Pro-Life Groups: ‘Reckless’ Abortionist Opening New Clinic in D.C.

Even though abortionist Steven Brigham’s license to practice medicine has been revoked in all six states where he was once licensed, that isn’t preventing him from taking a large roll in a new abortion clinic set to open in Washington, D.C.

Several pro-life groups are expressing their outrage that the disgraced, dangerous, and reckless abortionist may be allowed to operate without a proper business license, leaving women unprotected and at risk. The following groups have joined together to call on D.C. officials to shut the clinic down and to enact laws that will better “protect women and their unborn children from abortion clinic abuses”:

• Americans United for Life
• Mercy Missions D.C.
• Christian Defense Coalition

The leaders of those groups held a news conference and demonstration Thursday afternoon outside the clinic, Capital Women’s Services, and recounted the rest of Brigham’s horror story for the public:

• A judge once ordered him to stop falsely advertising that his abortions were painless.
• He was caught illegally practicing medicine in Maryland, where he was never licensed.
• He has operated at least two illegal bi-state late-term abortion businesses, which were discovered when women were seriously injured.
• He was arrested in 2010 for the murder of late-term aborted babies in Cecil County, Md.
• He has been evicted for non-payment of rent from several offices, including one in Delaware where he failed to pay $37,000 in back rent.
• He has a history of fraudulent billing practices.
• He was ordered never again to own or operate an abortion business in Pennsylvania.

“Our nation’s capital is the Wild West of abortion clinic oversight, with some of America’s laxest abortion laws,” AUL President and CEO Catherine Glenn Foster said. “As AUL documents in our legal guide Defending Life, the District of Columbia fails to employ common-sense health and safety regulations to protect women from the harms inherent in abortion.

“The new, unlicensed clinic controlled by notorious abortionist Steven Brigham is the direct result of DC’s failed policy of relying on abortion clinics to police themselves. Brigham’s medical license has been revoked in state after state, and he has a long history of botched abortions and cutting corners; in fact, just last year the State of Virginia served Brigham’s Fairfax clinic with a 52-page deficiency report and indefinitely suspended its license, calling the facility a ‘substantial threat.’

“Brigham is not alone. AUL’s report Unsafe exposes the horrific conditions in abortion clinics across the country and demonstrates that we can’t trust the abortion industry to voluntarily follow care or health and safety protocols. But the lack of abortion regulation or oversight here in our nation’s capital puts women right in the crosshairs of abortion industry abuses. Women deserve better.

“On behalf of all the women who live and work in D.C., I call upon D.C. officials to engage in AUL’s Women’s Protection Project to ensure that D.C. women are supported with the strongest legal protections and protected from modern-day back-alley abortions in unsanitary and unsafe clinics.”

Christian Defense Coalition Director Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, pastor of Church on the Hill, said that everyone should be outraged that Brigham would be allowed to operate or be involved in any kind of medical practice in D.C. He called upon city leaders to “protect women in our nation’s capital and shut down this dangerous clinic, as well as to enact clinic laws to ensure that women are not treated like a commodity and their health is not put at risk.” {eoa}