ex-abortionists: Why they quit, The

Human Life Review, Spring 2000 by Meehan, Mary

Carol Everett and her abortionist partner had what they felt was "the Neiman-Marcus of the abortion industry" in the early 1980s. They had a record of no complications-until they decided to go for the big money by doing late abortions. Operating on one woman who was about twenty-two weeks pregnant, the abortionist perforated her uterus and pulled out the lining of her colon. Instead of calling an ambulance-which could have given the clinic bad publicity-Everett drove the woman to a hospital, where she had a colostomy. The abortionist persuaded a colleague to reverse the colostomy later at no charge; he also arranged for the hospital to write off bills for both surgeries. There was no lawsuit.

Another abortionist at an Everett clinic perforated a woman's uterus and also severed her urinary tract. Again Everett drove the woman to a hospital instead of calling an ambulance. "We were maiming at least one woman a month," at one point, she recalled.20

Then there was the woman named Sheryl, who, after an abortion at twenty weeks, was in the recovery room "lying in a pool of blood." Everett said her bed "was soaked with blood, the privacy curtains were splashed with it, and even the wall had blood on it." The staff were finally able to control the bleeding; but the abortionist, eager to leave for a date, did not examine the woman to find the source of the bleeding. The woman was anxious to go home, and the staff let her go a few hours later, although her blood pressure was very low. She lost consciousness the next morning and was rushed to an emergency room, but she died. The abortionist and his girlfriend changed her medical chart so that the blood pressure readings appeared to be normal. But the coroner established the cause of death as hemorrhage due to a cervical tear. Everett said she "went numb" upon hearing this:

We could have saved Sheryl's life! my mind screamed. We only needed to have sutured her cervix. We had everything we needed in the clinic to save Sheryl's life, with one exception-a doctor willing to take the time to re-examine his patient to determine the cause of the bleeding. But he had a date, and the margaritas were waiting.21

Some clinics have lay staff do what only nurses or doctors are supposed to do. Mark Bomchill indicated that "untrained people" gave injections and medications to patients at the clinic he guarded. Hellen Pendley, who was a clinic administrator but not a doctor, said that when a patient had severe bleeding outside of regular clinic hours, "that was my problem, not the doctor's. . . . I was the one who called in all the drugs. I was the one who prescribed the medication."

Joy Davis, an ultrasound technician, went even further. Working for abortion doctor Thomas Tucker, she eventually managed a chain of six clinics in Alabama and Mississippi for him. Tucker, finding that he couldn't cover all the clinics by himself, trained Davis to do abortions and other routine clinic work. Davis described what happened:

I never spent the first day in medical school . But I started doing abortions . . . I did Norplant, cryosurgery, Pap smears, pelvic exams. Anything he did, I did. And I was real proud of that, because I felt I did it better than he did.