Northwest Florida’s only abortion clinic has permanently shuttered, months after a pro-life watchdog group uncovered three incidents in which patients had to be hospitalized with serious injuries over a nine month span.

The Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration (ACHA) issued an emergency order to suspend American Family Planning’s license in May after Reprotection, a nonprofit dedicated to catching abortion providers breaking laws and using local authorities to bring them to justice, revealed its findings.

The clinic appealed the closure and a hearing was set for this month. However, the Pensacola clinic’s attorney told the judge that a settlement had been reached between the clinic and ACHA, the Pensacola News Journal reported on Thursday. The case was dismissed on January 6.

The clinic’s attorney, Julie Gallagher, reportedly told the outlet that American Family Planning had forfeited its license and will not reopen.

“The standard of care at the American Family Planning Abortion Clinic was non-existent and we are elated the clinic has shut down before more women are seriously harmed,” Reprotection CEO Missy Martinez-Stone said in a statement.

In all three cases, the abortionist and clinic staff failed to report patient hospitalizations within the ten days required, according to the ACHA’s order in May. 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 2022, 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.

In May 2022, 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.”

In July, the state department of health issued a report that said the clinic’s head abortionist, Christopher Saputa, is not a trained gynecological surgeon.

“An independent medical expert reviewed Dr. Saputa’s curriculum vitae and determined that Dr. Saputa does not have the education, training, or experience to be competent to perform gynecological surgeries or procedures and that his continued performance of these surgeries is a public safety hazard,” the report said. Saputa’s license was suspended the next month.

The Pensacola Abortion Rights Taskforce, which was created last year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, is looking to bring abortion providers to the area now that American Family Planning has closed.

“Our efforts to get another clinic are underway,” Robin Blyn, a member of the taskforce, told the Pensacola News Journal. “We are looking at another provider providing a clinic or a mobile clinic if nothing else. So we are definitely focused on that because right now, people are in an untenable position.”