New Jersey Pro-Life Group Wants Abortion Facility Probe Expanded 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 15, 2007
Trenton, NJ (LifeNews.com) — A pro-life group in New Jersey wants state officials to expand a probe into the health and safety problems they uncovered at the Metropolitan Medical Clinic in Englewood. State health officials closed the abortion business last month after it botched a woman’s abortion and nearly killed her in the process.
The abortion center failed a followup inspection last week and authorities released information to a local newspaper yesterday on the shoddy conditions.
New Jersey Right to Life called on Governor Corzine and state health officials to expand the investigation by reaching out to women who had abortions at Metropolitan, which does 10,000 annually. The group says other women may have been injured by abortions there than have stepped forward already.
Marie Tasy, the group’s director, says stepping up the probe is important because the abortion facility gets state funds.
"Many of the women who frequent this clinic are Medicaid patients, which means Metropolitan Medical Clinic is receiving a large percentage of state money which comes from taxpayer dollars," she said in a statement emailed to LifeNews.com.
Tasy also said that contact women who had abortions at the Englewood center is important because they may have become infected because of the unsterilized equipment state investigators found.
"The [state] has an obligation to reach out to women who have gone to this clinic to find out whether any of them have experienced any complications or if any may have developed a sexually transmitted disease through the use of unsterilized instruments," Tasy said.
Health inspectors found dirt and debris throughout the abortion facility, open packages of items that were supposed to remain sterilized before their use, and other problems.
"Two plastic open top bins of sterile forceps, speculum and gauze prep kits are stored directly on the carpeted floor next to the copier in the main office," the report said.
Officials found forceps encrusted in "brownish blood-like residues" and rusty crochet hooks used in abortions. They also discovered dark red "dirt and debris" under an exam table that was a quarter-inch thick.
She called on health officials to implement and advertise a 1-800 number for women to use who had problems at the abortion business.
Metropolitan Medical Associates was originally closed when a botched abortion recently put a woman into a month-long coma.
The state said MMA failed to notify it "of an event occurring within the facility that jeopardized the health and safety of a patient" — referring to Newark resident Rasheedah Dinkins.
She 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."
Other problems at the abortion center include a failure to institute an infection control plan and a staffer appointed to oversee infection control did not know about the expected responsibilities and did not have appropriate training.
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.
