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The federal money, which covers 90 percent of the state’s $40 million program, will be phased out between May and September because the law violates federal regulations requiring that women have a choice in medical care, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a trip to Houston. That means the Women’s Health Program will join a long list of programs nationwide on the chopping block because of their affiliations with Planned Parenthood or other groups that offer abortions.

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The announcement came a day after Texas Gov. Rick Perry pledged to find state money to keep the program afloat, though details remain scarce about where the money would come from. Texas suffered massive spending cuts last year due to a $15 billion deficit, though a state health services official said Friday that Texas would prefer to increase its deficit than completely eliminate the program.

Perry blasted Sebelius’ announcement, insisting Medicaid rules give states the right to determine which clinics are qualified to provide women’s health care.

“The fact that the Obama administration would announce its decision to deny care for more than 100,000 low-income women during a press event before giving official notice to the state is a clear demonstration of the political motivation behind this decision,” he said in a written statement, adding that Texas officials are still waiting for official word on the decision.

As is the case with other programs now in the national spotlight, the Women’s Health Program provides cancer screenings, family planning and other women’s health services. About 44 percent of women in the Texas program go to Planned Parenthood clinics, although none that accept funding from the program may perform abortions, and no federal funds are used to terminate pregnancies.

The problem in Texas is being caused by lawmakers’ desire to prevent state funds from going to Planned Parenthood. The state is implementing a law that bars public funds from going to any programs, organizations or groups that are affiliated with abortions, even if they don’t perform them.

After touring a hospital in Houston, Sebelius said the state law violates federal Medicaid regulations that require women be allowed to choose where they go for health care. Federal funds flowed to Texas under a waiver, but “we plan to let Texas know that that waiver will not be extended,” Sebelius said.

The money will be phased out so women have time to find alternative care, she said.

The state was warned that implementing the law would jeopardize federal funding, and Texas chose not to immediately enforce it when it was passed, Sebelius added.

“They knew … they are not allowed to deny women the right to choose,” Sebelius said. “Women would be losing their doctor, their medical home, their choice.”

Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, said money to pay for the program would be diverted from others that are under budget – though she didn’t offer specifics. If that doesn’t cover the costs, she said, the state would increase its deficit to pay for the services because officials believe that if low-income women don’t have access to birth control, the birth rate would rise and cost the state another $57 million in maternity bills.

Last year, Texas lawmakers slashed state funding for women’s health and family planning programs by $73.6 million – cutting services to 160,000 women. They also took $10 million from a separate family planning budget line and shifted those responsibilities to organizations that administer Medicaid in Texas.

Now, with the expected cut in federal funds, “there’s a huge gap in family planning” in Texas, Sebelius said.

State Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Houston, said she and members of Congress are negotiating with Sebelius and federal officials to find a way to ensure that the funds don’t stop flowing.

And while Sebelius said her department has been trying to work with the state to provide a solution, she didn’t indicate that would happen before March 14, when the state plans to begin enforcing the law.

“We have been working with Texas. We’re eager to work with Texas to find a solution,” Sebelius said. “But if Texas chooses to go down a road that violates the law, we really have no choice.”

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The legislation passed mostly along party lines. The transabdominal ultrasound is a requested amendment to the bill by Robert F. McDonnell, the state’s Republican governor, after critics decried initial legislative efforts to have women undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.

(Yes. It is as invasive as it sounds)

The Washington Post reports that the bill now must go to Virginia’s House of Delegates for approval before it heads to McDonnell for his signature.

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The View

In addition to the sonogram, the mandate requires that doctors show women sonogram images, play fetal heartbeats and describe features of the fetus.

Though Joy Behar called it “totalitarian,” conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck said that it was just common medical sense that should be required of all procedures, comparing the new law to being informed about a cyst or kidney surgery.

“You would never go through any medical procedure like that…without looking at the scientific evidence,” Hasselbeck said. “Why you would ask for an X-ray for those things but not in this case?”

Barbara Walters claimed that the law is is unfair to women who may already feel a tremendous amount of fear and guilt when considering the procedure; Whoopi Goldberg agreed, arguing that the reasons for abortion range from women who do not want children to those who cannot afford them.

At that point, Shepherd interjected to point out the hypocrisy of conservative politicians who oppose welfare, birth control and make it a talking point to vilify Planned Parenthood at every opportunity, while simultaneously aggressively opposing abortion and casting negative judgment on women who “have to many babies” that they can’t afford:

“We stop at the picket signs and we don’t help you past that!” an emotional Shepherd said.. “I’m speaking as a girl who had a lot of abortions and I swear to God, if they had shown me a picture of the fetus… I would have put my child in a lot of situations that wouldn’t have been good because I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with having a child.”

See the heated View debate below:

Komen, meanwhile, incurred heated criticism from some members of Congress, numerous liberal advocacy groups and some newspaper editorial writers. But it was applauded by many conservative religious and anti-abortion groups that abhor Planned Parenthood for its role as the leading U.S. abortion provider.

Planned Parenthood says the funding cutoff was a result of Komen succumbing to pressure from anti-abortion activists. Komen, in a statement issued Wednesday evening, denied that politics played a role and reiterated that its decision was based on newly adopted criteria for issuing grants.

The criteria bar grants to any organization that’s under local, state or federal investigation. Planned Parenthood is being investigated for alleged financial improprieties by a Republican congressman acting with the encouragement of anti-abortion groups.

“We regret that these new policies have impacted some long-standing grantees, such as Planned Parenthood, but want to be absolutely clear that our grant-making decisions are not about politics,” the Komen statement said.

It pledged to ensure that women who need breast-health services can still have access to them.

Dr. Eric Winer, a breast cancer specialist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston who is chairman of Komen’s scientific advisory council, said he was confident that breast-screening availability would not be jeopardized.

“The last thing in the world that anyone at Komen wants to do … is to decrease the resources that are available to those women,” he said.

Nonetheless, some members of Komen’s nationwide network were unsettled.

The Komen affiliate in Connecticut posted a notice on its website saying it has enjoyed a “great partnership” with Planned Parenthood of Southern New England and noting that the funding decision was made at Komen’s national headquarters.

“We understand, and share, in the frustration around this situation,” the notice said. “We hope that any investigation prohibiting Planned Parenthood from receiving Komen grants is promptly resolved.”

Planned Parenthood said the Komen grants totaled roughly $680,000 last year and $580,000 the year before, going to 19 of its affiliates for breast-cancer screening and other breast-health services. According to Planned Parenthood, its health centers performed more than 4 million breast exams over the past five years, including nearly 170,000 as a result of Komen grants.

Andrea Hagelgans, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, said the organization was grateful for the outpouring of support since Tuesday evening, when The Associated Press first reported Komen’s decision.

“People respond powerfully when they see politics interfering with women’s health,” she said. “These donations will continue to help expand Planned Parenthood’s critical health care services nationwide, especially those affiliates impacted by the Komen cuts.”

Several members of Congress who support abortion rights voiced dismay at the grant cutoff.

“I was perplexed and troubled to see the decision by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to cut off funding for lifesaving breast cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood because of a political witch hunt by House Republicans,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. “I truly hope that they will reconsider this decision and put the needs of women first.”

The progressive group MoveOn.org launched an online petition calling on Komen to maintain its grants to Planned Parenthood. It said 60,000 people had signed in a matter of hours.

Komen won praise from anti-abortion activists such as Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life.

“The work of the Komen Foundation has lifesaving potential and should not be intertwined with an industry dealing in death,” said Yoest, a breast-cancer survivor.

Komen, based in Dallas and founded in 1982, has invested more than $1.9 billion since then in research, health services and advocacy while becoming the largest breast-cancer charity in the nation. Its Race for the Cure fundraising events have become a global phenomenon.

Editorials about Komen’s decision were published by several newspapers.

“Komen caved to political pressure,” wrote editorial writer Tod Robberson in the Dallas Morning News. “The next time Komen for the Cure comes asking us for an editorial supporting one of their local events, I’m going the think twice.”

The Star-Ledger in New Jersey took a more nuanced view.

“It’s hard to see who the winners are in this mess,” it wrote. “As so often happens when their bodies become a political battleground, women ultimately lose.”

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Dr. Steven Brigham, of Voorhees, N.J., was taken into custody Wednesday night and is being held in the Camden County jail, according to police in Elkton, Md. Authorities also arrested Dr. Nicola Riley in Salt Lake City and she is in jail in Utah. Each is awaiting an extradition hearing.

A grand jury indicted the two doctors after a 16-month investigation, police said.

The investigation began in August 2010 after what authorities say was a botched procedure at Brigham’s clinic in Elkton, located near the border of Maryland and Delaware.

An 18-year-old woman who was 21 weeks pregnant suffered a ruptured uterus and an injured bowel, according to documents filed in a previous investigation by medical regulators. Rather than call 911, Riley drove her to a nearby hospital, where both she and Brigham were uncooperative and Brigham refused to give his name, documents show.

A search of the clinic after the botched abortion revealed a freezer containing 35 late-term fetuses, including one believed to have been aborted at 36 weeks, the documents show.

Brigham, 55, is charged with five counts of first-degree murder, five counts of second-degree murder and one count of conspiracy. Riley, 46, faces one count each of first- and second-degree murder and one conspiracy count.

The charges relate to the botched procedure as well as other abortions performed at the Elkton clinic or fetuses found there, authorities said.

Cecil County State’s Attorney Ellis Roberts declined to elaborate on the charges or the circumstances that led to them, saying it would be inappropriate to comment before Brigham and Riley, who were taken into custody on fugitive warrants, had seen the indictments.

Maryland is one of 38 states that allows murder charges to be brought against someone accused of killing a viable fetus. The 2005 state law has so far only been used for cases in which defendants were accused of assaulting or killing pregnant women.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Roberts said. “At some point in time,” he added, “you will hear our explanation” of the charges.

The state law allows for murder or manslaughter charges to be brought against a person who intends to kill or seriously injure a fetus or who wantonly disregards the safety of a fetus. It does not apply to doctors administering lawful medical care and does not impinge on a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

Brigham’s attorney, C. Thomas Brown, said in an emailed statement that he does not believe his client has violated any Maryland laws. He said he has not seen any charging documents or spoken with Brigham since the arrest.

“Dr. Brigham has fully cooperated with this investigation,” Brown said. “I had an agreement with the state’s attorney’s office that if Dr. Brigham was charged, he would voluntarily come to Maryland to surrender. For reasons unknown to me, the state did not honor that agreement. … It is my opinion that Dr. Brigham’s arrest in New Jersey was orchestrated to ensure that he remained in custody over this holiday weekend.”

An attorney for Riley also took issue with her client being behind bars.

“We believe the charges are without legal merit,” said attorney Sharon Krevor-Weisbaum. “We believe it’s inappropriate for her to be held without bond. She is not a flight risk and she should be released on her own recognizance.”

Krevor-Weisbaum said Riley’s legal team would comment further after they had seen the indictment.

A spokeswoman for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group, said she was not aware of any cases in the United States in which an abortion provider had been charged with murder in the death of a fetus. A Philadelphia doctor, Kermit Gosnell, faces murder charges in the deaths of seven newborn babies but has not been charged with killing fetuses.

The botched 2010 abortion led regulators to order Brigham to stop practicing medicine in Maryland without a license, and Riley’s Maryland license was suspended. Brigham’s New Jersey license was also suspended, leaving him without a valid license in any state, and New Jersey authorities are pursuing revocation of his license there. New Jersey authorities have cooperated with the Maryland criminal probe, said Thomas R. Calcagni, director of the State Division of Consumer Affairs.

According to regulators, Brigham would begin abortions in New Jersey and have his patients drive themselves to Maryland to complete the procedures, taking advantage of Maryland’s more permissive laws. Brigham was not authorized to perform abortions in New Jersey after the first trimester, and regulators called his actions manipulative and deceptive.

In Maryland, licensed physicians can perform abortions before the fetus is deemed capable of surviving outside the womb, and abortions of viable fetuses are permitted to protect the life or health of the mother or if the fetus has serious genetic abnormalities. Doctors generally consider fetuses to be viable starting around 23 weeks.

Anti-abortion activists hailed the arrests of Brigham and Riley.

“These two individuals are now where they belong and should be in jail for the rest of their lives,” the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said in a statement. “Even those who believe abortion should be legal can join with us to stop the out-of-control practices of people like Brigham and Riley.”

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Gosnell is the wife of Kermit Gosnell, who is charged in the deaths of seven babies and a woman who died of a painkiller overdose.

Authorities say babies born alive were killed at the west Philadelphia clinic by having their spinal cords severed with scissors.

Besides the Gosnells, eight others were also charged in the case. Several have already pleaded guilty.

The lawyers in the case are under a gag order.

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Providers that offer abortion coverage would have to set up identical plans without abortion coverage to participate in the health insurance exchanges to be set up under the new law.

The legislation, which passed 251-172, is unlikely to be considered by the Democratic-led Senate and faces a veto threat from Obama. But it gives House Republicans, focused this year on cutting spending and reducing the size of the federal government, a chance to reaffirm their credentials on social conservative issues. Democrats chided Republicans for wasting time better spent on promoting job growth.

Supporters of the bill, including author Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa., say they are trying to close loopholes in the health care act that could lead to violations of the long-standing prohibition of the federal funding of abortion.

Opponents warn that millions of middle- and low-income women who receive partial subsidies to buy insurance would be denied abortion coverage. They said most providers are unlikely to set up two separate plans, one with abortion coverage.

The legislation also strengthens conscience protections for antiabortion health care providers. Again there is divergence between bill supporters saying they are merely clarifying existing law and opponents saying it will lead to hospitals denying emergency care to pregnant women.

Democratic opponents said the conscience clause would lead to pregnant women being denied emergency treatment.

“When the Republicans vote for this bill today they will be voting to say women can die on the floor and health care providers don’t have to intervene,” said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

The legislation revives the debate that almost scuttled the health care act. Former Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., leading a rebellion of antiabortion Democrats, joined Pitts in pushing through an amendment that imposed tight restrictions on abortions in the proposed government-run insurance plan.

When the Senate wouldn’t go along, Stupak got Obama to sign an executive order reaffirming the Hyde Amendment, a 1976 provision named after the late Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., that bans all federal funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk.

Pitts argued that the executive order can be rescinded at any time and the new health care act is not bound to follow the Hyde Amendment. As a result, said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., the law, “when phased in fully in 2014 will open up the floodgates of public funding for abortion in a myriad of programs.”

But the White House, in issuing its veto threat, said the health care law preserves the ban on federal funding and the legislation “intrudes on women’s reproductive freedom and access to health care and unnecessarily restricts the private insurance choices that women and their families have today.”

Under the law, federally subsidized health care plans can offer abortion coverage but they have to set up separate accounts to segregate federal funds from funds that can be used for abortion coverage.

The website and campaign, funded by the Restoration Project criticize Jackson for changing his position on abortion after being against it in the 1970s.

BET.com reports:

According to the Restoration Project, the organization behind the campaign and the billboard, African-American leaders have duped Blacks by their failure to take a stand against abortion in the African-American community.

“Something is wrong when those elected to protect the interests of their constituents turn a blind eye to the horrific impact that abortion is wreaking on the Black community,” said Catherine Davis of the Restoration Project. “In New York City, for every 1,000 Black babies born alive, 1,489 are aborted. In Washington, D.C., for every 100 Black babies born alive, 165 are aborted! Something is wrong!”

Read More At BET.com

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Anti-abortion organization, Issues4Life, created the campaign to bring awareness to what they describe as an abortion aided genocide of Black children. Abortion rights groups say the ads are simplifying a complex issue and dividing people.

“It is reprehensible, and disrespectful to the African-American community,” said Lupe Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the Alameda County branch of Planned Parenthood. “They’re trying to single out one part of the overall health care of that community, and using a wedge issue to divide people.”

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*Correction: The previous article said that CBS Outdoor Billboard Manager Jeff McCuen didn’t think the billboards were offensive. McCuen actually never made a comment on this story, and throughout the aggregation process, the writer made a mistake by attaching his name to comments that were never made by him.*

A series of controversial anti-abortion billboards that have been erected in the predominantly Black East and West Oakland areas will not be taken down.

CBS Outdoor Billboard Manager, Jeff McCuen, has been pressured to take the billboards down.

The sixty billboards in question show a sleeping African-American baby under the phrase, “Black & Beautiful” and a link: TooManyAborted.Com/CA.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee is outraged by the billboards which have popped up all over Black neighborhoods around the country.

“I am deeply offended by the race-based billboards that are being displayed in my congressional district,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee said in a statement. “These billboards stigmatize women of color and perpetuate myths about parenting skills and the types of women who seek and use abortion services.”

Read more at Life News

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Alabama, Kansas, Idaho, Indiana and Oklahoma have passed laws banning abortion with the new limitation, based on the theory that the fetus can feel pain at the 20-week stage of pregnancy. That theory disputes previous contentions set by the Supreme Court that abortions cannot be banned until the fetus becomes viable, around the 24th week.

The law could significantly impact African-Americans in two of the aforementioned states, Alabama and Indiana, where the abortion rate sits around 56 percent and 28 percent respectfully, according to State Health Facts.

The law has been used as a litmus test by some Republican presidential candidates, excluding Mitt Romney and Herman Cain, who have been criticized by conservatives and pro-life advocates.

Read More At NYTimes.com

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Using language that compares abortion to slavery and the infamous “three fifths” clause of the Constitution describing blacks as subhuman, these anti-choice messages attack African-American females with loaded words.

Instigated on Juneteenth, a day founded to celebrate blacks’ liberation from true slavery, the Radiance Foundation has used this date to make an offensive case, claiming legal access to abortion shackles blacks in modern chains.

Through statements such as “The 13th Amendment Freed Us. Abortion Enslaves Us,” and “Abortion Makes Three Fifths Human Seem Overly Generous,” the Radiance Foundation has co-opted the suffering African-Americans have endured to promote its pro-life agenda. Their justification? “Roe v. Wade has made a mockery of Civil Rights history by offering destruction and bondage instead of possibility and freedom,” according to their press release. But black leaders are balking at this simplistic line of reasoning.

Rep. Barbara Lee issued a statement blasting what she called “race-based billboards that… stigmatize women of color and perpetuate myths about parenting skills.” Yet some people agree that abortion is disproportionately killing children of color as part of a larger conspiracy to keep the number of African-Americans from growing. Leftist news site Think Progress reports:

Like other similar campaigns, the new slavery billboard is based on the conspiracy theory that abortion is actually a secret plot by groups like Planned Parenthood to execute “Black Genocide,” since the African American community has a higher rate of abortions than whites. In reality, as the Guttmacher Institute notes, the higher abortion rate reflects a greater prevalence of unintended pregnancies resulting from, among other factors, a lack of access to effective contraception. This problems, ironically, is exactly what groups like Planned Parenthood actively seek to solve.

But this theory, nonetheless, has some some powerful believers. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) said last year that African Americans were better off under slavery than they are now, because abortion was illegal then. Franks also has a bill to criminalize race- or sex-based abortions. GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain actually served as a spokesman for a group pushing the black genocide theory, cutting a radio ad that accused Democrats of wanting to kill “black babies.”

Regardless of whether such a conspiracy could be true, the fact that abortion is a choice renders such an implausible secret plan ineffective. It is precisely because women have the right to an abortion, or to carry a child to term, that they maintain power over their lives. And power is freedom. The Radiance Foundation and other anti-choice groups who want to seize this freedom by reducing women’s options in life are actually trying to recreate slavery by making women submit to dogma. This is a bondage to which African-American women will never return.

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The conservative group “Latino Partnership For Conservative Principles” is launching its anti-abortion crusade in California to coincide with a related conference — but the announcement of their mass messaging intent has already stolen its shine.

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Using language to deter Latinas from seeking abortions similar to the earlier billboards, these new ads will declare: “The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb.” Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the group behind this statement, argues that such propaganda is necessary to counteract the fact that, in his opinion, groups like Planned Parenthood coerce Latinas into having abortions at a rate of 200,000 per year. Aguilar also told Fox News Latino:

“Organizations like Planned Parenthood live off abortions,” he said. “They know they can target Latina women, who many times are younger, low income.”

“Latina women are victims of abortion, just the like the children being killed,” he said. “We see Latinas as victims, not perpetrators of crime.”

Planned Parenthood counters these claims with similar arguments made against the creators of the billboards aimed at black women that ran in Manhattan in February. The respected organization made it clear that it does not target women of any particular race; it only provides a wide array of services that are protective of overall female health.

In fact, the Vice President of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood, Celinda Vazquez, said: “I’m a Latina and personally it’s disturbing. Planned Parenthood just absolutely believes that every woman regardless of her ethnicity has the right to make informed decisions about her health, of course in consultation with her family and her faith.”

Well said, sister. We live in a country that protects both free speech and a woman’s right to choose if and when to have children. Groups like Latino Partnership For Conservative Principles and Life Always — which created the campaign seeking to influence black women — are unfortunately using their power to communicate freely to control the reproductive rights of others.

Latino conservatives can claim to see Latinas who have abortions as “victims,” but this latest manipulation illustrates a deep determination to take away a woman’s right to choose, simply clothed in sympathy. If society respects their right to free speech, conservatives must respect the rights of women to exercise their own power. Anything less will be met with full resistance. We are not fooled by offers of protection that are really declarations of war.

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JAMAICA — An article on The Grio touches on a frightening new trend of Jamaican women using preventative stomach ulcer medication to abort unwanted pregnancies.

The Grio reports:

Cytotec — the generic name for Misoprostol — is supposed to be accessible only by prescription. But according to reports the drug is being sold in markets and pharmacies around the country.

Demand for the so-called “abortion pill” has grown in recent years as women have learned about it from referrals or word of mouth. While the proper dosage for Cytotec is one pill per day, women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies take up to four or five pills in an hour. Without a doctor’s aid the women often take their instruction from the vendor, often non-medical professionals, that sell them the pill.

While doctors officially denounced Cytotec’s use as an abortion pill, they also point out that it is still a safer alternative to the risky back door terminations women may otherwise turn to.

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New Anti-Abortion Billboards Hit Black Communities

Tricia Fraser filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Texas-based Life Always over the billboard that went up briefly in Manhattan earlier this year.

Life Always did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The billboard pictured Fraser’s daughter, who is black, along with the words, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

The lawsuit claims the use of her daughter’s image was “defamatory, unauthorized and offensive.” It called the billboard “racist.”

Though the photograph was obtained legally, the lawsuit claims its license prohibited the use of the image in “defamatory” ways.

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CHICAGO — Anti-abortion billboard organization Life Always have installed their most recent questionable display in Black communities in Chicago. The latest billboards show an image of Barack Obama next to the words, “Every 21 minutes, our next possible leader is aborted.”

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ChicagoNow reports:

“The sponsors of these billboards are using race as a wedge issue to deny women the ability to make important personal medical decisions,” adds Carole Brite, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois. “…These billboards are offensive and disturbing. This is harmful to women in every community who need quality, affordable health care.”

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Dr. Kermit Gosnell

PHILADELPHIA — A jailed Philadelphia abortion doctor will sell his $900,000 beach home if he needs cash to defend himself in a capital murder case but will freeze other assets indefinitely amid a wrongful-death lawsuit, his lawyer said Wednesday.

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A Virginia family sued Dr. Kermit Gosnell over their mother’s death from a botched abortion in 2009, just months after the woman arrived in the U.S. from a refugee camp.

The family had sought to have Gosnell’s assets frozen so that any judgment could be paid, and Gosnell and his wife have agreed not sell any of the seven properties they own in Philadelphia.

Gosnell, 70, was not in court Wednesday because he is being held without bail, charged with eight counts of murder.

In January, prosecutors charged him in the death of patient Karnamaya Mongar, 41, and the deaths of seven viable babies allegedly killed with scissors after being born alive. His wife and eight other employees of the now-shuttered clinic are also charged with crimes.

Authorities believe Gosnell made millions of dollars over the years from a clinic they described as a filthy “house of horrors” that dispensed pills by day and performed abortions – often illegal, late-term abortions – on nights and weekends. The clinic went largely unregulated for more than a decade by state officials who failed to investigate repeated complaints, a grand jury found.

Mongar and her family had fled Bhutan and spent 18 years in refugee camps, mostly in Nepal. Months after arriving in the United States, she was referred to Gosnell by a Virginia clinic that did not perform second-trimester abortions.

According to the grand jury, unlicensed staff members gave Mongar, who was 4 feet, 11 inches tall and weighed 110 pounds, far too much anesthesia in the hours before Gosnell arrived to perform the abortion.

Mongar’s daughter, Yashoda Gurung, had accompanied her mother inside the clinic. She is now administering her mother’s estate.

“It is still agony because of the loss, because she was the matriarch of the family,” said Bernard Smalley, the family’s lawyer.

Gurung, 23, now cares for her own children and her younger brother in northern Virginia while Mongar’s husband works in a chicken plant in West Virginia.

The family didn’t know about the problems at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society until they were called to testify before the grand jury, Smalley said.

“They had no idea. They would have no reason to know that it was as extensive as it turned out to be,” he said.

The clinic, after three decades in business, was shut down within three months of Mongar’s death, after federal drug agents investigating the high-volume painkiller business made gruesome discoveries in the abortion rooms. They found fetal remains mixed among staff lunches in the office refrigerator, jars containing the feet of aborted fetuses and other unsanitary or disturbing practices.

Defense lawyer Jack McMahon told the judge Wednesday that Gosnell had no intention of selling his assets or transferring them to family members, including his six children, most of them adults. The youngest child, 13, is living with neighbors while her parents are in jail.

The doctor’s wife, Pearl, is charged with performing illegal abortions and other counts. Four of the eight other clinic workers are charged with murder.

The couple’s real estate holdings include their home near the Philadelphia Zoo, the nearby clinic and rental properties, authorities said.

“There’s been no showing my client is attempting to dissipate his assets … to avoid a judgment,” McMahon said.

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Fraser says the picture was taken at a modeling agency two years ago. She says she knew it could wind up being used as a stock photograph but didn’t expect anything like this.

The billboard was taken down after blacks complained.

A spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group that created the ad, Life Always, says it won’t use the girl’s picture again.

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Dr. Kermit Gosnell is scheduled to be in court Wednesday. Prosecutors say his West Philadelphia clinic was a squalid house of horrors where he and poorly trained staff regularly performed illegal abortions.

Authorities say Gosnell killed viable, live-born babies by severing their spinal cords with scissors. He is charged in the deaths of seven babies and one patient who died of a drug overdose.

Prosecutors say they are considering seeking the death penalty if Gosnell is convicted of first-degree murder.

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New York –  A controversial anti-abortion billboard in Soho aimed at African-American women and children is being pulled down after mass outrage from Black leaders.

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The Rev. Al Shaprton, who applied pressure to the group who put the ad up said that it was especially offensive during Black History Month.

“The billboard was offensive, especially during Black History Month, and I had intended to hold a press conference Friday in front of the billboard to protest the message of racial profiling and against a woman”s right to choose,” Sharpton said Thursday.

The group responsble for these ads, Life Always, has also placed similar ads in Texas.

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The sign in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood reads: “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.”

The campaign is by a group called Life Always. A board member, the Rev. Stephen Broden, who’s also black, likens abortion to “a genocidal plot.”

Brooklyn Councilwoman Letitia James, of the Working Families Party, calls the timing misguided. She tells the NYDailyNews.com that comparing abortion to genocide “is highly offensive.”

The group says its message counters what it calls Planned Parenthood’s “targeting of minority neighborhoods.”

Planned Parenthood, in turn, calls it an “offensive and condescending effort to stigmatize and shame African-American woman.”

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The Billboard is angering NYC residents according to DNA Info:

Mae Collazo, 38, who works across the street from the billboard, said she found the billboard incredibly offensive.

“I don’t like it all, what is that supposed to mean?” said Collazo, who is African American, “It makes it sound like all we do is abort our children.”

Collazo added that she didn’t think the higher percentage of abortions registered for African American women in New York necessarily reflect what is actually going on in the community, and questioned the source of the statistics and whether abortions conducted at private clinics are included in the statistics.

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Jan. 21, 2011: Davida Johnson, 30, seen with her husband Bobby Johnson, reacts as she reads a grand jury report brought to her by the Associated Press during an interview in Philadelphia. Johnson believes she contracted a venereal disease while undergoing an abortion in 2001 at Dr. Kermit Gosnell's clinic, and says she has since had four miscarriages.

PHILADELPHIA — When Davida Johnson walked into Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s clinic to get an abortion in 2001, she saw what she described as dazed women sitting in dirty, bloodstained recliners. As the abortion got under way, she had a change of heart — but claims she was forced by the doctor to continue.

“I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and he smacked me. They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication,” Johnson told The Associated Press.

Johnson, then 21, had a 3-year-old daughter when she became pregnant again. She said she first went to Planned Parenthood in downtown Philadelphia but was frightened away by protesters.

“The picketers out there, they just scared me half to death,” Johnson, now 30, recalled this week.

Someone sent her to Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic, at the Women’s Medical Society, saying anti-abortion protesters wouldn’t be a problem there. She said she paid him $400 cash.
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A few months after the abortion, she began to have gynecological problems. An examination revealed venereal disease. She blames Gosnell, 69, for the lifelong illness, which she declined to identify, and for the four miscarriages she has subsequently suffered.

Johnson learned last week that Philadelphia prosecutors believe Gosnell frequently delivered late-term babies alive at his clinic, then severed their spines with scissors, and often stored the fetal bodies — along with staff lunches — in refrigerators at the squalid facility. Tiny baby feet, prosecutors said, were discovered in specimen jars, lined up in a macabre collection.

“Did he do that to mine? Did he stab him in the neck?” Johnson asked at her North Philadelphia home. “Because I was out of it. I don’t know what he did to my baby.”

Gosnell was charged last week with killing seven babies born alive and with the 2009 death of a 41-year-old refugee after a botched abortion at the clinic, which prosecutors have called a drug mill by day and abortion mill by night. The medical practice alone netted him at least $1.8 million a year, much of it in cash, they say.

Prosecutors said uncounted hundreds more babies died there.

“(He) regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors,” said a report of the grand jury that investigated Gosnell and his clinic for a year.

The grand jury said while it believes Gosnell killed most of the babies he aborted after 24 weeks, it could not recommend murder charges for all of the cases.

“In order to constitute murder, the act must involve a baby who was born alive,” the grand jury said, adding that it was stymied by files that were falsified or removed and possibly destroyed.

“His entire practice showed nothing but a callous disdain for the lives of his patients,” said the nearly 300-page grand jury report, released Wednesday.

The panel also had scathing criticism for Pennsylvania state health and medical regulators, saying they had numerous opportunities to shut Gosnell down over the years but ignored complaint after complaint about filthy conditions and illegal operations.

In all, prosecutors said, state officials failed to inspect the clinic despite repeated complaints from 1993 until January 2010, when a federal drug raid investigating heavy painkiller distribution at the clinic shut it down.

“His contempt for laws designed to protect patients’ safety resulted in the death of Karnamaya Mongar,” the refugee from Bhutan, the grand jury report said.

Unlicensed staff members gave Mongar far too much anesthesia for her 4-foot-11-inch, 110-pound body, hours before Gosnell arrived for his evening slate of abortions, the grand jury charged.

Gosnell, at his arraignment Thursday, said he did not understand why he was being charged with eight counts of murder.

“I understand the one count, because a patient died, but I didn’t understand the seven counts,” he told a magistrate.

The magistrate explained the other counts involved babies who prosecutors say were born alive, and she denied him bail.

Four other clinic employees are charged with murder for roles prosecutors say they had in the deaths of Mongar or the viable babies. Gosnell’s wife was charged with performing illegal abortions and other crimes and is being held on $1 million bail.

Gosnell, in an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News after the clinic raid last year, described himself as someone who wanted to serve the poor and minorities in the neighborhood where he grew up and raised his six children, who include a doctor, a college professor and two children who are still at home.

Defense lawyer William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, said Gosnell “feels he has provided a general care medical facility in a fairly impoverished area for four decades.”

“That’s his belief,” Brennan said, “and he’s entitled to it.”

Gosnell told the magistrate he’s looking to retain another lawyer, and Brennan confirmed he’s not representing Gosnell anymore.

“I wish him well, but I am not taking this case,” Brennan said. “The doctor and I have had our run.”

In one 1999 case, prosecutors said, 20-year-old Marie Smith was sent home after a Gosnell abortion unaware that he had been unable to remove the entire fetus from her uterus. Days later, vomiting and with a swollen abdomen and severe infection, Smith was taken to a hospital, where she was rushed into surgery.

Her mother, Johnnie Mae Smith, said she was shocked at the “nasty and dirty, filthy” conditions in the clinic. When her daughter took ill days later, she called Gosnell.

“I said, ‘What did you do to my daughter? … My daughter’s about to die,’ Smith said. “He said, ‘Take her to the hospital.’”

Gosnell turned up at the hospital with his checkbook, she said, aiming to settle immediately. Instead, she chased him away, vowing to sue. Later, her daughter got $3,000, after lawyer fees, from a $5,000 settlement.

Johnson never sued over the abortion or ensuing venereal disease, but 46 other parties have, including the family of 22-year-old Semika Shaw, who prosecutors said died of sepsis at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in March 2002 two days after Gosnell perforated her uterus and cervix during an abortion.

Gosnell’s insurer later settled the family’s lawsuit over her death for $900,000 and referred a complaint and the settlement to state health officials who oversee the clinic and Gosnell’s medical license. The insurer’s complaint brought no action, prosecutors said, because a Board of Medicine attorney said “the risk was inherent with the procedure.”

Gosnell typically worked from about 8 p.m. until after midnight, arriving only after his pregnant patients were dilated, sedated and ready for the abortion procedure.

During the day, his untrained or undertrained staff ran the clinic and practiced medicine there, authorities said. They ranged from two supposed “doctors” who had finished medical school but had no licenses to Ashley Baldwin, the 15-year-old daughter of office manager Tina Baldwin, prosecutors said. The teenager came after school to administer anesthesia and assist with abortions, even past midnight, the grand jury charged.

“As Ashley’s involvement in Gosnell’s illegal practices became deeper — at one point she was working 50-hour weeks and well past midnight, while trying to complete high school — Tina did nothing to curtail her minor daughter’s exploitation by Gosnell,” prosecutors wrote in the report.

Tina Baldwin, 45, is charged with corruption of minors and helping to run a corrupt enterprise. Eight of her co-workers were charged with Gosnell.

Baldwin’s husband, Michael Baldwin, told the AP this week that his wife got the Gosnell clinic job eight years ago after a business school she attended referred her there for an internship. She worked up front, taking cash from patients as they walked in.

Baldwin denied that his wife performed any medical tasks or witnessed anything untoward at Gosnell’s clinic. Ashley worked in recovery, making sure the patients had clothes and a ride home, he said.

“How’s she going to give anesthesia? My daughter’s scared of needles,” he said of Ashley, who is now 20 and pregnant and still works in the medical field.

The younger woman, who prosecutors said was present the night Mongar died, was not charged.

Both women cooperated throughout the yearlong grand jury probe, and the family was therefore stunned — and angered — by Tina Baldwin’s pre-dawn arrest on Wednesday, Michael Baldwin said.

Mongar had fled Bhutan and had survived nearly 20 years in refugee camps in Nepal, even after cholera took the life of a 4-year-old daughter. She and her family had made it to the United States just four months earlier to pursue “all that America has to offer,” according to lawyer Bernard W. Smalley, who filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Gosnell this week.

“She was the matriarch of their family, and now she’s no longer there. Her children will all have to be raised without her,” Smalley told the AP.

Mongar was referred to Gosnell’s clinic in the city’s impoverished Mantua section by a clinic in Virginia that did not do second-trimester abortions. Abortions are legal in Pennsylvania until 24 weeks; prosecutors said Gosnell routinely performed illegal third-trimester abortions — when babies are viable and the procedure is far more dangerous.

Gosnell was certified in family practice but had never finished an obstetrics/gynecology residency. In the words of Joanne Pescatore, a lead prosecutor on the case, “He does not know how to do an abortion.”

Gosnell perforated the uteruses, bowels and cervixes of countless patients, the grand jury report charged. He left fetal parts inside, ignored postoperative pain and bleeding and passed venereal diseases from one patient to the next through bloody and dirty instruments, the report said.

Besides his abortion practice, authorities said, he ranked third in the state for the number of prescriptions he wrote for OxyContin, the highly addictive narcotic painkiller. Authorities allege that he left blank prescriptions for such drugs at his office and allowed staff to make them out to the cash-paying patients who streamed in during the day, when he wasn’t there.

Johnson’s husband, Bobby, was one of Gosnell’s pain patients. He said he went to Gosnell last year, paying $250 cash, to see the doctor about a debilitating pinched nerve. At the time, he said, he did not know his wife had gone to Gosnell years earlier, before they were married, for an abortion.

To defend his comments, Santorum compared the struggle of African Americans to achieve equal rights to the struggle to have fetuses have equal rights.

For decades certain human beings were wrongly treated as property and denied liberty in America because they were not considered persons under the constitution. Today other human beings, the unborn of all races, are also wrongly treated as property and denied the right to life for the same reason; because they are not considered persons under the constitution. I am disappointed that President Obama, who rightfully fights for civil rights, refuses to recognize the civil rights of the unborn in this country.

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New York–  Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, finds it “remarkable” that a black man like President Obama could support a woman’s right to choose  abortion.

In an interview with CNS News on Thursday, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum launched an attack on President Barack Obama over the issue, questioning his stance based on race.

Santorum:

“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?” he said. “And Barack Obama says no. Well if that human life is not a person then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”

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The Women's Medical Society in Philadelphia. Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, who catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women at the Women's Medical Society, was charged Wednesday Jan. 19, 2011, with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

PHILADELPHIA — A doctor who gave abortions to minorities, immigrants and poor women in a “house of horrors” clinic was charged with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, made millions of dollars over 30 years, performing as many illegal, late-term abortions as he could, prosecutors said. State regulators ignored complaints about him and failed to inspect his clinic since 1993, but no charges were warranted against them given time limits and existing law, District Attorney Seth Williams said. Nine of Gosnell’s employees also were charged.

Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord,” Williams said.

Patients were subjected to squalid and barbaric conditions at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society, where Gosnell performed dozens of abortions a day, prosecutors said. He mostly worked overnight hours after his untrained staff administered drugs to induce labor during the day, they said.

Early last year, authorities went to investigate drug-related complaints at the clinic and stumbled on what Williams called a “house of horrors.”

Bags and bottles holding aborted fetuses “were scattered throughout the building,” Williams said. “There were jars, lining shelves, with severed feet that he kept for no medical purpose.”

The clinic was shut down and Gosnell’s medical license was suspended after the raid.

Gosnell and four workers were charged with murder, while five others were charged with controlled drug violations and other crimes. None of the employees had any medical training, and one, a high school student, performed intravenous anesthesia with potentially lethal narcotics, Williams said.

All 10 defendants were taken into custody, authorities said.

Two listed numbers for Gosnell in Philadelphia have been disconnected. Defense lawyer William J. Brennan, who represented Gosnell during the investigation, noted that the doctor served patients in a low-income city neighborhood for decades.

“Obviously, these allegations are very, very serious,” Brennan said.

The grand jury said the woman who died was a patient who came to Gosnell’s clinic for an abortion and died of cardiac arrest because she was given too much Demerol. Gosnell wasn’t at the clinic at the time, but directed his staff to administer the drug to keep the woman, a healthy 41-year-old woman, sedated until he arrived, prosecutors said.

Gosnell has been named in at least 46 malpractice suits, including one over the death of a 22-year-old mother who died of sepsis and a perforated uterus in 2000. Many others also involve perforated uteruses. Gosnell sometimes sewed up the injury without telling women their uteruses had been perforated, prosecutors said.

Gosnell charged $325 for first-trimester abortions and $1,600 to $3,000 for abortions up to 30 weeks. Abortions are legal up to 24 weeks gestation in Pennsylvania, although most doctors won’t perform them after 20 weeks, prosecutors said.

Some women came from across the mid-Atlantic for the illegal late-term abortions, authorities said. White women from the suburbs were ushered into a separate, slightly cleaner area because Gosnell believed they were more likely to file complaints, Williams said.

“People knew near and far that if you needed a late-term abortion you could go see Dr. Gosnell,” Williams said.

Few if any of the sedated women knew their babies were born alive and then killed, prosecutors said. Many were first-time mothers who were told they were 24 weeks pregnant, even if they were further along, authorities said.

Gosnell got his medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and is board certified in family practice. He started, but did not finish, a residency in obstetrics-gynecology, authorities said.

“He does not know how to do an abortion. He’s not board certified,” Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said. “Once he got them there, he saw dollar signs and did abortions that other people wouldn’t do.”

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“The most dangerous place for African-American children is the womb”, is  an example of messages that have been sent out by the organization.

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Read more at Womanist-Musings.com

Wisconsin — Using 13 billboards in Milwaukee, Pro-Life Wisconsin says it wants to raise awareness of what it calls the disproportionate abortion rate among African-American women in Wisconsin.
According to the organization, which works to outlaw abortion, the billboards appeared Nov. 29, 2010, and will stay up for 30 days. They feature one of two messages: “Black children are in danger” or “Black & Beautiful.”

Each billboard shows a picture of an African-American infant and lists a website — TooManyAborted.com/WI. That website, and an announcement about the billboards issued by Pro-Life Wisconsin, make the same claim:

In Wisconsin, “6.2 percent of the population is black, yet 24 percent of all state abortions are on African-Americans.”

Read more at Politifact

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Authorities say Dominic Holt-Reid pointed a handgun at his pregnant girlfriend and forced her to drive to a women’s clinic, where she was able to slip a note to an employee who got help. She was not harmed.

Holt-Reid entered the not guilty plea in Franklin County Common Pleas Court and was ordered held on $350,000 bond. A public defense attorney for him did not comment.

In court, public defender Priya Tamilarasan said Holt-Reid is a lifelong Columbus resident and father of six children who lives with his aunt. He attends Columbus State Community College full time, taking classes on heating and air conditioning, school spokesman David Wayne said.

The attempted murder count was filed because Holt-Reid tried “at gunpoint to force her to have an abortion against her will,” county prosecutor Ron O’Brien said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

O’Brien said Ohio previously rewrote its murder law to prohibit the “unlawful termination of a pregnancy” to avoid a debate over an unborn fetus’ legal rights. The statute has allowed his office to win convictions on two counts in murder cases in which the victim was pregnant, he said.

The Columbus Dispatch first reported O’Brien’s filing.

Police said Holt-Reid had become angry with Yolanda Burgess because she refused to go through with an abortion scheduled Oct. 6 at a women’s clinic. After the two dropped their 5-year-old child off at school, Holt-Reid took a loaded .45-caliber handgun out of the glove compartment of Burgess’ car, aimed it at her, threatened her and forced her to drive to the clinic, police said.

Once there, Burgess was able to slip a note to an employee, who notified police.

It was unclear Wednesday whether Burgess still is pregnant and, if so, how many months. A woman answering the phone at a listing for Yolanda Burgess said it was a wrong number.

Federal court documents and the Bureau of Prisons show that Holt-Reid served a 20-month sentence in federal prison stemming from a 2007 drug conviction and is on supervised release. A message left with the attorney who represented Holt-Reid in the federal case was not immediately returned.

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“The Most Dangerous Place for An African American is in the Womb.” Although the statement is clear, the message is not. The billboard was placed there by Heroic Media, a faith-based non-profit out of Austin Texas that promotes alternatives to abortion. The billboard was paid for by ticket sales from an event in Jacksonville, featuring Sarah Palin.

“While African Americans make up thirteen percent of the population in America, they represent 36 percent of the abortions in the United States,” says Marissa Gabrysch from Heroic Media. “In the African American community, twice as many deaths have occurred due to abortions than the combined totals of violent crime, cancer, heart disease and AIDS,” she continues.

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