Bismarck, ND (LifeNews.com) -- North Dakota officials have revoked the medical license of a former abortion practitioner accused of defrauding the Medicare program. Richard Leigh, an 82-year-old Grand Forks gynecologist, has been accused of bilking about $22,000 from the national health insurance program.

Rolf Sletten, executive secretary of the state Board of Medical Examiners, told the Associated Press that Leigh will be required to repay the amount he illegal gained from the program.

Sletten said the board believes Leigh, who ran his own medical clinic in Grand Forks, defrauded the federal program for the elderly and disabled from 2001 to 2004.

Leigh first obtained his medical license in 1949 and the order revoking it was finalized last Tuesday.

“It’s a bad end to a long career,” Sletten told AP.

According to Sletten, Leigh has retired and apparently moved out of state and a phone number for him in Grand Forks has been disconnected.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Reisenauer told AP that no criminal charges have been filed against Leigh in the case.

Leigh was one of the few abortion practitioners in North Dakota and opened what is considered to be the first abortion business in the state.

In March 2003 he was quoted as saying that he did illegal abortions before the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 essentially allowing unlimited abortions. He suggested that women made him do the abortions and that he wasn't to blame.

"Anti-abortion people are mad at the wrong people," he said.