There hasn’t been much Big Media coverage for the death of a 29-year-old pregnant woman during a botched 33rd-week abortion under the knife of late-term abortion superstar Dr. LeRoy Carhart, at his clinic in Maryland. Thus far, the only information about the incident has come from pro-life group Operation Rescue:
The woman, who came for a third trimester abortion from out-of-state, arrived at GRHC on Sunday and was seen by pro-life activists every day through Wednesday. Witnesses said she appeared “pale and weak.”
Early Thursday morning, the woman began suffering chest pain and other discomforts. Her attempts to reach Carhart were unsuccessful. The woman was taken by her family from her hotel to a nearby hospital emergency room at approximately 5:00 a.m. Efforts by hospital staff to contact Carhart or get informational assistance from the abortion clinic were unsuccessful.
The patient suffered massive internal bleeding into her abdominal cavity. She slipped into a Code Blue condition approximately six times before finally succumbing to her injuries at around 9:30 a.m. The case has been placed with the Medical Examiner for further investigation.
(Emphasis mine.) As Operation Rescue president Troy Newman noted, this is not Carhart’s first late-term abortion fatality; he was “also involved in the death of Christin Gilbert, who died after a third trimester abortion in Wichita, Kansas” in 2005. A Carhart associate in New Mexico has been under investigation for negligence charges “related to a botched third-trimester abortion using the same risky late-term abortion method employed by Carhart.” Operation Rescue described a Medical Board vote to clear these charges “politically motivated.”
At the very least, and to put it mildly, there would seem to be significant safety issues with these procedures (and when they go off without a hitch, somebody dies anyway.) Robert Stacy McCain at the American Spectator is beside himself over the news media blackout, even though Carhart has been able to count on plenty of media attention under more favorable circumstances:
Carhart is a celebrity of the pro-abortion movement. Described as “one of the few doctors in the U.S. to openly perform late-term abortions,” Carhart was an associate of Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated in 2009. Michael Martelli of the Maryland Coalition for Life notes thatCarhart “was hailed as a ‘hero’ in the film ‘After Tiller’ at the recent Sundance Film Festival.”Now that a 29-year-old woman has reportedly died as a result of Carhart’s butchery, however, it seems that no major news organization considers him newsworthy.
Neither the Washington Post nor the Baltimore Sun has yet reported on this woman’s death in Maryland, despite the fact that there was an 11 a.m. press conference today in front of the Germantown clinic. The story is also being ignored by the Associated Press, USA Today, theNew York Times, and television news networks. As of 1:30 p.m. Friday, the largest organizations reporting the story were WorldNetDaily and LifeNews.com.
The local Montgomery Gazette was the only newspaper to send a reporter to the press conference, Martelli told me in a brief telephone interview this afternoon. Martelli said he had been contacted about the story by only a “few” reporters, “mostly from pro-life or Christian organizations.” The Maryland Coalition for Life has announced that it will hold a prayer vigil, memorial, and follow-up press conference at 9 a.m. Monday near the Germantown clinic where Carhart performed the botched abortion.
A 2009 profile in the Daily Beast lauded Carhart as “The Abortion Evangelist,” noting his efforts to challenge bans on partial-birth abortion and “train as many late-term abortion providers as possible – or the practice just might die with him.” These efforts made him “a pro-choice hero, receiving awards from NARAL and Planned Parenthood for his activism.” The latest grim developments in his abortion evangelism should rate some media attention… unless, of course, one assumes the news organizations in question would strongly prefer not to tell the story.
Live Action president Lila Rose issued a statement on Friday afternoon about the death in Maryland:
“While his twenty-nine-year-old patient and her eight-month-old baby were dying horribly, late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart skipped town, leaving the hospital and the young woman’s family desperate for answers. We know about this double-homicide only because a doctor with a conscience made the information public; after all, Carhart himself is busy whitewashing and promoting his grisly work through a Hollywood film. So how many women and children are killed by abortionists like Carhart without our ever knowing, their deaths covered up by pro-abortion physicians?Not only does Carhart’s violent work literally tear women from their children, but it also divides women against themselves; they suffer and mourn for their lost children, yet they are all the while told by Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion entities that they have no good reason to grieve.
These tragic and unnecessary deaths underline what Live Action has detailed again and again: abortion is not safe–for anyone. Women who understand what these horrible abortions entail do not want them. And those women who are lied to and misled about these “procedures” deserve to know exactly what Big Abortion–and their abortion bosses like Carhart–seek to do to them.”
The film Rose mentioned is called “After Tiller,” and screened at the Sundance Film Festival. The title is a reference to abortion doctor George Tiller, who was murdered in 2009, and was an associate of Carhart’s.
Rose reiterated her determination to campaign against partial-birth abortion. “If there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try,” she declared. No, wait, I’m sorry, that was Barack Obama talking about gun control. Doubtless entirely different standards apply here.
