Main Street becomes Backstreet: Botched abortion story far from “an isolated incident”

Main Street becomes Backstreet: Botched abortion story far from "an isolated incident"  

13th January 2012

Abortion providers and promoters often say it’s better to legalise abortion as women’s lives are endangered in backstreet abortions. Abortion, they say should be “safe, legal and rare.” The recent stream of news reports on women’s lives lost or harmed in ‘botched’ abortions gives the lie to these self-serving rationalisations.

Last month, the Irish Independent reported that a Marie Stopes’ doctor who botched an abortion on an Irish woman, nearly killing her, in London, was struck off. The doctor, Phanuel Dartey perforated the woman’s uterus and left parts of her unborn baby inside her at the Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing. 

Marie Stopes claims it was an ‘isolated incident’ and that they have rigorous procedures for vetting staff who work for them. But in 2001, when Dartey worked with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, he was involved in a case where a woman actually died during an abortion procedure, which our spokesperson Dr. Ruth Cullen described as "an inconvenient truth which undercut Marie Stopes' claims" in a recent article in the Irish Examiner newspaper.

Last week, Reuters news service carried another prominent report about legal actions pending against Dr Steven Chase Brigham, owner of abortion clinics in a number of US States. He and a doctor he employed are charged with murder for allegedly starting late-term abortions in New Jersey and arranging to have them completed in Maryland where restrictions are looser.  Reuters cited a New York State Department of Health report to the effect that Brigham had ‘a history of bungled late-term abortions’. His medical licence was suspended in 1994, after two late term abortions in which he exhibited ‘gross negligence’ – severely injuring the women.

Last week too, it was reported that an 18-year-old mother of two, Karen Devi Bahdal, died in Guyana following an abortion during which her uterus and bowels were perforated and she developed peritonitis.

It is a genuine scandal the way many in the mainstream media are refusing to report these horrific stories. It is inexcusable, for example, that RTÉ and The Irish Times completely ignored the story where an Irish woman almost died at a Marie Stopes clinic in London. Had the story reflected poorly on the pro-life side of the debate, there would have been wall-to-wall coverage. There is something deeply rotten and corrupt about this and it highlights once again how truly biased much of the media is in Ireland.

In spite of all this, slowly but surely these tragic stories are starting to make their way into the mainstream media, at least, internationally. It may take a little while longer to fully expose the horror of what has been going on but the truth is finally starting to catch up with the seedy abortion industry.