Thirty abortion facilities have either close or are in the process of closing in the United States thus far in 2013, more than twice the number of facilities that closed in all of 2012. The latest closure is Nova Women’s Healthcare in Fairfax, Virginia, a facility with a history of botched abortions which shut its doors in June.
On May 14, pro-life activists attended a city council meeting to oppose the relocation of the Fairfax facility proposed for July after the property owners sued to terminate its lease in the current location on grounds that it created a nuisance. Nova’s previous applications for a building permit in the new location had been denied because there were not enough parking spaces. During the May 14 meeting, pro-lifers spoke out about the negative consequences of the abortion business. The mayor, Scott Silverthorne, said that the facility withdrew its application the day before.
On March 3, 2012, a 35-year-old diabetic patient had to be transported to a hospital after heavy bleeding as a result of an abortion in the Nova facility. The medical license of the owner, Mi Yong Kim, had been surrendered in 2007 because she did not sedate a patient properly in 2005 and did not realize that she was suffering from a cardiac arrest; Kim did not try to resuscitate the woman, who died. Two months later, inspectors found several health and safety violations and that another patient had been hospitalized after a botched abortion.
Another of the 30 abortion mills closed this year was Cuyahoga Falls Capital Care, which was ordered shut by the state of Ohio in April after an inspection in February. The facility was collecting large amounts of relatively rare Rh- blood from frequent customers to test its reagents, a process needed to provide accurate lab test results. The patients, who came for a finger stick test, did not know the blood would be used for this purpose. The facility was also found to be operating without an Ohio State Board of Pharmacy license needed to administer drugs during surgical procedures. One medical assistant was illegally administering controlled substances to patients.
In May, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services ordered the closure of A Preferred Women’s Health Center. It was discovered to have given injectable methotrexate orally to patients to cause an abortion. Moreover, the facility failed to ensure that all of the baby and pregnancy-related tissue were expelled from the womb after the chemical abortion.
In April, days after Virginia’s Board of Health voted to implement a 2011 law passed by the state legislature requiring that abortion mills “meet strict, hospital-style building codes,” Hillcrest Clinic in Virginia Beach announced it would be shutting its doors due to the cost of abiding by the new standards as well as a decline in business.
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said that more facilities are closing because of greater enforcement of regulations and a lack of business. “In 1991, there were 2,176 surgical abortion clinics in America,” Newman said. “After the closure of Nova at the end of this month, there will be only 630 surgical abortion clinics left. While we still have a long way to go to end the barbaric practice of abortion in this nation, we have shown real progress,” he said in a report for Operation Rescue.
