Pro-Life Campaign Started to Stop Late-Term Abortion Business Replacing Tiller
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 3, 2009
Wichita, KS (LifeNews.com) — Operation Rescue has started a new pro-life campaign to stop Nebraska-based abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart from opening up a new late-term abortion business. Carhart, who runs an abortion center in an Omaha suburb, has promised to take over for George Tiller, who was recently shot and killed.
Carhart told local media outlets he promised to either open up his own abortion center in Kansas to replace the one Tiller’s family shut down after his death or to teach his own employees how to help him do late-term abortions in Nebraska.
To combat that from happening, Operation Rescue told LifeNews.com on Monday that it has started the "Keep it Closed" campaign.
Joining with other pro-life groups, including Rescue the Heartland and Nebraskans United for Life, OR will sponsor a pro-life rally in Omaha later this month which will include protests at Carhart’s abortion center in Bellevue.
"We are dedicated to working through every legal means to stop LeRoy Carhart from following through on his threats to open a late-term abortion clinic to replace Tiller’s clinic," the group’s president, Troy Newman, told LifeNews.com.
Newman says he can’t imagine the residents of Nebraska or Kansas would support a new late-term abortion business since polls show such abortions are opposed by 93% of the American people.
"We have vast experience gained over years of legally and peacefully closing abortion clinics around the nation and will be putting that experience into practice in new and creative ways in the coming weeks and months," said Newman.
Newman’s group and others, such as Nebraska Right to Life, have focused their efforts on contacting Nebraska Attorney General Jon Buning and asking for him to enforce state laws that may prevent Carhart from doing late-term abortions in Kansas.
The pro-life advocates are also concerned that Carhart is putting women’s health at risk already at his abortion center.
They note how Carhart’s poorly-maintained abortion business presents a hazard to women that would only increase with the introduction of the more dangerous third-trimester abortions.
They also note that he was responsible the botched third-trimester abortion death of 19-year old Christin Gilbert, a mentally-disabled Texas girl who went to Tiller’s abortion center. Other late-term abortions Carhart did at Tiller’s center required emergency hospitalization after medical problems occurred.
Newman also says records on file with the Nebraska Department of Heath indicate that Carhart has falsified entries on patient charts, interrupted abortions due to fatigue or exhaustion, engaged in personal phone conversations in the middle of abortions, and failed to train his staff on infection control protocols.
He also failed to obtain a proper city permit to reopen his abortion business after it was damaged in an accidental fire.
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