An inquest into the death of an Irish woman just hours after having an abortion at a Marie Stopes facility continued this week with new evidence of the abortion staff’s alleged negligence.
The woman, Aisha Chithira, 31, of Ireland, died of massive internal bleeding in 2012, several hours after aborting her unborn baby at a Marie Stopes abortion facility in Ealing, west London.
Two years ago, the abortionist, Adedayo Adedeji, and two nurses Gemma Pullen and Margaret Miller faced manslaughter charges in Chithira’s death, but the charges later were dropped. Prosecutors did not explain why.
This week, during a new coroner’s court inquest into the case, West London Coroner Dr. Sean Cummings said there were “repeated failures” involving Chithira’s care, according to the Daily Record.
Cummings also said the staff had an “element of complacency” about the woman’s care.
Here’s more from the report:
West London Coroner’s Court heard Ms Chithira died in January 2012 following a late-stage abortion after being discharged from the west London clinic despite vomiting and feeling dizzy, and displaying symptoms that “were not appreciated as potentially sinister”.
Ms Chithira suffered a tear to her uterus during the “blind” procedure performed under anaesthetic, as a surgeon struggled to remove a 22-week-old foetus from a womb that had not fully dilated.
However, Cummings would not commit to charges of neglect “because he was not satisfied there had been a gross failure,” according to the report. He noted that Chithira had uterine fibroids that made the abortion more difficult.
“Her death resulted from the manifestation of a recognized complication of the procedure resulting in sometimes subtle and atypical symptoms and signs which were not appreciated as potentially sinister at the time,” Cummings said. “There were repeated failures of recording of observations by different clinicians involved in her care.”
Previous reports from the inquest indicated the nurses may have pressured Chithira to leave, even though she was vomiting and swaying when she walked out of the abortion facility.
Pullen, one of the nurses who stayed late to look after Chithira, said she was the last patient in the building and did not leave until about 8:30 p.m. However, Pullen claimed Chithira was walking normally when she got into the taxi, and they did not pressure her to leave.
The nurse admitted Chithira had been hyperventilating and complaining about being hot.
Later that night, Chithira died from catastrophic internal bleeding from a tear in her uterus, according to the report.
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The abortionist, though admitting Chithira’s late-term abortion was difficult, denied that the tear was his fault.
Interestingly, the same year that charges against the abortionist and nurses were dropped, the British government temporarily shut down some of the Marie Stopes’ operations after inspections revealed numerous health and safety violations. The abortion chain later was allowed to resume all abortions after promises to fix the problems.
However, in 2017, the British Care Quality Commission found that Marie Stopes facilities had botched nearly 400 abortions in a two-month period. Then, it found evidence that Marie Stopes was pressuring women to have abortions by incentivizing staff with bonuses.
One of its Australia facilities also is facing a lawsuit after a woman said she almost died there from an abortion. The woman claims a Marie Stopes abortionist failed to recognize that she had an ectopic pregnancy before the abortion.
Despite all this, Marie Stopes continues to function as one of the largest abortion chains in the world, and receives British tax dollars to support its work.
Most recently, the very abortion facility where Chithira died lobbied for and received a 100-meter (328 foot) buffer zone to prevent pro-lifers from reaching out to women outside. Marie Stopes claims the buffer zone is important to protect women’s “safety.”
Pro-life advocates contend the real reason for the buffer zone is because Marie Stopes is losing abortion business.
