UPDATE: After a series of complex series of parliamentary maneuvers today, another attempt to override the veto on the late-term abortion reporting bill, HB 2115, is currently scheduled to take place on Monday, May 3, 2010. Additional corrections below. Read the corrected Topeka Capital-Journal story.

Topeka, KS – The Kansas House of Representatives today failed in a bid to override Gov. Mark Parkinson’s veto of HB 2115, which would have provided new reporting standards for late-term abortions. The preliminary vote of 82-40 fell just two votes shy of the 84 votes needed to override.

Operation Rescue President Troy Newman issued the following statement in response:

This bill was falsely portrayed as a law that would interfere with a woman’s abortion decision. In truth, this law had nothing to do with women and everything to do with insuring that abortionists are complying with already established law. If the laws cannot be enforced, they are worthless.

Parkinson’s veto was a vote for illegal late-term abortions. Each of the 40 votes that supported the veto was a vote for illegal late-term abortions.

With their votes, Parkinson and his 40 cohorts in the House have defied the will of the majority of the people who supported this common-sense law. They have now given tacit approval for criminal acts and anarchy, and have issued an open invitation to unscrupulous abortionists across the nation to come to Kansas where abortion laws will not be enforced. By doing so, they have endangered the lives of women and the viable babies our laws were enacted to protect.

We will do all we can to make sure the people of Kansas remember this shameful vote the next time these people appear on the ballot.

This is part three of a five part series “Abortion Capital” delving into the business of lucrative late-term abortions in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Read Abortion Capital, Pt. 1: The Wild, Wild West

Read Abortion Capital, Pt. 2: “Am I Killing? Yes, I am. I know that”

Albuquerque, NM – In March, it was announced that Curtis Boyd, an elderly Texas abortionist, was providing dangerous abortions throughout the latest stages of pregnancy at his Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That seemed the perfect place for Boyd to establish himself as the late-term abortion “go-to” man in the wake of the death of George Tiller, who had dominated the lucrative late-term abortion market. The state was liberal and had few laws that would hinder his newly expanded business. Late-term abortions are long, complex procedures fraught with risks. If Boyd was going to do large numbers of them, he would need help.

In September, 2009, Boyd hired two abortionists with experience in late-term abortions, Shelley Sella and Susan Robinson. Both had been employed by Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, prior to the closure of his clinic. There, at what had been the world’s largest late-term abortion clinic, they were responsible for well over half of all abortions done in the U.S. after 24 weeks.

Troubled Career

Shelley Sella, 52, was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel. She received her education at the liberal University of Wisconsin in Madison, and at the Sackler School of Medicine in Ramat Aviv, Israel. She received her original medical license in 1988.

Sella’s first real employment began at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, during which time she also moonlighted at a large community clinic catering to the Hispanic population.

Sella had a troubled career with Kaiser. In December, 1996, Sella was listed as the attending physician during second trimester botched abortion. Her patient, a 28-year old woman who was 16 weeks pregnant, suffered a perforated uterus and other complications as a result of the abortion. A civil suit was filed and later settled out of court for $25,000.

In October, 2000, Sella again found herself in civil court. She was accused of negligent management of a labor and delivery when a patient’s uterus spontaneously ruptured, resulting in a dead baby. Kaiser settled out of court for $500,000.

One month after that lawsuit was filed, Sella left Kaiser under a cloud and hired on as an abortionist at Planned Parenthood of Shasta Diablo, in Concord, California, where she continues to work. Since then, Sella has become a “circuit riding” abortionist that currently splits her time between Planned Parenthood, Pregnancy Consultation Center in Sacramento, and Boyd’s Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Radical Leftist Ideology

Sella has been a financial contributor to a radical California pro-abortion group called ACCESS, Women’s Health Rights Coalition. This group’s stated goals are to prevent women from patronizing pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and insure greater access to abortion services beyond 20 weeks, or the fifth month of pregnancy and beyond.

Sella is a lesbian who was married to her female lover, Julie Litwin, in a civil marriage service in San Francisco, CA, on Valentine’s Day, 2004, in the presence of Litwin’s son, who was seven years old at the time. The Sella-Litwin “marriage” was one of dozens of highly-publicized gay civil ceremonies performed in San Francisco in early 2004. Courts later ruled that those “marriages” would not be recognized by the State.

Ironically, Litwin is a certified midwife, a profession that is ironically antithetical to Sella’s abortion career.

Sella gained experience in late-term abortions during her eight years of employment at Women’s Health Care Services, (WHCS), in Wichita. There, Sella continued to be troubled with botched abortions and other allegations.

Michelle Armesto-Berge

In September, 2007, a former Sella abortion patient came forward and testified before a joint interim legislative committee about her abortion experience. The woman, Michelle Armesto-Berge, told the committee about her hair-raising experience during a coerced second-trimester abortion done by Sella in May, 2003. Armesto-Berge was 18-years old and in her 25th week of pregnancy when her mother coerced her into an abortion that she did not want. Medical records revealed that an injection that was meant to stop her baby’s heart had been botched by Sella and had to be re-administered, causing Armesto-Berge additional mental anguish.

A complaint was filed by Operation Rescue President Troy Newman against Sella and her employer, George Tiller in October, 2007, on behalf of Armesto-Berge. The complaint alleged that Sella began the abortion process on Armesto-Berge before consent was obtained. Because Armesto-Berge was late and missed the appointment with the second physician that was required to confirm the medical necessity of all abortions on viable babies after 22 weeks gestation, the complaint alleges that Sella misrepresented the 25-week old baby as being “non-viable.”

While Sella’s Kansas medical license shows “no derogatory information on file,” Sella told the New Mexico Medical Board in her license application that the Kansas Disciplinary Panel “found that a handwritten note for surgical procedures was not legible and insufficient.” The Panel asked that Sella complete a record keeping course and start dictating operative procedures. She complied with the recommendations and the case was quietly closed.

35 Week Baby Murder?

But the most shocking allegation against Sella came from a former Tiller employee who came forward in April, 2008, and told Operation Rescue that a baby at 35 weeks gestation was born alive and intentionally stabbed to death by Sella.

Tina David was a licensed practical nurse who often assisted with the late-term abortions. David contacted Troy Newman and told him that she wanted to speak with him about her time at WHCS. David was interviewed by Newman and Cheryl Sullenger. (Listen to the audio clip.) The following is a partial transcript of that conversation:

DAVID: Well, my job, like I said, was hold the leg …
SULLENGER: Uh-huh.
DAVID: And count the parts, if it was in pieces.
SULLENGER: Right.
NEWMAN: Right.
DAVID: And this was…hmmm, maybe 35 weeks?
NEWMAN: Um-hum.
SULLENGER: That’s pretty big.
DAVID: Yeah. Yeah. It was – It was a big baby.
SULLENGER: Uh-huh.
DAVID: And…baby came out, and it was moving. I don’t know if it was alive or if it was
nerves…I don’t – I have no clue.
SULLENGER: Um-hum.
DAVID: Then Dr. Sella looked up right away at me and took a utensil and stabbed it – right
here – [indicating the left rib section] and twisted, and then it didn’t move anymore.
NEWMAN: Oh, my goodness!
DAVID: Yeah, and I don’t remember—because usually we did the injection.

David could not explain why the baby was born alive since abortions that late in the pregnancy usually begin with a fatal injection into the baby’s heart. However, the Armesto-Berge case showed that sometimes the first injection is not always successful.

David told Newman that after her interview with Operation Rescue she spoke with some of her former associates at WHCS. Soon after, she stopped returning Newman’s calls.

“Ms. David gave us a very specific eye-witness account about the incident,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “At 35 weeks, there is no doubt about viability. This is murder in anybody’s book.”

Newman reported the incident to the police, who opened a murder investigation against Sella. A complaint was filed with the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts asking for the suspension of Sella’s medical license and the immediate closure of WHCS.

Unfortunately, under questioning by police, Tina David recanted her story. She would only say that she “didn’t want to get involved.”

“We still believe that the original story that Tina David told us was true based on the fact that we were able to confirm the veracity of nearly everything else she told us. Unfortunately, without Tina, we could never prove it. WHCS had an incinerator onsite where the remains of the baby were cremated. The only physical evidence that may have convicted Sella of murder literally went up in smoke,” said Newman.

If David had stuck to her story, it may have saved another abortion patient from the worst experience of her life.

Patient S.

Twenty-three year old Patient S. had been under routine obstetrical care when she decided to abort her baby due to involvement in an abusive relationship. According to her last menstrual period and ultrasounds that she had received, she was 23 weeks pregnant at the time of her abortion, which she began on Tuesday, September 23, 2008. (Read her full story.)

However, she believed that WHCS misdiagnosed her as being only 19 weeks – a difference of an entire month of gestation. According to Kansas law, at 22 weeks, a second physician must concur that the abortion is medically necessary. Patient S. never saw a second physician.

Sella began the abortion on Patient. S. by giving her an injection digoxin into her abdomen, which is meant to stop the baby’s heart. Apparently something went wrong with the injection, because Patient S. began feeling sick. She was sent home for the day.

On Thursday, while shaky, sick, and running a fever of 103.7°, she returned to WHCS. According to Patient S., George Tiller, not Sella, completed the abortion, during which Patient S. suffered an asthma attack, respiratory distress, and cardiac arrest. She was revived and hospitalized. She was later treated for a painful yeast infection on her face that another doctor said came from the use of a dirty oxygen mask during her abortion. Patient S.’s mother was present during the abortion and told pro-lifers that she believed that the baby was still alive at the time of the abortion delivery process. If true, that would have made the abortion illegal under the Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

A complaint was filed with the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which found that Sella did not violate the “standard of care” for her part in Patient S.’s ordeal. With Tiller’s death, plans to file a civil suit have been dropped.

“We have three reported incidents where Sella allegedly botched a critical part of the late-term abortion process, leading to major complications each time, yet she has managed to escape responsibility for this,” said Newman.

“It is important for the public to know the history here so women can be warned and protected, and so that watchdog groups and authorities can be vigilant. It’s only a matter of time before Sella is involved in abortion complications in New Mexico similar to what we have already seen – or worse. It’s not a case of ‘if, but ‘when.’”

Coming soon:

This is part two of the five part series “Abortion Capital” delving into the business of lucrative late-term abortions in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Click to read Abortion Capital, Part 1: The Wild, Wild West

Albuquerque, NM – At age 73, Curtis Boyd is old enough to know better. Having committed thousands of illegal abortions in the days prior to Roe v. Wade, Boyd has, in recent months, positioned himself as the new late-term abortion kingpin in the wake of the murder of George R. Tiller last year.

Boyd is a mousy, white-haired wisp of a man who was born in Texas and raised in a Christian home. Early in his life he felt the call to preach, and became an ordained Baptist minister. But fundamental Christian morals did not permanently stick with Boyd. In the sixties he decided to expand his horizons. He left the Church and began a back-alley abortion business in Athens, Texas. Eventually the truth came out about Boyd’s back-alley enterprise to the shock of the small rural community. He was forced out of Athens and moved to Dallas where he continued to ply his illegal abortion trade.

Women came to him in droves, according to Boyd’s account. He knew it was possible that he could be arrested and jailed, but he thought he knew better than the law.

I thought the law needed to be changed, the service needed to be provided, and I was going to do it understanding the risk that I was taking, which may have included going to prison. That’s the way a social activist needs to think. Deciding to disobey a law is not something you take lightly.

In those days, the big fear was someone would either file charges against me or I would have some major complication or patient death. I knew that every patient I saw had the potential to not only take my medical license, but to put me in prison.

People thought I was dealing drugs because there were so many of these young people coming from college and university campuses…They knew something was going on, because all these people were coming and many of them had out-of-county license tags. Was I supplying them with some sort of drugs? Fewer suspected that the people were coming for abortions.

There were never any charges filed because I was not dealing drugs. And fortunately no woman ever told why she was coming to see me or filed any complaint with the police. But they did keep me under surveillance. I’d see them parked down the street. They’d just sit there watching.

In 1973, when Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion, Boyd was relieved. His days of looking over his shoulder were over. Now, he could openly do abortions, and he was proud to do so. He established the first abortion clinic in Texas, and later expanded his business to Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Experimental abortions

Boyd was a founding member of the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion clinics that has become infamous for having more than their fair share of filthy conditions, botched abortions, abortion deaths, and other violations.

He is known for his invention of new second-trimester abortion techniques. He experimented on his patients trying to develop pain management protocols and discover ways to reduce the risks of abortion surgeries.

“I shudder to think of what the women had to endure that suffered through Boyd’s ghoulish ‘pain management’ experimentation or his development of new surgical techniques,” said Newman. “We wouldn’t experiment like that on animals.”

Religious Pretenses Cover “Works of Darkness”

To this day, Boyd attempts to couch his justification for decades in the abortion business with religious pretenses. But Boyd, in Christian terms, is apostate having fallen away from the truth of the Bible to embrace the unorthodox teachings of the Unitarian Universalist Church that are considered heretical by the standards of most Christian denominations.

Boyd worked with the Clergy Consultation for Problem Pregnancies, and later with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice to give women seeking abortions the false sense that God somehow approves of their decisions to take the lives of their innocent babies.

“It is an interesting thing that so many abortionists try to justify their actions in religious terms,” said Newman. “Somehow they need to think God approves of them and what they are doing. Deluding themselves is probably the only way they are able to sleep at night. Deep down in their hearts, unless they are completely reprobate, they have to know that what they are doing is wrong. Boyd admits as much.”

Boyd raised eyebrows recently when he stated during an interview that he understands that he is killing.

“Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that.”

He says he prays for his abortion victims.

“I’ll ask that the spirit of this pregnancy returns to God with love and with understanding.”

“I wish Boyd had actually studied the Bible a little closer when he was a Baptist, because clearly God says that the shed blood of the innocent cries out to God for vengeance that belongs to God alone. In fact, according to Proverbs chapter six, the hands that shed innocent blood are among six things that God says He hates. The Bible also teaches that we should have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness, but should rather expose them. I can’t think of anything that qualifies better as an ‘unfruitful work of darkness’ than taking the life of an innocent baby in the womb,” said Newman.

“Boyd may find himself in for a rude awakening when he finally faces his Maker and is required to give an account for his life.”

Vanessa Preston

For years Boyd operated what was known as the “Fairmont Center” in Dallas, which was the site of numerous abortion protests as well as abortion tragedies.

On January 22, 1980, Vanessa Preston arrived at Boyd’s Fairmont mill for a second-trimester abortion. According to the RealChoice blog, which documents cases of abortion abuse, Preston was the wife of a local minister who was accompanied to the abortion clinic by her husband and young son. During the Dilation and Extraction abortion, Vanessa began to seize and suffered cardiac arrest.

Boyd and his staff called for an ambulance and began CPR, resuscitating Vanessa only to have her slip into cardiac arrest again before the ambulance could arrive. They again applied CPR until emergency crews arrived and stabilized her for transport to the hospital.

RealChoice gives the following account:

About 40 minutes into exploratory surgery, trying to address a retained placenta and multiple vaginal punctures, Vanessa again went into cardiac arrest. She was given a total of 24 units of blood to try to keep her circulation intact despite her massive, unstoppable blood loss. For an hour and a half, hospital staff tried in vain to resuscitate Vanessa before finally pronouncing her dead.

An autopsy revealed that she had developed amniotic fluid embolism (AFE – amniotic fluid in the mother’s bloodstream) and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC – a blood clotting disorder) during the abortion. This is what caused her cardiac arrest. When Boyd’s staff resuscitated Vanessa, they caused a small laceration of her liver. This is typical in even properly performed CPR, and is not usually life-threatening. However, because of the DIC, Vanessa’s blood couldn’t clot, and she bled to death from the liver laceration. Since second-trimester evacuation abortions were still new (read “experimental”) at the time, Boyd and his staff didn’t realize that there was a risk of DIC.

Now days, Texas law requires that abortions done after 16 weeks gestation must be done in a hospital or ambulatory surgical center. When he decided to expand his abortion services to the maximum legal limit in Texas, Boyd was forced to close his Fairmont mill because that location could not meet the minimum safety requirements. In 2009, he reopened his Dallas clinic at a new location as Southwest Women’s Surgical Center and expanded his gestational limit to 24 weeks.

However, that was not late enough. Tiller had been providing abortions through the full nine months of pregnancy. If he was to fill in the gap in the late-term abortion business left by the closure of Tiller’s Wichita, Kansas abortion mill, then he would have to do that elsewhere. With few laws regulating abortion, New Mexico seemed the perfect place.

The later the gestational age of the pre-born baby at the time of the abortion, the greater the abortion risks. It is only a matter of time before serious late-term abortion complications or even maternal deaths, such as in the case of Vanessa Preston, begin to occur at Boyd’s new late-term abortion clinics.

Abortion is a Family Affair

Boyd shares his abortion practice with his second wife, Glenna Halvorson-Boyd. Glenna is the past president of the National Abortion Federation, of which her husband is a founding member and where the couple still wields considerable influence. Today, Glenna works in Boyd’s abortion clinics as a psychologist.

The Boyd’s are abortion ideologues who are politically involved, especially in New Mexico where their money has gone to insure that abortions remain unencumbered by restrictions that have caused legal headaches – and sometimes criminal charges – for other abortionists around the nation. Together, the couple has dumped at least $24,600 into New Mexico politics in the past few years. The Boyd’s also have an extensive history of contributing to pro-abortion political campaigns in Texas.

“Maybe money can’t buy love, but it can buy political cover and favors,” said Newman. “We want the people to know the truth about Boyd and his sordid abortion business so they can hold their elected officials accountable to enforce the laws that are on the books, and enact further protections for women and their pre-born babies. Abortionists thrive in secrecy, but knowledge is power for those who protect life.”

Coming Soon: