The Department of Health (VDH) recently suspended the license of an abortion center in Fairfax, owned by Dr. Steven Brigham.  This action came after an inspection discovered dozens of health and safety violations.  The inspection report itself is 52 pages long.

We have for years brought Dr. Brigham’s record of disregard for health and safety to the Board's attention.  Quite frankly, he should not be allowed to operate any type of facility in Virginia.  According to newspaper reports, Pennsylvania “banished” him from that state because of a similar record of safety violations, and New Jersey has ordered him to sell his abortion centers in that state.

It has become abundantly clear he should not be allowed to own a facility in Virginia.  Regardless of “plans of correction,” regardless of promises, he has made it clear that he does not care about women’s health and safety.

In addition, some of the amendments adopted by the Board to make to the existing health and safety standards would make it easier for the likes of Steven Brigham to operate in Virginia.

The suggested amendments would make it easier for the abortion industry to deceive women into believing they've had an abortion when they haven't.  The Planned Parenthood in Richmond did just that, whether intentionally or simply through neglect, as was revealed in the August 2015 inspection report of that abortion center.  Under current regulations, the "conception material" obtained from the abortion must be sent to a lab to verify that is indeed a human being.  The proposed changes would leave it up to the abortion center to make that determination, mislead patients, either intentionally or accidentally because of improperly or poorly trained staff.  

Incredibly, at the abortion center in Fairfax that had its license suspended recently, violations include a lack of training for staff who were assigned to determine if the "material" was indeed a baby.  The staff member given the task said, "Well (another staff member) came and showed me how a couple of times and then the rest I learned from other staff members.  I catch on quick...."  Clearly, some abortion centers do not care or are not well-staffed enough to properly analyze the “conception material” (that would be the human baby) that is disposed of during an abortion. 

Another change adopted by the Board is a top goal of the abortion industry: differentiate between surgical abortions and so-called “medication” abortions (i.e. chemical abortions).  The industry claims that with “medication” abortions, all they do is “write a prescription,” but that is far from the truth.  They want to differentiate because they claim that some abortion centers do “only medication” abortions and therefore shouldn’t be held to the same health and safety standards as those that do surgical abortions.

Yet, according to inspection reports at the Virginia Women’s Wellness Center in Virginia Beach, again owned by Dr. Steven Brigham, it was discovered that for 36.6 percent of patients that had medication abortions in January 2014, a repeat medication dose or a surgical procedure was required to complete the abortion.  According to the FDA, RU-486 is only to be used until 49 days gestation and if used according to FDA guidelines has an 8 percent failure rate.  The farther along in gestation a woman is, the more likely it is that RU-486 will fail.  According to the New England Journal of Medicine, statistics indicate that there is a 17 percent failure rate at 50-55 days, and a 23 percent failure rate at 57-63 days.  Virginia Women's Wellness' rate of 36.6 percent failure is over four times the average.  Its plan to correct the problem:  “These cases will no longer be documented in the complication log.” 

While some members of the Board may believe the changes being made to the health and safety standards that theoretically make them more in line with “standard medical practice,” the fact is that people like Brigham don’t operate according to any standard medical practice or with the best interest of their patients in mind.

You may also believe that Dr. Brigham is a “rogue” operator who is an outlier from the norm in Virginia.  Let’s take a look at just a couple of other abortion center owners and operators in Virginia:

• Diane Derzis has operated abortion centers across the nation, including A Capital Women’s Health Center in Richmond.  The Administrator of A Capital Women’s Health Center, Shelley Abrams (formerly Shelley Statum), was the former director of Derzis’ New Woman All Women Health Center (Birmingham, AL) as well as the director of Derzis’ Mississippi center – Jackson Women’s Health Organization.  A significant number of Derzis’ abortion centers have been closed due to egregious health and safety violations. In 2012, Derzis was ordered to shut down her New Woman All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, after inspectors found 76 pages of violations following the hospitalization of three patients in one day for abortion complications.  Officials have been fighting to close her Mississippi abortion center for years.
• William Fitzhugh owns/operates abortion centers in Richmond, Charlottesville, Roanoke and Newport News.  Fitzhugh’s abortion centers have been found to have a litany of health and safety violations, including unlicensed staff members illegally mixing drugs for patients and transporting narcotics from one facility to another with no record or documentation.  In fact, the Charlottesville facility had no records in accordance with federal and state laws regarding the drugs used at the facility, including Schedule II narcotics like Fentanyl, a drug now becoming a major problem in the drug trade.  Fitzhugh administered medications and wrote prescriptions at his Charlottesville facility without a current DEA number for that abortion center. For multiple violations of state and federal drug laws Fitzhugh received nothing more than a reprimand.  In 1989, Fitzhugh was involved in a botched abortion on Margaret Codfelter, in which he perforated her uterus and left parts of the dead baby inside. He sent her home without informing her of her life-threatening condition. Margaret died two days later.

Between them, Brigham, Derzis and Fitzhugh own and operate seven of the sixteen (fifteen operating with the Fairfax suspension) abortion centers in Virginia.  And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to these “rogue” operators.  They each have a long history of mistreatment of patients and disregard for health and safety standards.  Reviews of the inspection reports of other independently operated abortion centers (i.e. not owned by Planned Parenthood) are similarly disgusting. 

I recognize that “evidence based medicine” is a catchy phrase to hide behind when changing these health and safety standards, but the amendments you’ve adopted fly in the face of all the evidence found through inspection reports.  If nothing else, the Brigham incident is yet another reminder that all the promises by representatives of the abortion industry that abortion centers in Virginia are safe and well maintained were blatant lies.