We've reported several times in the past on the Los Angeles Times's problems in reporting on the abortion issue (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Its negligence has included ignoring a Panned Parenthood scandal in its own backyard. But then on Friday (2/8/08) the Times published an eye-opening article prominently displayed on the top of page B1: "Abortion clinics operator is charged" (Print edition: "Operator of clinics is charged").

The article chronicles horrific barbarities at a chain of Southern California abortion clinics managed by a Bertha Bugarin. Bugarin has now "been charged with practicing medicine without a license on five patients in February and March 2007." The article begins (WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE):

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.

Whoa. The article then continues by cataloging a number of jaw-dropping episodes:

[Dr. Nicholas] Braemer, the Torrance doctor who appears on some public records as owner of the clinics, admitted to the [Medical Board of California] 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 woman eventually spent a month in a Torrance hospital having her bowel repaired and multiple abscesses drained, the board said ...

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 ...

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 [clinic owner Bertha] Bugarin ... 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 ...

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 ...

Kudos to the Times for shining the light on these horrors. But the article begs a number of questions:

Why did it take so long for the abortion mill manager to be charged?

Don't the episodes in the article completely fly in the face of the oft-heard line that abortion is such a "safe" procedure for women?

What about the doctors who work at other chains of abortion clinics in Southern California? In light of discovering the dregs who work at this one particular chain, isn't it worth looking into the doctors who work at other clinics?

Will the Times take that "next step" and dig deeper? I, for one, won't hold my breath. Just seeing this article in a major newspaper is small ray of light in itself?

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P.S. - Life Dynamics has compiled a list of 347 women who have been verified to have been killed by legal abortion; the list is called "Blackmun's Wall." (For other stories, see this, this, and this.) The number of abortion-related deaths is almost impossible to tabulate, as many abortions occur in "nonreporting states" (source, see page 5) and such deaths often go unreported (see this important report.) (For even more on this, read the book Lime 5, by Mark Crutcher.)