines,” he told LifeNews.com.

“Now the NIH has decided which new lines are ‘appropriate,’ leading those scientists who will get rich from this disturbing decision to jump for joy,” he lamented.

“It is true that all the stem lines that were approved involve embryos left over from fertility clinics. But it won’t stop there, and that is because those with the muscle to do something about this issue—beginning with the president—are essentially utilitarians who lack a principled ethical base,” he said.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, a former director of the NIH, recently said that embryonic stem-cell research was basically “obsolete.”

Donohue noted that quote and added, “That’s because, in part, there are ways in which scientists can approximate this research by using ethically neutral adult stem cells. But this isn’t good enough for those scientists who are literally salivating over the thought of getting their hands on the stimulus package loot.”

“What’s next? Intentionally creating and destroying embryos with more stimulus money? To those who say it doesn’t matter, remember this: every one of us started as an embryo, and it is impossible to do this kind of research without first killing nascent human life,” he concluded.

Obama Administration OKs First Taxpayer-Funded Embryonic Stem Cell Research

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 2, 2009

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Obama administration today authorized the first study using embryonic stem cells paid for at taxpayer expense. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama issued an executive order overturning President Bush’s limits preventing taxpayers from being forced to pay for the destruction of human life.

Because embryonic stem cells can only be obtained by destroying human life, Bush put limits in place directing taxpayer dollars to adult stem cell research.

That science has already proven to help patients facing more than 100 diseases and adverse medical conditions.

The National Institutes of Health, following Obama’s order, approved 13 embryonic stem cell lines for use by researchers conducting studies funded with federal funds.

The lines NIH approved are in use by researchers at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Rockefeller University in New York, according to a Bloomberg News report.

The Associated Press indicates as much as $21 million in taxpayer money could be used by the Obama administration to fund studies using these embryonic stem cell lines.

They were created with private dollars during the Bush administration, showing that Bush’s limits did not prevent scientists from moving ahead with their research with private dollars, contrary to the assertions of Obama and other opponents.

The lines were created by destroying days-old unborn children — human embryos who were supposedly “leftover” at fertility clinics. Adoption agencies have emerged that have allowed parents to adopt these human beings and carry them to term in a pregnancy.

NIH is also reviewing hundreds of other embryonic stem cell lines for federal funding under the guidelines the agency issued to implement Obama’s order. The initial round of approval includes 13 batches of embryonic stem cells and NIH said today that it has 96 more batches to review — with perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars paying for the destructive research.

About 20 of the additional lines will be reviewed on Friday, the agency indicated.

“What we are announcing today is just the beginning,” NIH official Francis Collins said today.

George Daley of Children’s Hospital Boston, submitted 11 of the 13 lines and the other two come from the lab of Ali Brivanlou at Rockefeller University in New York.

In comments about the funding, Daley called the human beings “low-grade” human embryos who were rejected for fertility treatments, and then donated by couples for research.

Richard Doerflinger, of the pro-life office of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, told USA Today the announcement is a “political event, but the science is all moving in the other direction.”

He noted how most scientists around the world are moving ahead with iPS cells, or induced pluripotent stem cells, that are adult stem cells reverted through direct reprogramming to an embryonic-like state without the destruction of human life.

Missouri Representative Files Bill to Stop Funding of Abortion, Cloning, ESCR

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 1, 2009

Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) — Today, the first day Missouri lawmakers can file legislation in advance of the next legislative session, one pro-life state representative has filed a bill to stop taxpayer funding of abortion, human cloning, and embryonic stem cell research because they all destroy human life.

Representative Cynthia Davis, a Republican from O’Fallon who is the chair of the Special Standing Committee on Children and Families in the Missouri House, is behind the new bill.

Davis filed a House Joint Resolution, H.J.R. 49, along with six other members of the House.

“This Joint Resolution I filed will allow Missouri taxpayers to make sure their hard-earned tax dollars will not go to pay for abortions not medically necessary to save the life of the mother, abortion services, human cloning or embryo destructive research,” she said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained today.

“We are guardians of the taxpayer’s money and public tax dollars in these tough economic times. I speak for all the Missourians who do not want their tax dollars to go for procedures that are controversial and that a large percentage of Missourians find morally reprehensible,” she said.

She said the measure makes sense at a time when state and national residents are “demanding greater accountability and fiscal integrity from their elected representatives.”

Davis, a well-known fiscal conservative who has a reputation for being a watchdog for the taxpayers, filed the Resolution to remedy a developing problem of money being funneled to abortion services or other research.

Todd Jones, the director of the Missouri Roundtable for Life, told LifeNews.com that a recent court case in Cole County Circuit Court has clarified that certain restrictions passed in 2003 under the authorship of the late Representative Richard Byrd have been struck down.

Those restrictions made clear that Life Sciences Research Trust Fund dollars would not be spent on abortion services, human cloning, and other destructive research. As a result, Davis’ bill becomes more necessary.

Davis’ filing of H.J.R. 49 follows on the hard-fought efforts of Representative Brian Nieves, and 60 bipartisan co-sponsors, filing H.J.R. 38 in the House and Senator Jim Lembke filing S.J.R. 17 in the Senate during the last legislative session.

Last session, members of the House voted 114 to 37 for Representative Allen Icet’s placement of restrictions on the use of taxpayer funds for those anti-life practices.

If the legislature approves the resolution, the amendment would appear on the ballot during the next general election in 2010 or a special election if called by Governor Jay Nixon, who backs abortion.

“Missouri Roundtable for Life thanks Representative Davis for taking leadership on this issue to protect Missouri taxpayers and for finding six other House members to co-sponsor H.J.R 49,” Jones told LifeNews.com today.

“Missourians need to stop the raid of the Missouri treasury by fringe special interest groups like Planned Parenthood and others who seek taxpayer dollars for abortion services and human cloning. The time to stop that raid is now,” he said.

Related web sites:
Missouri Roundtable for Life – http://www.moroundtable.org