Luka Granic and Paul Tuns:
Abortion advocates claim not only is abortion a human or civil right but that it is medical care for women, but recent incidents show that the care provided women seeking abortions is anything but caring or respectful of women.
Hope Clinic is an abortion mill based in Granite City, Illinois which has become notorious for botched abortions and shabby care. According to reports from LifeNews based on eyewitness accounts and publicly available 911 calls, in 2023 alone at least 15 women left the facility by ambulance. Even though a hospital is located directly across the street, nearly every one of these emergencies necessitated transfer to Barnes-Jewish Hospital, a Level One Trauma Centre in the neighbouring state of Missouri. The facility has been the locale of more problems this year.
On Feb. 28, a 22-year-old woman was transferred to Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Staff at the abortion mill told the 911 dispatcher that the patient “just has a fever.” This call was made about 5:15 pm, after the pro-lifers who demonstrate outside the mill typically leave for the day. This has led them to believe that the staff waited to call 911 to decrease the chances of pro-lifers witnessing the emergency transfer.
On May 22, a 31-year-old woman was experiencing “heavier than normal bleeding” after an abortion procedure. Calling 911, the abortion staff used language that has been perceived by some to be intentionally vague, saying the hemorrhaging patient was “stable.” Operation Rescue President Troy Newman said, “Even if the patient’s vital signs were within normal limits, uncontrolled hemorrhaging is a life-threatening situation that certainly calls for emergency intervention. Anyone with common sense knows people don’t call 911 to ask for an ambulance if somebody is not in danger.”
Last year, over a two-month period, three women were sent to the hospital after botched abortions at Hope Clinic. In the call on Aug. 4, 2023, the caller provided limited information. When asked what the emergency was, she said, “Um, we have a patient that needs to be transferred, um, yes, she needs to go to a higher level of care for evaluation,” with no follow-up questions from the dispatcher. In the next two calls on Sept. 7 and 29, the abortion mill staff said that their patients were “stable,” once again. In the call on Sept. 7, the caller said that the patient was having “some bleeding” and “controlled bleeding,” while also telling the dispatcher that she “need(s) someone ASAP.” In the Sept. 29 call, the abortion staff said that the patient needed to go to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital “for sedation purposes.” The dispatcher followed up, “Okay, so post-op sedation?” The caller responded, “Um, yeah, kind of, yeah, yeah.”
In April 2023, this abortuary requested that the Illinois Department of Public Health (ILDPH) permit it to bypass certain requirements surrounding abortions. Erin King, the centre’s medical director, requested exemptions for rules that abortionists must have specific surgical practice privileges at a licensed Illinois hospital, abortions only be carried out by a qualified physician, and that removed “tissues” must be examined by a consulting pathologist, and the results of the examination must be documented in the patient’s medical record. These requests were denied by the ILDPH.
Hope Clinic is far from unique. The University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health had two on-site emergencies in April of this year. On April 10, around 2:30 pm and again around 4:00 pm, eyewitnesses saw ambulances take women from the abortion mill to transport them to the emergency room.
Newman said these are not uncommon occurrences. “We continue to see an increase in medical emergencies like these while the traditional media, liberal groups, and their allies remain silent,” he said. “Meanwhile, women keep getting hurt. But we will move forward with our work exposing the truth of what the abortion cartel does not want the public to know about abortion. We pray for these women who were injured, though the condition of each remains unclear.”
Last month, Operation Rescue released audio of a 911 call from the Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Richmond, Virginia, in which abortion staff could be heard laughing in the background. The caller said there “appears to be a possible uterine perforation” when a second abortion staffer took the call and insisted the patient was “not currently actively bleeding” and requested that when the ambulance arrive “if you could just not use your sire- your, you know, your sirens, the noise.” It was not clear why people were laughing in the background as the woman faced potentially serious injury.
Before this incident, Abby Johnson, told LifeSiteNews ahead of the release of her latest film, Unthinkable, that women feel degraded “laying on the tables for their abortion” and are insulted by “the way that they are talked about by the staff, the doctors in particular,” noting “the way their bodies are made fun of and talked about and just how devalued they are.”
Such cases are not limited to the United States. In an article from 2004, The Interim wrote, “‘Pam,’ a 28-year-old woman, nearly died … 15 minutes after the 10-minute abortion procedure, Pam experienced stomach pains and began vomiting and shaking. The Morgentaler abortuary called an ambulance, which took her to University Hospital. Two hours later, the (Toronto) Sun reported, ‘her uterus, Fallopian tubes and ovaries had to be removed because of bleeding.’ A doctor informed the woman she nearly died and that she was ‘lucky to be alive’.” In the 1980s, The Interim reported on a woman who changed her mind about having an abortion and the abortionist stuffed what the patient later described as a maxipad into her mouth to prevent her from screaming.
Campaign Life Coalition intern Nathalie Comrie has been researching “customer reviews” of the Morgentaler abortuary in Ottawa on Google. She found one in May 2024 from Chloe Hanlon who reported, “my friend that also received a surgical abortion the same day as me received a BLOOD INFECTION from this place. The blood test results literally state she received this infection from UNSTERILE EQUIPMENT … they think her uterine wall was perforated.” In 2023, an unidentified woman reported that, “Once in the room, they basically just grabbed my arm to inject me and despite pain medication (that did not work at all) it was EXCRUCIATINGLY painful, I was told to be quiet after screaming.” In November 2023, Nirvana Diba reported, “I was fixing the mess cause(d) by the doctors at this clinic, still my uterus is thin and I couldn’t get pregnant … it has been three years past and my uterus is not fixed after several hysteroscopies and now I am using a surrogate to carry my embryos … the director of this clinic is a liar and manipulator, she covers up their bad acts.”
The mass-production of abortion pills has also proven to be damaging to women’s health, but with many health authorities relaxing restrictions, the dangers are becoming more apparent. A woman identified only as “Patricia” in LifeNews reports said that after getting the chemical abortion pills at a Planned Parenthood facility, “Within one hour I knew that everything the doctor had told me was a lie. I was bleeding so heavily, I believed I was dying. I was passing clots the size of baseballs, and I was in the worst physical pain of my life, worse than childbirth … I looked into the toilet and saw my baby. It had a head, body, and tiny arms and legs … The shame and guilt … I felt … as I was forced to flush my aborted baby down the toilet, is impossible to describe.”
Furthermore, abortion operations have frequently broken the law. Soon after the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade, a ten-year-old rape victim left Ohio where abortion was illegal at her preborn baby’s level of development. She crossed over to Indiana to get an abortion at the hands of Dr. Caitlin Bernard. After committing the abortion, Bernard went public about it to put pressure on states to rescind pro-life laws. She said, “I think that it’s incredibly important for people to understand the real-world impacts of the laws in this country, about abortion or otherwise.” In November of 2022, the Indiana State Attorney General’s office filed a complaint asserting that Bernard failed to protect the victim’s privacy and immediately report the abuse of the child as required by the state’s law. Bernard defended her actions, “As a physician my role is to provide care for the patient no matter how she winds up in my care, it is not my job to investigate the crime.” She was found guilty of violating patient privacy laws, and was issued a letter of reprimand.
Further, Planned Parenthood in Missouri has been revealed to transfer minors to Kansas for abortions to evade state restrictions on abortions. Missouri law states that those under 14 cannot consent to sex and that anyone 14-16 cannot consent to sex with someone who is four years older. Minors are not allowed to obtain an abortion without parental consent and all healthcare providers are supposed to report sexual abuse of minors.
Project Veritas interviewed the managing director of Planned Parenthood in Kansas City, Missouri, identified only as Lashuana, in November of 2023. In this interview, Lashuana described transporting a 13-year-old across state lines to obtain an abortion, circumventing Missouri law and ignoring its statutory duty to report the abuse of minors. “We never tell the parents anything,” she said, “They will bypass without the parents.” When asked how often Planned Parenthood arranges inter-state abortion transport for minors without parental consent, she laughed, “Every day.” Additionally, Lashuana said how they give a doctor’s note to the school, whether or not the school agrees. “They have to take it,” “And we can cut off our letterhead, so it doesn’t even say where she was.”
This is nothing new. In 2018, Live Action released a report “Aiding Abusers Investigation” that found children as young as 12 were provided abortions and then returned to their abuser despite state laws requiring suspected child abuse be reported to state authorities. In one case, the mother of a 15-year-old raped by an 18-year-old told the facility about the rape and the counselor told them “it wasn’t worth the hassle” to report it.
The late-senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that anecdote is the singular of data. These incidences, that are becoming more public, are data points about the grubbiness of the abortion industry that ignores the law and downplays dangers to women’s health as they truck in murder for hire.
