An abortion clinic in New Mexico allegedly experimented on over 500 women without their consent, a report reveals.
The Christian Post said the Albuquerque-based clinic Southwestern Women's Options (SWO) was exposed by Abortion On Trial for secretly conducting experiments on 501 women having late-term abortions by adding Mifepristone during their procedure.
SWO has been renowned for conducting late term abortions, even up to 32 weeks or later, in states that allow it. The said experiment was conducted by the clinic's Carmen Landau and Shelley Sella, who are both its official abortionists.
As per the Christian Post, there are seven states in the United States that allow abortions up to birth as of January 2019. These are Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. There are only five clinics where such abortions are done, however.
Abortion on Trial (AOT), an organization that helps women suffering injuries from abortion, said the "shocking discovery" came to be after the two doctors, Landau and Sella, disclosed what they had done in an article published in the University of California San Francisco. They mentioned a certain Keisha Marie Atkins as being part of the experiment.
Accordingly, AOT knew Atkins because she died in February 2017 after undergoing procedure at the SWO. The group pointed out that Atkin's medical records in the clinic revealed the use of Mifepristone, which the two doctors blatantly mentioned they included and then withdrew after experimentation.
"Did these authors truly think they could list detailed medical information about Keisha's death without someone connecting those dots?" AOT pointed out.
"Although the authors claim there were updated policies and procedures manuals documenting these changes no such documentation was given to attorneys when S.W.O. was subpoenaed for documents regarding Keisha's death that occurred in February 2017," the organization added, "shortly before Dr. Landau stopped giving her patients Mifepristone experimentally. In fact, no mention of this study was included in Keisha's file at all, nor was any mention of it made by Landau when deposed about Keisha's death."
"It appears as though Dr. Landau didn't want attorneys to learn about this piece of literature," they stressed.
AOT pointed out that the UCSF article of Landau and Sella discusses what took place during their experimentation. The doctors revealed their aim for conducting the experiment between 2016 and 2017 was to "make the service quicker to accommodate an increasing patient load."
The doctors pointed out the "differences in induction abortions when adding the risky and unnecessary use of Mifepristone." The doctors seemed to have tested their theory on the use of the drug but since they didn't find any changes in using it, removed in on May 2017.
"501 women were included in this study between 2016 & 2017. Approximately half of the women were given Mifepristone and half were not. All 501 were 24 or more weeks pregnant. And 48 of those 501 women were minors," AOT stated.
"It appears that in 2016 Landau and Sella decided to test the theory that Mifepristone would make the induction abortion occur quicker and after a year of "no perceived benefit" to them, they again changed the procedure back to inducing without the use of Mifepristone in May 2017," the organization stressed.
In addition, AOT revealed that the said doctors conducted the experiment without informing the 500 patients about it, thus also without getting their consent to participate. The organization highlighted that some of these women were injured, on top of the 501 babies killed in the process. AOT's Director Jamie Jeffries pointed out that "consent matters" and stated that the study confirms their claims on the clinic's late term abortion operations.
"This study not only confirms our claims that S.W.O. performs elective late term abortions regularly, it confirms our theory that abortion procedures are being altered by S.W.O. providers and women are being injured as a result. Women aren't lab rats, we shouldn't be used by medical providers for their research without our knowledge. But S.W.O. staff seem to have, once again, missed the memo that consent matters," Jeffries said.
AOT said that it will not stop in just disclosing this matter on the clinic and on the doctors. It will continue "breaking" the "study down piece by piece" and expose its anomalies to the public since what they have done is illegal, "dehumanizing experimental care, and blatant misrepresentation published in this research is just too much for one article."
