By Elizabeth O’Brien
CRANFORD, NJ, July 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This week New Jersey Right to Life (NJRL) Executive Director Marie Tasy wrote to Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen, calling his attention to the filthy conditions of NJ abortion clinics, pointing out the lack of State inspection and requesting that the situation be remedied immediately.
In April Tasy filed an Open Records Act Request in order to view the inspection record of abortion clinics within the State of New Jersey. According to the Department of Health (DH) policy, clinics must be inspected every other year; but Tasy learned that when it came to abortion clinics, this had not taken place for at least fives years in some cases. In addition, the DH failed to submit records for two NJ abortion clinics, indicating that they have never yet been inspected.
For years the gruesomely unsanitary conditions in New Jersey abortion clinics have gone uninvestigated. The Metropolitan Medical Associates (MMA), for example, is one of the largest abortion mills in the state, performing over 10,000 abortions annually up to 24 weeks gestation. The MMA was shut down this January after a woman went into a coma due to a botched abortion. Similarly, Alternatives clinic in Atlantic City was investigated only after public complaints. That abortion mill was closed by officials this June.
Tasy cited the horrific reports of what investigators found inside the MMA: “forceps encrusted in ‘brownish blood-like residues’, ‘rusty crochet hooks used to remove IUDs’ and a quarter inch of dark red ‘dirt and debris’ under an exam table.”
Similarly, at the Alternatives Abortion Clinic in Atlantic City, she writes, “When state officials entered the clinic for the first time in years, they found the absence of hot water for more than a year and a scrub sink for sterilization, and the absence of a mechanical ventilator and the anti-hypothermia drug Dantrium.”
Challenging Chen to take immediate action, the NJRL pointed out that the “office’s guiding principle, as noted in the statute establishing your office, is to ‘advocate for those “unable to effectively advocate for themselves,”’ and to “take legal action against state agencies which may be neglecting their duties and placing the lives of our citizens at risk.”
NJRL requested that the department “take appropriate and swift legal action to ensure these abuses are rectified at the Department of Health and all New Jersey abortion clinics,” and to “implement an outreach program to locate and assist any women who may have experienced complications, infections or a sexually transmitted disease through the use of unsterilized instruments and conditions ‘posing immediate and serious risk of harm to patients.’”
The request concluded, “It is inexcusable that there is no requirement that facilities that perform abortions before 14 weeks LMP be inspected by the Department of Health. It is even more shocking and intolerable that clinics that perform abortions through the 24th week of pregnancy and are licensed by the state are not inspected.”
“This is bad public policy that creates a double standard with regard to abortion, to the obvious detriment of women’s health,” said Tasy in the letter. “The silence from lawmakers and advocates of ‘safe and legal abortion’ has been deafening.”
Marie Tasy told LifeSiteNews.com that at present she is exploring her options with regards to the Department of Health’s failure to follow-through with their statement that they would send the requested medical records.
Tasy also stated, “The public should be outraged. Women should be outraged. Everyone in the State of New Jersey should be outraged. It’s just shocking that lawmakers and groups that claim to advocate for women’s health have not uttered a word. It just shows the hypocrisy of these groups that claim to care about women. It exposes that the only thing they care about is abortion.”
She continued, “They will go to any lengths to protect the so-called right to abortion even if it means stepping over women’s bodies to do so. They are silent when abuses occur inside abortion clinics to the very people that they claim to care about.”
Read previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Second New Jersey Abortion Clinic Closed for Violation of Health Regulations https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07062705.html
Abortion Doctor’s Receptionist Charged with performing Illegal Abortions https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jan/05011801.html
New Jersey Woman Suffers Coma after ‘Safe, Legal’ Abortion https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07030201.html
Report Reveals Filthy Conditions, Health Violations at N.J. Abortion Center https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/mar/07032010.html
To contact Public Advocate Chen and respectfully voice concerns:
Department of the Public Advocate
240 West State Street, 16th Floor
P.O. Box 851
Trenton, N.J. 08625
Phone: (609) 826-5090
Fax: (609) 984-4747
Email: [email protected]