A British inquest Thursday heard how a Marie Stopes abortion clinic allegedly urged a woman to leave after her late-term abortion even though she was vomiting and swaying when she walked.
The woman, Aisha Chithira, 31, of Ireland, died later that evening of massive internal bleeding, The Evening Echo reports.
New details about the tragic 2012 incident are coming to light this week in an inquest in west London. Two years ago, the abortionist, Adedayo Adedeji, and two nurses Gemma Pullen and Margaret Miller at Marie Stopes in Ealing faced manslaughter charges in Chithira’s death, but the charges later were dropped. Prosecutors did not explain why.
Here’s the latest from the Echo:
She suffered a tear to her uterus during the “blind” procedure performed under anaesthetic, as a surgeon struggled to remove a 22-week-old foetus from a womb that had not fully dilated, West London Coroner’s Court heard.
Afterwards, she vomited in a stairwell and complained of feeling unwell to her husband, but was helped into a taxi to a cousin’s home in Slough by staff at the clinic. They had told her she could not stay overnight.
One of the nurses denied they had pressured her to leave because they had wanted to go home.
Corinne Slingo, representing Marie Stopes, said: “The taxi driver says he saw his passenger walking out of the building. He was quite shocked, she didn’t seem with it at all.
“She looked like she was drunk.”
Reading from a statement, she added: “The nurse got her in a hug and she said ‘don’t do that, you will break my bones’.”
Pullen, one of the nurses who stayed to look after Chithira, said she was the last patient in the building and did not leave until about 8:30 p.m. However, Pullen claimed Chithira was walking normally when she got into the taxi, and they did not pressure her to leave.
The nurse admitted Chithira had been hyperventilating and complaining about being hot.
Later that night, Chithira died from catastrophic internal bleeding from a tear in her uterus, according to the report.
The abortionist, though admitting Chithira’s late-term abortion was difficult, denied that the tear was his fault.
The report continues:
The surgeon, who said he had performed around 2,000 terminations, said the procedure was performed “blind” but added: “On this occasion, the head was really right up the uterus and I decided to use the (ultrasound) scan to look at exactly where it is.
“The neck of the womb was not that compliant in the sense it was not dilated, it was not satisfied.
“There was a small tear at the neck of the womb at the right side caused by the foetal parts that were coming out .”
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He denied it could have been caused by damage from his surgery or from him cutting a fibroid, adding: “There was no bleeding, it wasn’t at the time that it was bleeding.”
The inquest is scheduled to continue Friday.
Interestingly, the same year that charges against the abortionist and nurses were dropped, the British government temporarily shut down some of the Marie Stopes’ operations after inspections revealed numerous health and safety violations. The abortion chain later was allowed to resume all abortions after promises to fix the problems.
However, in 2017, the British Care Quality Commission found that Marie Stopes facilities had botched nearly 400 abortions in a two-month period. Then, it found evidence that Marie Stopes was pressuring women to have abortions by incentivizing staff with bonuses.
One of its Australia facilities also is facing a lawsuit after a woman said she almost died there from an abortion. The woman claims a Marie Stopes abortionist failed to recognize that she had an ectopic pregnancy before the abortion.
Despite all this, Marie Stopes continues to function as one of the largest abortion chains in the world, and receives British tax dollars to support its work.
Most recently, the very abortion facility where Chithira died lobbied for and received a 100-meter (328 foot) buffer zone to prevent pro-lifers from reaching out to women outside. Marie Stopes claims the buffer zone is important to protect women’s “safety.”
Pro-life advocates contend the real reason for the buffer zone is because Marie Stopes is losing abortion business.
