Maryland launches investigation into abortionist Steven Brigham's business

Transporting abortion patients across state lines, botching abortions, and storing late-term fetuses in jars are just a few of the issues surrounding Steven Brigham's American Women's Services abortion business.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Three weeks ago, physician Steven Brigham led a car caravan of patients from his Voorhees abortion clinic to his facility in Elkton, Md. After one of the patients was critically injured during her surgery there, Brigham put the semiconscious, bleeding woman into the back of a rented Chevrolet Malibu and drove her to a nearby hospital emergency room rather than call an ambulance.

Those details are contained in documents issued over the last 10 days by the Maryland Board of Physicians and Elkton police. The two agencies have launched a wide-ranging investigation into Brigham's long-troubled abortion business, which he conducts in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.

On Aug. 25, the Maryland Board of Physicians ordered Brigham, 54, to stop performing abortions in that state, where he has never been licensed to practice medicine. By then police had raided Brigham's Elkton facility - from which they said they removed 35 "late-term fetuses and fetal parts" - as well as the Voorhees headquarters of his chain of 15 clinics, which does business as American Women's Services.

Maryland authorities seek missing medical records, and are looking into Brigham's habit of sending late-term patients across state lines after initiating their abortions in Voorhees.

One of the late-term fetuses was 36 weeks.

Maryland Board of Physicians has also suspended the medical licenses of two abortionists who work for Brigham.

On Tuesday, the board suspended the Maryland license of George Shepard Jr., a Delaware obstetrician-gynecologist hired in 2009 as a part-time medical director of Brigham's four Maryland clinics. The board has charged Shepard with unprofessional conduct and with helping Brigham flout credentialing requirements.

Shepard's lawyer, Jason Allison of Elkton, said, "We are reviewing the allegations and . . . are confident that Dr. Shepard's license will be reinstated."

On Tuesday, the Maryland board also suspended the license it granted less than two months ago to Nicola I. Riley, a family physician who in late July began flying "from her home in Utah every other week to Maryland to perform abortions." Riley did not return a call left with her mother in Utah.

Riley botched an abortion on an 18-year-old who was 21-weeks pregnant and "cut through the patient's uterus into the bowel and vagina."

Riley informed the patient's mother and boyfriend of the complications, but refused to call for an ambulance. Riley "originally contemplated taking [the patient] by wheelchair to the hospital, which was about two blocks away."

Brigham drove Riley and the patient to the hospital, where the two abortion doctors dodged questions "about who they were, what had happened, and from where they had come."

The patient's injuries were so complex that she had to be flown by helicopter to Johns Hopkins Hospital while Riley "returned to the Elkton office . . . to perform another abortion."