Abortion Center in New Jersey Schedules Abortions Despite Health Violations 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 8, 2007
Englewood, NJ (LifeNews.com) — A New Jersey abortion business closed two weeks ago for health and safety code violations, and that failed a follow-up inspection on Tuesday, is reportedly continuing to schedule abortions. A pro-life group said a member posed as a potential customer the day after the second inspection and was offered an appointment.
State officials ordered the Metropolitan Medical Associates abortion center to close its doors after a complaint was filed after a woman who had an abortion there went into a coma for more than four weeks following a botched abortion.
Nathan Rudy, spokesman for the health department, indicated it failed a follow-up inspection on Tuesday.
Wanting to see how the abortion facility was responding to the state’s orders, a member of the Kansas-based pro-life group Operation Rescue placed a call seeking an appointment for a first-trimester abortion.
An MMA staff member told the caller the abortion center wasn’t taking appointments this week but scheduled her for an abortion next Tuesday morning. The worker did not offer to refer the caller to another abortion center or say it was closed and why.
In a statement LifeNews.com obtained, Operation Rescue President Troy Newman said MMA "has seriously hurt women and placed others at risk. They don’t get to decide when they reopen."
Newman said the "arrogant conduct" of the Metropolitan Medical Associates abortion center for scheduling appointments after failing a health inspection "shows us that the mill’s concern about making money outweighs any consideration for the well-being of the women."
Newman urged pro-life advocates to contact the New Jersey Department of Health to ask them why Metropolitan Medical Associates is allowed to schedule appointments even though they have been shut down for health violations.
After the state sent a nurse, an architect and two public health officials to the abortion center, Rudy told the Bergen Record newspaper and said the abortion business can reopen when the problems are corrected.
"What we’re looking for is for all the serious deficiencies to be abated and when they are, the order curtailing admissions will be lifted," he said.
"They told us their plan of correction was completed so we went out and inspected," he explained. But the problems hadn’t been fixed.
MMA, which does more abortions than most states see in a year and also performs the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure, had told people considering abortions last week that it would reopen on Tuesday.
The complaint came after Newark resident Rasheedah Dinkins, now 20 years old, became severely ill following the abortion and was transferred to Beth Israel Medical Center where she needed blood transfusions and had her uterus removed. She also suffered a stroke due to the serious blood loss and had one of her lungs collapse.
Dinkins said her mother and hospital officials told her she died en route to the medical facility from the abortion center but medical personnel were able to revive her.
"I was laying in my bed and I got the cold shakes," Dinkins, who filed a lawsuit against the abortion facility last week, said about her ordeal. "My body kept going numb. After that, I don’t remember anything."
Adam Slater, her attorney, talked with the Record about her current health situation.
"She is able to stand up and walk a little bit so she is progressing, but no one knows how it will go," he said.
"She’s very determined to focus on the positives. She’s seen her kids now and of course that helps. She was ecstatic to see them, and they were ecstatic to see her," Slater added.
In ordering the abortion business to close, the Department of Health and Senior Services did not release an exact list of the problems at MMA but said the abortion facility had poor infection control, and did not properly sterilize instruments and equipment.
Health inspectors said the violations at the abortion business pose "immediate and serious risk of harm to patients."
This is only the second time state health officials ordered one of the state’s 650 ambulatory health centers closed but the second time MMA has been shut down. It was temporarily closed after health and safety violations in 1993.
Dinkins isn’t the only woman who had an abortion at MMA and experienced problems.
Gloria Mozas of Cliffside Park is also suing the abortion center saying staff there misdiagnosed a tubal pregnancy and told her she miscarried the baby when she was actually pregnant with twins.
She told AP an abortion practitioner there did an abortion on her and told her he was just removing dead tissue. B ut a week later she had to undergo a medical procedure to remove the babies who had implanted into her fallopian tubes, causing her severe internal bleeding.
"I’ve been waiting for those doors to be locked for 3 1/2 years," she told AP.
ACTION: Express your opinion to the New Jersey Department of Health at [email protected].
