New Jersey abortion clinic pays out $1.9 million to settle lawsuit

Metropolitan Medical Associates, an abortion clinic in New Jersey, has settled a lawsuit by paying $1.9 million to Rasheedah Dinkins. Dinkins was in a coma for three weeks along with suffering a host of other injuries after abortionist Keith Gresham botched her second-trimester abortion.

Newark Beth Israel filed a formal complaint with the state, saying it was concerned the abortion may have been done improperly. That led to a state inquiry of Metropolitan Medical, which performs more than 10,000 abortions a year.

"We learned from the case that their volume of procedures was one factor that led to this problem," said Roseland-based lawyer Adam Slater, who represented Dinkins. "When you do too many procedures, you start to lose sight of the fact that these are all separate patients and separate procedures.”

Dinkins had "greater-than-expected bleeding, they couldn’t stop it, they eventually took extraordinary measures to stop it, and then they sent her home," Slater said. "They should have sent her to Englewood Hospital, which is less than a mile away, where they would have examined her and found she had a uterine rupture. They would have treated her, and she would have been fine. But the damage from her excessive bleeding led to catastrophic injuries."

In 2007, the state of New Jersey temporarily shut down Metropolitan Medical Associates, a member of the National Abortion Federation, after an inspection found dirty equipment and infection control problems. Also in 2007, two other women (besides Dinkins) came forward about injuries they suffered at MMA and at least one of them had filed a lawsuit.