[The following is an article that appeared on February 8, 2008, in the Los Angeles Times. It reveals horrific new details concerning a Southern California abortion clinic chain owned by Bertha Bugarin that was raided by a special task force of the Los Angeles Police Department last summer. Bugarin was charged with practicing medicine without a license. Read Operation Rescue's earlier report published on January 28, 2008.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-abortion8feb08,0,3847304,full.story
Abortion clinics operator is charged
Bertha Bugarin, 48, allegedly ran medical facilities where improper procedures were performed. She has pleaded not guilty.
By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 8, 2008
By the time paramedics arrived, the patient was lying in a pool of her own blood, her pulse racing and her blood pressure dangerously low.
The woman, identified only as Angela P. in records of the Medical Board of California, had gone to the Clinica Medica Para la Mujer de Hoy in Santa Ana in the summer of 2004 for an abortion.
Dr. Phillip Rand, then in his early 80s, performed a vaginal suction procedure, despite having determined that Angela was about 20 weeks pregnant, well into her second trimester. She was given no anesthesia or painkillers.
According to the National Abortion Federation, vacuum aspiration procedures are normally performed on women who are up to 14 weeks pregnant. After 14 weeks, a more complicated procedure, known as dilation and evacuation, is standard.
“A suction abortion is not appropriate at 20 weeks,” said Vicki Saporta, president of the federation.
Angela P.’s experience was cited in a 2004 medical board accusation against Rand as “barbaric” and a “severe departure” from a reasonable standard of care. Rand surrendered his license in 2005.
Rand was one of at least six doctors with histories of malpractice complaints, addiction or medical board actions who were employed by a chain of Southern California abortion clinics, according to court and medical board records.
Now Bertha Bugarin, 48, who authorities say manages the clinics, has been charged with practicing medicine without a license on five patients in February and March 2007, according to a statement from Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s office. Her sister Raquel Bugarin, 49, is accused of helping with the procedures. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The two sisters were arrested last summer, but a protective order filed in the case has made information difficult to obtain. Bertha Bugarin’s attorney, Rickard Santwier, declined to comment, as did her sister’s attorney, Christopher Chaney.
The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Nakaki, would not discuss the case or details of the sisters’ connection to the clinics.
A fictitious name statement from 1991 filed for the business lists Bertha Bugarin as the person behind Clinica Medica Para La Mujer de Hoy, although paperwork filed with the medical board lists Nicholas Braemer, a Torrance doctor who lost his license in 2000, as the sole registrant of the clinics between 1991 and 1999.
The clinics, which according to an associate of BerthaBugarincatered primarily to low-income Latinas, operated in several Southland locations.
Cooley’s statement refers to offices in Baldwin Park, Huntington Park, Los Angeles and Panorama City, operating either under the name Clinica Medica Para La Mujer de Hoy or Community Women’s Medical Clinic. Public records contain references to four more locations, in Chula Vista, North Hollywood, Torrance and Santa Ana. One clinic doctor said in a deposition for a 2002 malpractice suit that there were nine clinics.
Since the early 1990s, at least 12 personal injury and malpractice lawsuits and one wrongful death suit have been filed in Los Angeles County against Bertha Bugarin, the clinics or both. The defendants in the suits denied most of the allegations.
At least six of the 13 cases ended in settlements or judgments against the defendants, according to court records and attorneys. The records of one case have been disposed by the court, and another case was dismissed when the plaintiff failed to hire an attorney or show up for a status conference. In the remaining cases, resolutions were not clear from the court files, and several attorneys involved in the lawsuits said they didn’t recall the outcomes.
According to a letter from Bertha Bugarin’s accountant contained in a court file, Bugarin developed the clinics herself, hiring the doctors to work on an on-call basis.
Bertha Bugarin was arrested Aug. 1 and released on $500,000 bail. Her sister was arrested Sept. 6 and released on $100,000 bail. Each could face up to six years in state prison if convicted.
Some doctors associated with the clinics have had repeated problems with the medical board. Braemer, the Torrance doctor who appears on some public records as owner of the clinics, admitted to the board in 1994 that he performed an abortion in 1987 that removed only one arm of the fetus. The patient expelled the rest of the fetus the next day.
The board put Braemer on probation for five years, but then accused him at least three times of violating the probation terms, which included only performing abortions in approved facilities. Clinica Medica was not an approved facility under his probation terms.
In 1999, the board accused Braemer of leaving a fetus’ cranium and placenta inside a patient during a 1996 abortion at the Panorama City clinic.
The woman eventually spent a month in a Torrance hospital having her bowel repaired and multiple abscesses drained, the board said.
Braemer surrendered his license in 2000, after a medical board investigation of several Clinica Medica clinics. Without a physician present, unlicensed receptionists performed ultrasounds on undercover investigators posing as patients, according to medical board records. In the board’s record of the surrender, Braemer also admitted gross negligence in the 1996 abortion. Braemer could not be reached, and calls to several of his former attorneys were not returned.
Other doctors who performed abortions at the clinics include:
* Torrance-based Mohamed Dia, who surrendered his license in 1999. He admitted to the medical board that he used a van to bring a bleeding patient to a hospital after perforating her uterus and leaving part of the fetus in her body during a 1996 abortion at Clinica Medica.
* San Diego-based osteopath Laurence Reich, who surrendered his license in 2006 after pleading no contest to misdemeanor criminal charges of sexually exploiting two patients during abortions in 2000 at clinics not associated with Bugarin. His conviction was expunged in 2004 after he completed a yearlong probationary period and paid the court a $100 restitution fine, according to a Van Nuys court file.
One of the patients, Sherman Oaks resident Yvette Chambers, 43, said in a phone interview that Reich groped her breasts and asked explicit questions during an abortion at a Van Nuys clinic.
An earlier board accusation in 1982 had accused Reich of sexual abuse in three cases in 1981 and 1979. Reich asked the women to masturbate and rubbed their genital areas, according to the accusation, which led the board to put Reich on probation for 10 years until 1994. Reich could not be reached for comment, and his attorney, Santwier, declined to comment.
* Santa Monica-based Glenn Edward Miller, an admitted alcoholic whose license was revoked by the medical board in 2005 due to repeated substance abuse relapses. Miller was on probation for performing obstetrical procedures while under the influence of alcohol when he began working in Bugarin clinics in about 2003, according to board records.
That same year, Miller and Rand settled a malpractice lawsuit filed by a woman who said they gave her an abortion at a non-Bugarin clinic in 2002 even though she was not pregnant, rupturing her uterus in the process, court records said. Miller could not be reached for comment.
* George Dalton Flanigan, who was hired as an independent contractor at five Bugarin clinics in 2002, according to court documents. That same year, at an unnamed hospital, he delivered a dead baby using a vacuum procedure after refusing to perform a cesarean section, according to a board accusation that led to a 2007 decision to put him on probation for five years. Both Flanigan and his former attorney Arthur Selesnick declined to comment.
Times staff writer Daniela Perdomo contributed to this report.
Oh, these are just isolated cases–abortion is all about protecting women——Give me a break!!!
If the L.A. Times is giving a negative report about abortion, you know it’s got to be really bad! I wish more journalists would have the guts to report the truth about all-too-common tragedies of abortion and the greedy self-seeking people involved in these ghastly procedures that are ruining women’s lives and killing millions of innocent babies.
These abortion clinics are nothing but “Slaughterhouses for these women and their unborn babies! When will they learn they are putting their lives in danger and the possibility of being sexually assaulted and maybe never getting out at all. Who is to know if they would not be taken into sex slavery and used for prostitution? Where does the vice end? They are walking into a death chamber where there may be no end to the criminal acts they will be submitted to. When will women start respecting their bodies? I notice the signs advertising this clinic also include massages, facials etc..
Abortion does not fit in with a manicure, ladies! Obviously there are many women who need more education in this area.
Thanks for all your great work for life. It is good to expose the small abortionists but we must not forget that Planned Parenthood is getting the lions share and growing as the others are stopped. What are the plans to fight them?
I find it interesting that the media is so ready to report gruesome, bloody stories, but they remain silent on this one.
Hey Bev,
If you read this site closely, you will notice that OR helped convene a grand jury in Johnson County to investigate Planned Parenthood. That grand jury is still in progress. Also, OR is working with other groups to pull PP’s federal funding. If PP is convicted of a crime, then they would be disqualified from receiving federal money, which is probably about all that is keeping them in business.
Kansas is the lynchpin state! I think OR is doing an amazing job. By the way, I wouldn’t call Tiller a “small” abortionist.
It has been my experience that mothers would step over bloody, dying women to get inside to kill their infants. When the killer Pendergraft’s death mills were finally allowed to open here (after his medical license was suspended for illegal abortions) you should have SEEN the line! It was around the corner! When we spoke to the moms & dads about the scandalous charges against Pendergraft they all laughed it off, saying; “Hey, we all have ghosts in the closet.”
Women have go to use their brains and THINK. If you are willing to walk into a place that murders innocent people for $$$ just how ‘precious’ do you think they believe YOU are?
I am shocked that the journalist was even allowed to do the story, much less it being printed. Hmmm….I thought it was just a blob of tissue…did I see the words “a fetus’ cranium.”
I am amazed and grateful that an expose like this ever made it into the LA Times. That newspaper is usually so overtly biased; I agree with the comment that it must really be bad for the times to pick up the story. I think that we must commend the paper and the reporter for running this story. It must have been difficult to compile and publish this, given the paper’s usual culture of death. They are to be encouraged for taking this small but concrete step toward honest reporting on this issues.
PS, I meant to capitalize “The Times”.
This is just the tip of the iceberg! I know this for a fact. I had 2 abortions over 30 years ago(yes legal ones) and I was held down on the table after I had changed my mind and told it was too late, when in fact it wasnt too late. I also did post abortion counceling for a few years and heard many many stories just like the ones in the LA times article. One woman the abortionist swore at her as he threw the abortion instruments across the room into the sink and said as he left the room “tell him to leave you alone next time” She was aborted at 18 weeks via suction abortion and told she was 11 weeks, she later found out from the nurse that she was 18.
I wish the media would investigate all over the united states, they would find these things are common place in abortuarys.
what a sad story..the last thing a woman thinks when she walks into an abortion clinic is thats its going to kill or hurt her in any way thanks to our liberal media. unfortunately, OR shows time & time again that that is not true. maybe if the news media would pick up these stories, more women would re-think allowing one of these monsters to murder her unborn child & possibly herself. i wish women would smarten up & demand better for themselves & their unborn children.
Shades of Alicia Hanna! At least, thank God, they shut this woman down before she killed any other patients.
BTW, I’m trying to find information on the wrongful death case. Is that referring to the botched delivery? It would seem not, since that was at a hospital and not at one of the “clinics”. Anybody?
I was a ‘sidewalk counselor’ out in front of the Santa Ana clinic named in this article from Feb 2005 to June of 2006 and I can testify of the types of corruptions which this article reports and more besides. I am so thankful to God that he has answered my prayers in shutting down these clinics. May their doors remain sealed!
When I start seeing these types of stories on the front pages of all the mainstream newspapers then I will be convinced that there is no left wing bias. Thank you LA Times!