Virginia Medical Board Suspends Abortion Practitioner’s License
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 12, 2006
Richmond, VA (LifeNews.com) — The Virginia state medical board voted to suspend the license of abortion practitioner Reffat Kamel Abofreka of Annandale saying he failed to provide proper are to women having abortions. The suspension is in effect until the Virginia Board of Medicine has a more formal hearing on May 19.
In two cases, the medical board said Abofreka failed to properly determine the age of the baby before starting the abortion procedure.
Both cases resulted in botched abortions and Abofreka told the women to go to a local hospital for follow-up care but failed to arrange a transfer for them, according to an AP report.
In the first case, Abofreka thought he was performing an abortion on a woman with a 12-week old unborn child. He started the abortion procedure and later realized he was aborting a 24-week old baby.
In that case, he instructed the woman to go to Alexandria Hospital but did not transfer the case. Doctors there later delivered the baby, who died hours later.
In the second abortion case, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, Abofreka did not perform any tests to determine the age of the baby during the February 2005 abortion.
The Times Dispatch reported that Abofreka stopped in the middle of the abortion to perform a sonogram because he believed the woman had an ectopic pregnancy. He stopped the abortion and did not make arrangements for the woman to go to a local hospital.
Instead, he gave the woman and her boyfriend a copy of the sonogram and told them to go to a local emergency room. The woman later went to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where doctors determined the woman had a very early stage pregnancy.
The board also said Abofreka, in a case where he was slated to provide OBGYN care for a pregnant woman, failed to give her any proper checkups or treatments during the first five months of her pregnancy.
The Virginia board also cited other problems at Abofreka’s abortion facility, including faulty record keeping and a lack of written protocols on handling emergency medical situations.
This isn’t the first time the abortion practitioner has run afoul of a state medical board.
In 1998, Abofreka was disciplined by state agencies in South Carolina and Pennsylvania. In South Carolina, he found his medical license suspended after he abruptly left the country and failed to notify patients, his staff or hospitals where he had admitting privileges.
Born in 1943, Abofreka graduated from medical school at Cairo University in Egypt.
