Why shielding abortion providers from consequences puts women’s lives at risk

When Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of first-degree murder for killing three viable babies born alive during abortion procedures and was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a woman who died at his facility during a procedure, the abortion industry referred to him as an ‘outlier’ and anomaly – and the media played along. In May of 2013, Gosnell was sentenced to life in prison, leaving the abortion industry and its supporters who turned a blind eye to Gosnell’s actions unscathed.

In 1989, the Miami Herald’s Tropic Magazine ran a multi-page exposé into Florida abortion facilities and providers, entitled “Do Not Enter,” which uncovered shocking, and horrific things happening inside legal abortion facilities in that state. Then, in 2011, in the midst of the Gosnell scandal, Slate writer William Saletan described cover-ups within Florida’s abortion industry as “The Sisterhood of Silence.” The subtitle to his damning article read: “A bad abortion clinic, a dead woman, and a wall of pro-choice denial.” Years prior, the Philadelphia Inquirer dared to expose that babies were being born alive after failed abortions and documented their shocking findings in a report entitled the “Dreaded Complication.”

Those media reports followed a 1970s Chicago Sun Times investigation which also uncovered horrific conditions inside abortion facilities. The five-month investigative series, dubbed the “Abortion Profiteers,” documented abortion assembly lines and providers who performed abortions on women who were not pregnant, unqualified staff, instances of serious infections and complications, and health inspectors who turned a blind eye. Abortion businesses were more interested in selling abortion than the safety of women.

Since all of these events, from the 1970s to the early 2000s, little has changed.

Protecting (indemnifying) abortion providers from civil and criminal culpability puts women’s lives at risk, benefiting abortionists while leaving women or teen girls lured into the dark and often unscrupulous web of unregulated abortion to deal with the fallout of their abortion injuries — and some have died. Despite a long history of dangerous abortion outcomes, the media today remains silent.

Women harmed

In 1989, New York Newsday documented the abortion related death of Eunice Agbagaa at the hands of Abram Zelikman who botched the procedure so badly that Agbagaa lost three pints of blood and lapsed into a coma as a result. Her uterus was punctured and her uterine artery severed on January 7, 1989, while undergoing a 19-week abortion at the Y&P Women’s Medical Association abortion business in New York City. She died eight days later at a local hospital.

The Syracuse Herald American alleged that after Zelikman committed the abortion on Agbagaa, he continued to commit abortions on other women before leaving the facility, while Agbagaa lay bleeding in recovery. The woman was left by Zelikman in the care of of abortion facility administrator Yolanda Penalver, who was not a licensed health care professional yet allegedly administered anesthesia to the abortion client.

Agbagaa’s friend, who accompanied her that day, unsuccessfully attempted to summon Zelikman back to the facility. She told the paper that she watched Agbagaa writhe in pain as she lay in the recovery room in a pool of blood. “I felt if I hadn’t been there, they would have wrapped her body and thrown it in the garbage,” she told the paper.

The New York Newsday indicated that staff at the facility attempted to hide Agbagaa’s file prior to the ambulance arriving on scene.  Agbagaa died on January 15, 1989, at Long Island College Hospital. Zelikman was cited by the Health Commissioner for “patient neglect and abandonment” and his medical license was later suspended. An autopsy revealed Agbagaa “expired with the collapse of her heart, kidneys and liver, and after days of massive bleeding,” the paper reported.

In 1993, New York abortionist Dr. Abu Hayat — nicknamed the “Butcher of Avenue A” — severed the arm of little Ana Rosa Rodriguez while attempting an illegal third-trimester abortion. Her 20-year-old mother, Rosa Rodriguez, was about eight months pregnant when Hayat attempted the $1500 procedure. Rodriguez claimed she was strapped in stirrups and held down by Hayat and his assistants. She testified that she begged him to stop the abortion after he inserted a four-inch needle in her stomach that appeared dirty, and she began hearing women in other rooms screaming. Hayat was found guilty of assault, and in June of 1993, was sentenced to prison but was released on parole in 2006. He was discharged from parole supervision in 2009 and his sentence has been deemed completed. He tried to have his name changed but a judge refused his request. See video of Ana Rosa and her mother on the Phil Donahue show here.

A report published by the New York Times described the abortion related death of 33-year-old Guadalupe Negron this way: “As her life drained from her, Guadalupe Negron sat bleeding on an operating table, drowning in her own vomit as a doctor fumbled in a failed attempt to get oxygen into her lungs.” The paper states she “bled to death in the [abortion] doctor’s storefront Metro Women’s Clinic on July 9, 1993 in Corona, Queens [New York],” at the hands of abortionist David Benjamin, whose own staffers testified that Negron was left bleeding unattended for over an hour while Benjamin committed other abortions. She was 19 to 20 weeks pregnant.

Benjamin was paid $800 for the abortion, which “caused a three inch tear in the Negron’s uterus and vagina, and then left her to bleed to death in the recovery room while he performed an abortion on a second woman,” the paper noted. Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown claims Negron was placed in a corridor after her abortion, where she was “bleeding profusely from her pelvic area and complaining of intense pain,” the New York Times wrote. “Dr. Benjamin is alleged to have given instructions that Mrs. Negron be ‘cleaned up’ and then to have begun an abortion procedure on another patient,” Brown claimed.

Paramedic Freddie Neboa arrived at the abortion business to find the woman dead. “When we first entered, there was a lot of blood on everything, on the table, on her genital area, on the floor and instrument,” he said, describing the facility as a “horror scene.”

Abortion doc David Benjamin murdered patient (NYT’s 8/9/1995)

“While she continued to hemorrhage, the indictment said, no medical personnel observed her condition and no equipment was used to monitor her vital signs,” the Times reported. “Mrs. Negron was then taken to New York Hospital Center in Queens, where she was pronounced dead.” The paper also reported that “an autopsy showed Mrs. Negron had died of uncontrolled bleeding caused after Dr. Benjamin perforated her uterus and cervix and then failed ‘to address the patient’s massive bleeding,’ which he said caused her ‘to lapse into shock and cardiac arrest’ alone and untreated.”

Images of the abortion facility shown at Benjamin’s trial were described by jurors as “disgusting” and “unsanitary” and a “Medicaid mill that preyed on poor immigrant women.” In 1995, Benjamin was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.

More Modern Cases

In 2010, Cape Cod abortionist Rapin Osathanondh was charged with manslaughter, and authorities alleged that he failed to monitor his abortion patient Laura Hope Smith while she was under anesthesia. He also delayed calling emergency services when her heart stopped and later lied to try to cover up his actions.  She was pronounced dead later that day. (Read more here.)

In 2012, Planned Parenthood left Tonya Reaves, a young Black woman, bleeding after her abortion in Chicago. She died later at the hospital. The abortion providers in her case were never arrested or charged with a crime. The autopsy report is a tragic record of Planned Parenthood’s negligence.

In 2016, legal abortion also took the life of 24-year-old Cree Erwin-Sheppard after she visited a Michigan Planned Parenthood facility.

Watch her brother describe the horror below:

Woman dies after abortion at Planned Parenthood

In February 2015, an Arizona court rejected an appeal by Phoenix abortionist Brian Finkel, who was originally charged with 67 counts of sexual assault. Finkel, who once committed 20% of Arizona’s abortions, was convicted of 22 of those counts of sexual assault on his abortion patients and was sentenced in 2004 to nearly 35 years in prison. (More on this case here.) Live Action News has detailed sexual abuse and harassment within the abortion industry and among staffers, including instances of child pornography possession — here, here, here, here, and here.

In 2017, Michigan abortionist Thomas J. Gordon had his license to practice medicine suspended after failing to notify state officials of his extensive criminal history. Gordon, who has a long history of criminal offenses, was the medical director at the Heritage Clinic in Grand Rapids, a National Abortion Federation-affiliated clinic. That same year, Keisha Atkins underwent a late-term abortion at 24 weeks pregnant and died as a result. The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center later paid a settlement for negligently referring Atkins to the Southwestern Women’s Options abortion business in Albuquerque where “she suffered cardiac arrest and became pulseless,” media reports state. No abortionists have been charged in her death, which can be read about at Abortion on Trial.

Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the abortion industry is now pushing laws, ordinances and propositions, which seek to insulate anyone aiding or abetting abortion,  because they know that ultimately these laws will protect the industry — not women.