There are three Women's Med Center abortion facilities in total. In addition to the Sharonville abortion clinic in Cincinnati there are also WMC abortion facilities in Dayton, OH and Indianapolis, IN.
The same questions of safety and legality that are areas of concern with the Sharonville clinic are also issues with the other facilities. The Dayton and Cincinnati clinics have been involved in a legal battle between Haskell and the Ohio Health Department. The clinics do not meet the requirements put in place by the state to try to improve the safety of their patients. Haskell was given variances, but at least in the case of the Cincinnati abortion clinic the variance is not being renewed and there is currently a legal battle as a consequence, with a judge keeping it open.
Are the Women's Med Center abortion clinics in Cincinnati, Dayton and Indianapolis safe? Click on the video below to hear a recording of just one of the 911 calls the Dayton clinic made when they screwed up an abortion.
This is an excerpt from a 1993 article by Julia Duin in The Washington Times. It is the story of a nurse who used to work for Martin Haskell at the Women's Med Center in Dayton, OH.
Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse, is credited with providing the lurid testimony that helped build congressional support for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which President Clinton vetoed in April.
During congressional hearings, Mrs. Shafer's explicit description of the death throes of an almost-born child contradicted pro-choice assertions that the fetus feels no pain during the procedure. Anesthesiologists have testified that anesthesia given to the mother does not protect the fetus from pain.
Her account - delivered at the National Right to Life (NRTL) convention of 1,200 registrants at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Alexandria - was based on her experiences three years ago at an abortion clinic in Dayton, Ohio.
Mrs. Shafer said she had been pro-choice until one day in September 1993, when the nurses agency assigned her to a three-day stint at the clinic.
The clinic, operated by Dr. Martin Haskell, specialized in the type of abortion in which an unborn child is delivered feet first up to his or her neck. The doctor then stabs it in the back of the head with a pair of scissors, then suctions out the brain.
"When the doctor forced the scissors into the base of the skull, "the baby jumped," she said. "I watched the life being drained out of it. I almost threw up all over the floor."
Worst of all, she added, the mother then wanted to see the then-fully delivered child, who had "the most perfect, angelic face I have ever seen." The mother then "held the baby in her arms and screamed and begged God to forgive her."
Mrs. Shafer claimed that none of the six or seven procedures performed that day were for life-threatening situations and that only one case involved Down syndrome. The others included a woman who was getting a divorce and a teen-age girl whose parents insisted she abort her pregnancy.