Australia Abortion Practitioner Can’t Practice Medicine for 10 Years 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 6, 2006
Sydney, Australia (LifeNews.com) — An Australia abortion practitioner, who was convicted of illegally giving a woman a dangerous abortion drug and had numerous other complaints filed against her, will not be able to practice medicine for 10 years. That’s the ruling of a state medical panel.
The New South Wales Medical Tribunal ruled that embattled abortion practitioner Suman Sood should not be allowed to practice medicine after it ruled she was guilty of medical misconduct.
The ruling came after the panel heard 11 complaints against Sood.
Judge Stephen Walmsley said the panel found Sood "is not of good character" according to the Townsville Bulletin newspaper.
"The respondent is deregistered and further the respondent is not to reapply for re-registration as a medical practitioner for 10 years," Judge Walmsley said.
The complaints centered on the way Sood handled abortions done on various women. Some 11 women who received abortion or other medical care from her since 1998 filed the complaints.
One of the women said Sood treated her in June 2002 even though the abortion practitioner’s medical license was suspended at the time.
Sood, who sometimes does non-abortion medical work, told the woman she had cancer and only two or three months to live. Later, the woman saw a specialist who told her the diagnosis was wrong and that she didn’t have cancer.
Another woman said Sood did an abortion on her but it failed. She returned to Sood’s abortion business to have the abortion completed and Sood charged her for an additional abortion.
The woman told the Herald newspaper she later went to a hospital with severe bleeding and doctors there told her she had fibroids.
New South Wales Health Minister John Hatzistergos welcomed the decision.
"This has followed a very lengthy process in which Dr Sood and her legal advisers have used all sorts of legal mechanisms to avoid this matter being able to come to a conclusion," he said.
"And it was appropriate that this matter be pursued to its finality rather than to simply have her stand down in the way that she had proposed."
Following the conviction, Sood voluntarily took her name off of the nation’s medical register and will no longer do abortions. She had done more than 10,000 before convicted of the improper abortion.
In the illegal abortion case, Sood failed to conduct a medical examination on a patient she gave a dangerous abortion drug to that resulted in a botched abortion. The woman gave birth to a premature baby boy in the toilet in her bathroom at home and by the time paramedics could rush the infant to the hospital, he was dead.
Sood was convicted and a court hearing for the sentencing is expected this week. She could be jailed for as much as 10 years as a result.
