Abortion Practitioner, Nurse Suspended, Attorney General Will Investigate 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 22, 2006
Birmingham, AL (LifeNews.com) — An abortion practitioner and nurse who worked at an Alabama abortion facility that saw its medical license suspended have been suspended as well. The state medical board said it has temporarily prohibited abortion practitioner Deborah Lyn Levich and Summit Medical Center nurse Janet F. Onthank King from practicing medicine.
Levich routinely traveled from her home in Marietta, Georgia, to do abortions at the Birmingham facilitiy.
The latest action comes days after the state health board suspended Summit’s medical license after King gave a woman with a severely high blood pressure and late-term pregnancy the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug.
The woman later gave birth to a stillborn baby and the abortion center falsified its violations of state law in its medical papers to cover up the problems.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Troy King said his office would begin an investigation into the abortion clinic’s violations.
The one incident of a non-physician giving the late-term pregnant woman the abortion drug wasn’t the only violation.
State officials said they found "egregious lapses in care, including non-physicians performing abortions, severely underestimating the gestational age of a fetus, failure to appropriately refer or treat a patient with a dangerously elevated blood pressure, and performing an abortion on a late-term pregnancy."
According to the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper, the Board of Medical Examiners accused Levich of allowing King to give abortion drugs and do other things such as performing ultrasounds to estimate the age of an unborn child that only licensed physicians are allowed to do under state law.
A hearing on the charges Levich faces is set for July 18 and Summit faces a hearing on its medical license on June 20.
