The problems exposed in Florida's fight over abortion clinics—state neglect, pro-choice denial, and the relegation of abortion to the shadows of medicine—didn't end there. They have surfaced in other states, too.
On Sept. 2, 1989, two weeks before the Miami Herald exposé in Florida, the Boston Globe disclosed that Dr. Howard Silverman, the owner of Massachusetts' biggest chain of abortion clinics, had admitted to sexual misconduct with a female patient. . . . Like the exposed clinic operators in Florida, Silverman portrayed his unmasking as an attack on abortion rights. And, as in Florida, the Globe found that colleagues had known of his misconduct, as well as his generally bad reputation, but had kept it secret. . . .
A few days later, Chicago abortionist Arnold Bickham was arrested for practicing medicine less than a year after losing his license for gross malpractice. In the malpractice case, a woman had hemorrhaged and gone into shock after an abortion at Bickham's clinic. . . . No one could be sure how rare these offenses were, since abortion clinics in Illinois hadn't been regulated or inspected for four years, thanks to a court injunction like the one in Florida.
Another horror story surfaced in Maryland a week after the fight in Florida began. A woman lapsed into respiratory trouble while under anesthesia for an abortion at the Hillview Women's Medical Surgical Center. Despite having no anesthesiologist on hand, the clinic's medical director continued the operation. The patient went into cardiac arrest and died. . . . The clinic's owner, Barbara Lofton, blamed reports of her recklessness on the pro-life views of the local paramedic chief. He denied that he held such views. . . .
Over the years, similar cases have turned up in other states. Pennsylvania's Kermit Gosnell scandal may be the latest and biggest of these regulatory failures, but it isn't the only one. . . . For five months last year, New Jersey regulators received complaints that abortion doctor Steven Brigham, 54, was running a secret, cash-only, late-term abortion business using a risky interstate scheme—one for which he was disciplined in the 1990s. Just as in the Gosnell case, regulators took no public action against Brigham—until a police raid forced them to.
Brigham's case is still unfolding. . . . Despite the raid, a trail of botched abortions, and license suspensions in New York and New Jersey, Brigham is still operating clinics in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Last year, Pennsylvania's Department of Health, fresh from the gruesome discoveries at Gosnell's uninspected facility, approved Brigham's transfer of his clinics to his mother's company, thereby helping him evade an order that was supposed to bar him from owning abortion clinics in the state. The order forbidding clinic ownership "does not apply" to Brigham's mother's company, a health department spokeswoman told the Inquirer. And guess where Brigham has opened his latest franchise? Florida. Slate
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