SACRAMENTO, CA, May 17, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The last three abortion centers in a northern California chain that once boasted six closed this week, according to Wynette Sills, whose Sacramento 40 Day for Life group has been regularly praying in front of the facilities for years.
Sills told LifeSiteNews in an e-mail that when she asked a Choice Medical employee about the reason for closing, the employee responded, “We just didn't have enough patients.”
Choice Medical Group, which offered abortions up to 24 weeks’ gestation, closed its Sacramento, Fremont, and San Jose locations this week, just two months after closing their San Francisco facility in March.
Two additional locations in Salinas and Concord had also closed in recent years.
For several years, Sills and other pro-life activists have held vigils every weekday morning outside Choice Medical abortion centers, praying for them to close and offering sidewalk counseling to abortion-minded women.
Sills reports that as a result of those efforts, at least 32 babies were saved in just two years at the Sacramento facility alone.
One of those was Khya Spidell, a baby with special needs whose mother was urged by doctors to abort her because they felt her condition was “incompatible with life.” Her mother, Stephanie, ultimately chose to give birth to Khya. She recently turned two.
In addition to the efforts of Sills and her colleagues, it’s possible one driving force behind the drop in clientele and subsequent closure of the clinics may be the franchise’s increasingly poor reputation since online review sites have made it easier for post-abortive women to rate and share their experiences.
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Of the Sacramento facility, Yelp user “Heather B.” wrote:
The worse [sic] experience I have had at any medical facility! Unfortunately this was not my first surgical abortion and I've taken steps to be sure it will be my last. I was greeted very rudely from the front desk when I signed in and proceeded to present my billing information. After waiting in a very crowded and not very sanitary waiting room for 2 and a half hours they took me back for the preliminary testing. … When they put the blood pressure cuff on it read my pressure as dangerously high, I questioned the technician, she instructed me to “not worry about [it], this machine hasn't worked in a long time.”
Herded like cattle we were led in one by one to have the procedure. I cannot imagine how an unsanitary and unprofessional facility can legally continue to operate this way.
On the online review site Insider Pages, user “Katie S.” reported that she had horrible experiences at both the San Jose and Fremont clinics.
“After having the most agonizing experience ever at both San Jose and Fremont Choice Medical Abortion Clinics, which have the worst service and is soiled with human fluid extracts all over the place, I will never recommend anybody there,” Katie S. wrote. “In fact, it's so bad, they should be petitioned for shut down by the state. They were rude, insensitive, pushy, abrasive, unsympathetic, and most of all UNSANITARY, I wound up with a severe vaginal infection that could have easily been prevented then they didn't know how to process my insurance claim…you'll run into so many problems. Save yourself. Don't choose this group.”