The remains of 34 aborted babies were found by police in the freezer of an illegal late-term abortion facility in Elkton, Maryland. The raid was conducted after staff at the nearby Union Hospital alerted police about the unusual behaviour of the facility’s two abortionists when they brought a severely injured victim of a botched abortion to the emergency room, 18-year-old D.B. (the woman cannot be identified). D.B.’s baby, whose remains were found in the freezer according to an autopsy report obtained by Operation Rescue, was estimated to be 25.2 weeks old, while the oldest remains found belonged to a 36 week-old baby.
Operation Rescue reported extensively on the botched abortion. On August 9, 2010, D.B. was told she was 21.5 weeks pregnant at American Women’s Center in Voorhees, N.J.
Abortionist Steven Brigham began the abortion procedure by inserting laminaria. Because abortions could only be done up to 14 weeks in New Jersey, Brigham would begin the procedure in New Jersey and then tell the women to return the next day, when they would be given drugs to induce labour and then transported to his “secret clinic” in Elkton, Maryland, where there are no gestational limits and where Brigham is not licenced to practice medicine.
In Elkton, Nicola Riley, a new hire, started to perform the dilation and extraction procedure under the guidance of Brigham. During D.B.’s abortion, Riley accidentally pulled out part of her bowel. Parts of the baby’s remains were pushed through a uterine tear into the patient’s upper abdominal cavity. The two abortionists drove the patient to Union Hospital without an intravenous. When they arrived, they refused to enter the emergency room and forced the staff to talk to them outside. Riley told them that she was a physician “that works at a secret clinic that performs second trimester abortions in town.” D.B. had to be transported to Johns Hopkins Hospital because of the severity of her injuries.
As a result of this case, new regulations in Maryland caused the closing of all four of Brigham’s abortion facilities in the state, while public scrutiny led to the shutdown of Brigham’s five abortion mills in Pennsylvania.
Brigham and Riley were charged with five counts of murder in Maryland for the abortions because the deaths of the babies occurred in the context of a crime. The charges were withdrawn after a key expert witness withdrew from the proceedings. Riley’s Maryland medical licence was revoked, but her Utah licence has now been restored (it was first restricted after the botched abortion). Brigham has only one remaining medical licence in New Jersey, which is suspended. The abortionist, however, still operates a chain of 11 facilities in three other states, New Jersey, Virginia, and Florida, and the Voorhees, N.J., abortion facility remains open.
