PLANTATION, Florida, April 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A Ft. Lauderdale-area abortion facility has agreed to pay $3,000 to settle charges that it illegally performed second-trimester abortions without a license.
Aastra Women's Center, located in the Broward County city of Plantation, said the payment is a “business decision,” not an admission of guilt, and its legal counsel maintains it has done nothing wrong.
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) said that, after paying an unannounced visit to state abortionists last August 5, inspectors found five abortion facilities performing illegal second-trimester abortions. The facilities' licenses allowed them only to perform first-trimster abortions.
In addition to Aastra, officials named the Bread and Roses Women's Health Center in Gainesville and three Planned Parenthood offices in Fort Myers, Naples, and St. Petersburg.
According to state records, on six occasions, Aastra performed abortions on women without measuring their last normal menstrual period (LNMP), instead relying on an ultrasound that placed the child's gestational age at between 13 and 14 weeks.
But under state law, inspectors said, any abortion carried out beyond 12 weeks without documenting LNMP is considered a second-trimester abortion and exceeds those facilities' state licenses.
The settlement, which had been floated in outline late last year, was formally filed in the state Division of Administrative Hearings last Thursday.
The facility's attorney, Julie Gallagher, said that the $3,000 in “fines were minimal vs. [the] cost of [a legal] hearing.”
Pro-life leaders say that concern over the bottom line dovetails with the facilities' alleged disregard for laws regarding riskier, second-trimester abortions.
“Give an abortion business an inch, and it’ll take a mile, especially if it thinks no one is watching or that the political administration favors it and will look the other way,” said Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue. “The abortionists that have been cited for illegal second trimester abortions have endangered women by acting as if they are above the law and can make up their own definitions as they go along.”
