Activists plan an aggressive challenge

Germantown, MD – Operation Rescue has confirmed that late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart is not in fact opening a new clinic in Maryland as he announced, but is instead joining up with an existing abortion business in Germantown in order to evade a new Nebraska law that prohibits abortions past 20 weeks.

“This is not an expansion of abortion, but a relocation of Carhart’s failing late-term abortion business in a desperate attempt to avoid financial ruin,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

Running from the law that halted his late-term abortion business, Carhart has made an opportunistic move to capture a portion of the abortion market vacated by the notorious abortionist Steven Chase Brigham, whose Maryland abortion clinics recently closed after it was discovered that he was operating a secret illegal late-term abortion racket in Maryland.

Like Brigham, Carhart has no hospital privileges in any state, including Maryland where he intends to commit the risky late second and third trimester abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services, located at 13233 Executive Park Terrace.

GRHS is an affiliate of the National Abortion Federation, a group of abortion mills that has an abysmal record of filthy clinics and dangerous abortionists. Convicted rapist Brian Finkel, who is currently serving 34 years in an Arizona prison for raping dozens of his abortion patients, was a proud NAF member. (View photos of a filthy NAF abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas, which was bought and closed by Operation Rescue.)

“Being an NAF affiliate only increases our belief that conditions at the Germantown clinic are such that the lives and health of women seeking Carhart’s late-term abortion services would be placed at even greater risk than is usual for late-term abortions which are typically prone to complication,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.

Carhart plans to begin late-term abortions at GRHS on December 6, 2010. Operation Rescue is working with Maryland and Washington, D.C. pro-life groups to employ peaceful, legal means to halt Carhart’s plans to do late-term abortions in Germantown.

There is no record that Haskell’s Sharonville mill is licensed by the State as required by law

Sharonville, Ohio – One group of Ohio pediatricians are very upset with their new neighbor. Late-term abortionist Martin Haskell has closed his Cincinnati, Ohio, abortion clinic and reopened in the community of Sharonville, about twelve miles to the north – right next to Liberty Sharonville Pediatrics. In fact, parents will now have to enter a common driveway and pass by Haskell’s surgical abortion mill in order to get the Pediatrician’s office.

Dr. Steve Brinn, M.D., was so upset that he wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in the Cincinnati Inquirer on Saturday, November 27, 2010, expressing his opposition to the abortion business.

“Imagine our shock and disbelief, when we learned that an abortion clinic was opening in the building 50-feet from our front door. Why would a clinic performing abortions be so insensitive to a group practice treating children for 31 years?” wrote Dr. Brinn.

He continued, “To have a group of OB/GYN doctors terminating fetuses just outside our door, to force our mothers and their babies drive through a common driveway, driving by the front of an abortion clinic, in order to park in our lot to have their babies cared for is an atrocity. We are here to prevent infant diseases, and they are here to end infant lives. We may not have the legal right to get them to move but we will do anything in our power to vocalize our personal disgust with their mission.”

Haskell is perhaps best known for his claim, however false, that he invented the gruesome and now illegal Partial Birth Abortion procedure. Today, a modified version of that procedure that exploits a loophole in the PBA ban is in wide use by Haskell and other late-term abortionists.

Haskell closed his long-time Cincinnati location near the University of Ohio to open up in the industrial community of Sharonville. Ironically, it was Haskell’s Dayton location that ran afoul of the law, refusing to comply with a state law that required abortion clinics to be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers and have a transfer agreement with a local hospital. Haskell’s Dayton mill has no such transfer agreement, and after years of legal wrangling, the State capitulated, granting Haskell a “variance” that allows him to operate without meeting the legal requirements that other clinics must meet.

Haskell’s newest location in Sharonville is not listed as a licensed ambulatory surgical center on the Ohio Department of Health website, even though a receptionist told one of Operation Rescue’s undercover investigators that the Sharonville clinic is a surgical center.

Public opposition to Haskell’s late-term mill is far from an isolated incident. Last week, public opposition led Council Bluffs, Iowa, to ban the selling of city-owned property to abortion businesses after abortionist Leroy Carhart threatened to open a late-term abortion mill there. Pro-lifers also successfully blocked Carhart from opening an abortion clinic in Kansas.

“It is shameful that Ohio has placed the profit interests of abortionists ahead of the health and safety of women. We applaud Dr. Brinn’s brave stand in defense of children and encourage him to pursue all legal avenues to run Haskell’s abortion business out of town,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “With prayer and public support, we know these efforts can be successful.”

Learn More: Read Operation Rescue’s 3-Part Exposé on Haskell

Dear Friends of Life,

I’d like to share with you a Thanksgiving story that I pray will warm your heart as it has mine.

Many years ago, sidewalk counselors met a young couple who were about to enter a San Diego area abortion clinic. There were already two car seats in the back seat of the couple’s small sedan, and there just wasn’t room for another. Besides, the couple said, they wanted to be able to give their two children all the best things in life. Another child just wasn’t in the plan or the budget.

After an extended discussion, the couple warmed to the pleadings of the sidewalk counselors and left the clinic without having the abortion.

The sidewalk counselors befriended the couple. Soon Mom and Dad prayed to receive Christ as their Savior and began regularly attending church.

A few months later, a baby girl (we will call her “Abby”) was born. In spite of their financial fears that drove them to the abortion clinic months before, God supplied all their needs and more.

Later, there would be another little boy born to this family, then another girl. Eventually this couple would be the proud parents of nine precious children, including one set of twins!

Mom once confided that she believes that she may never have accepted Christ if she had gone through with the abortion, and her marriage may not have survived. The sidewalk counselors did more than save a baby. They were used by God to save an entire family. And that’s not all!

Little “Abby” grew into a beautiful young woman and married. Just last week I saw a posting by Mom on Facebook. She was accompanying “Abby” and her husband to the hospital where “Abby” gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.

It meant so much to me to see the newborn picture of this precious “second blessing,” a child whose life never would have been possible without the loving intervention of Christians who cared enough to reach out to abortion-bound women so many years ago and save the life of this new baby’s mother while she was yet in the womb.

Our ministry reverberates down through the years, touching now a second generation. Talk about a Thanksgiving blessing!

As we pause from our busy lives to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, we are particularly thankful to God that He has privileged us with this ministry. We work every day in hopeful confidence that one day families like this will be safe from an abortion industry that unmercifully preys on their fears. In the past year, over twenty abortion mills have closed, many as a direct result of the work of Operation Rescue.

Closing clinics, saving lives, and working toward the day when abortion is a simply a tragic footnote in our nation’s history. That is what Operation Rescue was all about in the early 1990s, it is what we are about today, and it is what we will continue to be about until every life is protected by law.

If you appreciate the work we do, please consider making a special Thanksgiving gift to Operation Rescue. (Click here to donate online.) Your gift will ensure that there will be more “Abby”s blessing the world with their own precious children years into the future.

We are grateful for all of you who make our work possible through your sacrificial giving.

May God bless you abundantly!

For the babies,

Troy Newman
President, Operation Rescue