By Gudrun Schultz
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, June 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An abortion clinic under investigation for allegations of severe misconduct has voluntarily surrendered its license, after unqualified clinic staff gave a woman in advanced pregnancy an early-term abortion drug.
The Summit Medical Center had its license suspended on May 17 by the Alabama Department of Health, with a hearing pending on June 20. The state would have attempted to revoke the center’s license at the hearing, the AP reported yesterday.
Allegations against the clinic include statements that a nurse practitioner, not a doctor, gave an ultrasound to a woman in the third trimester of pregnancy and concluded she was only six weeks pregnant. The practitioner then gave the woman the abortion drug RU 486, intended for use only within the first nine weeks of pregnancy, despite the woman’s dangerously high blood pressure.
A report by the state health department said the woman checked in to a hospital emergency room six days later with the head of a baby protruding and “delivered a stillborn, macerated, foul smelling, six pound, four ounce baby.”
The clinic is under investigation by the Alabama Board of Medical Examiners and could face criminal charges. The board has temporarily suspended the licenses of Dr. Deborah Lyn Levich and nurse practitioner Janet F. Onthank King, and banned them from working together.
The board has accused Dr. Levich of allowing nurse practitioner King to prescribe drugs and perform services she was not qualified to carry out. Dr. Levich has been summoned to a board hearing on July 18.
A lawsuit was brought against the Birmingham center in June of 2004, after a woman died of a perforated uterus following an abortion at the center. The doctor who performed the abortion, also named in the suit, had his license to practice medicine suspended in the states of Alabama and Mississippi in 2004.
Abortionist Malachy DeHenre was accused of “gross malpractice” by the Medical Licensure Commission of Alabama after three women required complete hysterectomies to control severe haemorrhaging following abortions, and Leigh Ann Stephens Alford died.
Summit has abortion clinics in Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, as well as the state of Alabama.
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Alabama Abortion Clinic Closed After Botched RU-486 Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052310.html
Mississippi Abortionist’s Medical License Suspended for Malpractice
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/aug/04082004.html
Mississippi Abortionist says He won’t Commit Abortions Again
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/dec/04122003.html