A web site is providing women with information about records of abortion providers in the United States. The aim of AbortionSafety.com, organized by Kelsey Hazzard, president of Secular Pro-Life, is to provide women considering abortion with information while they are at home, rather than on the sidewalk outside of the abortion mill. Hazzard told The Interim in an email that “we’re constantly told that abortion is such a safe medical procedure…but the repeat offenders rarely get any press. Many legal abortionists have maimed or killed their patients, and continue to practice. Women deserve this information.”
The web site allows users to search for a particular facility by name or state. The site’s listing of medical abuses is incomplete, as some cases may not have been brought to AbortionSafety.com’s attention. Victims also may have settled with the provider before the lawsuit was filed or not threatened the facility with legal action at all.
New York has the most facilities involved in malpractice cases. One example is Salomon Epstein, an abortionist associated with several offices, including Brooklyn Women’s Services. Permanent limitations on Epstein’s licence were set in 2004 by the New York State Board for Professional Medical Conduct due to Epstein’s failure to monitor the patient’s oxygen levels during a surgical abortion procedure, failure to respond to complaints of pain and symptoms of complication after abortion, and his tendency to discharge patients too soon after the abortion.
Hazzard said that AbortionSafety knows of several lawsuits against Planned Parenthood facilities in New York, but the organization is unable to track down the specific locations because the entire regional affiliate gets sued in a malpractice case as opposed to an individual office.
She said that she does not find it surprising that New York had the most facilities involved in malpractice cases, as “New York has a giant population and very abortion-friendly state policies, so it has more abortion facilities than any other state save California. More abortion facilities means more malpractice.”
Texas also had many facilities associated with malpractice complaints. For instance, Jasbir Singh Ahluwahlia at Routh Street Women’s Clinic in Dallas was taken to court after giving a baby brain damage while delivering it in 1989, as well as after perforating the uterus of two women coming in for abortions. In 1995, he allegedly blocked a uterus with stitches.
“We’ve been very careful not to suggest that a particular facility is ‘respectable’ or ‘safe’,” said Hazzard. “If we don’t have a record on an abortion facility or doctor, then we don’t list it at all. If you run a search and come up with no results, you’ll get the message ‘We are sorry; there are no results for your search. The absence of data does not guarantee that your abortion will be safe. You should know that abortion has serious risks, which vary depending on the type of procedure’.”
At the time of writing of this article, AbortionSafety.com had listings for abortion facilities in 28 states. Apart from data about the records of individual facilities, the web site includes descriptions of the abortion procedure, as well as a listing of risks and side effects. Links to crisis pregnancy centres and information about abortion alternatives is also provided.
There is no comparable website for Canada because information about individual facilities is not publicly available.
