The state of Florida recently issued an emergency order to suspend operations at a Pensacola abortion clinic after a pro-life watchdog group uncovered three incidents in the last nine months in which patients had to be hospitalized with serious injuries.
Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) issued an order on Friday closing American Family Planning until an administrative hearing can be held.
The order came after Reprotection, a nonprofit dedicated to catching abortion providers breaking laws and using local authorities to bring them to justice, began investigating the clinic.
In all three cases, the abortionist and clinic staff failed to report patient hospitalizations within the ten days required, according to the order. They also reportedly failed to keep a record of the patients’ vital signs during the procedures.
One patient had an abortion in August 2021 and later “required the repair of uterine perforation, a colon resection, a colostomy, a sigmoidectomy, and a cystoscopy.” The clinic failed to report the complications in accordance with the law.
In March, a patient received an abortion at 20 weeks pregnant and began bleeding during the procedure to open the cervix.
When the woman was finally transferred to the ER, she had no pulse and had lost an unknown amount of blood, according to the order. There were “pools of blood” at the abortion clinic when emergency personnel arrived.
Two big holes were found on the left and right walls of the uterus plus cervical lacerations, according to the order. Doctors were unable to save any of the patient’s reproductive organs, and she underwent a total hysterectomy.
Earlier this month, another patient reportedly went to the clinic for an abortion at 19 weeks pregnant and was given drugs upon arrival and told to wait in her car with her husband, defying regulations that require the clinic to monitor a patient’s vital signs in an exam room.
The abortion was not completed due to “possible uterine rupture and cervical lacerations,” the order says.
It adds that she lost a significant amount of blood, though the specific amount is unknown because the writing on her chart is illegible.
The clinic instructed her husband to drive to a hospital an hour away in Mobile, Ala., rather than using a hospital in Pensacola as the husband advocated and as required under the clinic’s license.
Upon arriving at the hospital, she had “undetectable blood pressure” and “required resuscitation and mass transfusion,” the order says.
The abortionist failed to communicate with hospital physicians about the three patients’ conditions and what procedures had been done as required under the clinic’s license.
The abortionist “candidly” told AHCA officials that he is “unfamiliar” with the clinic’s policies and procedures and that he relies on the clinic’s office manager, who holds no medical or clinical license, for direction.
The order says the three incidents are “not isolated events” and that the clinic’s failure to comply with the law “places patient health, safety, and welfare at immediate risk.”
The CEO of Reprotection, Missy Martinez-Stone, said in a statement that her nonprofit had investigated the clinic for two years before the order was issued and found that the standard of care there was “nonexistent.”
“We have utilized every avenue possible to work to protect the health and safety of women from dangerous abortion clinics like this one,” Martinez-Stone said. “While we don’t know why AHCA did not shut them down earlier, we are grateful the state of Florida has taken decisive action to protect women from dangerous abortion clinics who seek profit over safety. ”