SOUTH BEND, IN, March 21, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An Indiana abortionist is back at work today – and so are investigators across the state, pouring over the medical records that they seized from his office during a raid this week.
Officers with the Special Victims Unit raided Dr. Ulrich George Klopfer's Women's Pavilion abortion facility in South Bend, Indiana, on Thursday. They copied and returned the medical records to his office the same day.
Klopfer was in the news recently for failing to comply with a law designed to catch child molesters. Now, as charges begin accumulating, new revelations have come to light that Klopfer's facility had echoes of Kermit Gosnell's “house of horrors.”
In 2010 and 2012, state inspectors found that Klopfer allowed the bodies of aborted babies to be stored in a refrigerator alongside medication the office would dispense to its patients.
They also found unsigned consent forms, fire hazards, and a nitrous oxide tank that had expired in December 1989.
Gosnell's West Philadelphia Women's Medical Society had a similar litany of state violations, which caught up to him only after officials discovered another of his illegal ventures: illicit prescription drug sales.
Although no one has publicly stated which records SVU officers obtained on Thursday, Klopfer has been investigated for failing to report abortions performed on very young girls within the time frame required by state law. Any minor under 13 is considered incapable of consenting to sex, and any sexual contact by an older person is statutory rape.
However, he failed to report more than one such case.
Klopfer performed a suction curettage abortion on a young black girl who was not yet in the eighth grade at the Fort Wayne office last February 7. But he failed to report the procedure until July 25, more than five months later.
The abortionist, who lives in Illinois, had similar issues with two other minors, including a 13-year-old in Lake County.
“It's heartbreaking to learn that a 13-year-old became pregnant and now must live with the pain of an abortion for the rest of her life,” Cathie Humbarger, the executive director of Allen County (Indiana) Right to Life, said. “But it's doubly-heartbreaking that Dr. Klopfer's failure to report the abortion may have allowed the girl's molester to walk.”
The charges began to pile up. After he lost his backup physician, Klopfer was forced to close his Fort Wayne office in January, the first abortion facility closure of 2014.
Klopfer still performs abortions in South Bend and Gary, but investigators say he does not have a secondary physician listed at either location.
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Then there are allegations of improper record keeping, such as his habit of listing the date of every abortion at 88 weeks. The state's right to life movement filed first hundreds, then more than 1,000 complaints against Klopfer for shoddy record-keeping that evaded the state's legal standards.
State Attorney General Greg Zoeller said he is engaged in the matter, which he sees as an effort to protect women and children, and he will present the findings of his investigation to the state Medical Licensing Board by the end of the year.
Pro-life advocates would like to see that investigation expand. Between 58 and 75 percent of abortions performed on girls under the age of 14 were not reported in accordance with a state law designed to catch child molesters, according to an investigation by Amanda Gray of the South Bend Tribune.
“The work of Indiana Right to Life in researching, exposing, and reporting abortion abuses in their state is a model we hope other pro-life groups will follow,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue. “We know that when abortionists are brought to justice and abortion clinics close, women are protected and lives are saved.”