Questions Still Surround Morbelli Tragedy

As I posted yesterday, last week twenty-nine year old Jennifer Morbelli sought a late-term abortion from Leroy Carhart.  It went horribly wrong, and she had massive internal bleeding in her abdominal cavity.  She went into a Code Blue condition six times before passing away from her injuries. The reason for her late-term abortion is still unknown.  Unless the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, late-term abortions are illegal in the United States under the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

According to Jill Stanek, a leading pro-life advocate, the child was wanted, but was suffering from “fetal anomalies.”  What these anomalies were are still unknown.  All we do know is that upon learning upon her baby’s condition two week ago:

Jennifer, her husband, her parents, and her sister traveled to Carhart’s late-term Germantown Reproductive Health Services abortion clinic in Germantown,Maryland, last weekend. Carhart began the abortion process on Sunday, February 3, in the afternoon, according to sidewalk counselors who maintain a constant presence at the clinic when it is open. They noted Jennifer appeared “very” late-term. According to those counselors, Sunday is when Carhart kills late-term babies by lethal injection into the heart through the mothers’ abdominal wall.

Jennifer and her family returned on Monday, presumably to begin the labor induction process by insertion of laminaria or prostaglandins to dilate the cervix, and again on Tuesday. They likely spent each night at a nearby hotel, as is the usual process for a multi-day, late-term abortion at Carhart’s Germantown clinic. Each day sidewalk counselors noted in real-time annotations that Jennifer appeared more and more pale.

The family returned again on Wednesday, presumably for the delivery of Jennifer’s dead baby Madison, staying nine hours, an extraordinary length of time. They left at 4:35 p.m. Carhart and his wife Mary Lou left soon afterward. The two typically fly out on Wednesday afternoons to either Indianapolis, Indiana, or Bellevue, Nebraska, to commit abortions on Thursdays. Carhart is what’s known as a “circuit rider” abortionist.

At approximately 5:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 7, Jennifer presented at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, which is almost nine miles fromCarhart’s clinic. Family members told hospital personnel they had tried to reach Carhart several times, but he did not return their calls.

At approximately 9:00 a.m. Jennifer coded. She coded a total of six times before she was pronounced dead at about 10:00 a.m. It was during this time Carhart called the hospital. He never showed up.

What’s more disturbing, according to Stanek, is that the state of Maryland licensed seventeen abortion clinics, including Carhart’s, without inspecting one of them.

LifeSiteNews reported on February 12 that the police and medical authorities are investigating this matter.

The Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has autopsied Morbelli’s body, but officials say a complete review could take more than a month.

Tricia Nay, the medical director of Maryland’s Office of Health Care Quality, confirmed that her office is looking into the matter. “We are aware of this incident, and we do have an ongoing investigation,” said Nay.

The probe into Morbelli’s death comes as the controversial abortion facility is also under investigation by the Maryland Attorney General’s office for charges of illegal dumping of biohazardous waste – possibly including the remains of aborted infants – and private patient information.

As I’ve written in a previous post, this isn’t the first patient that has died from a botched abortion from Dr. Carhart. In 2005, Christin Gilbert died after a failed late-term abortion, which was the result of a sexual assault.  After Tiller “gave her [Christin’s] baby a fatal digoxin injection to the heart. Christin was prepared for labor and delivery of her dead child. Her cervix was filled with laminaria and she was sent back to her hotel room at the La Quinta Inn, located about 1-2 miles from WHCS on East Kellogg in Wichita.” The baby was expelled, but Christin suffered a tear in her uterus, which was taken care of during the procedure.  However:

at this point, Carhart allegedly administered the abortion drug RU 486 to Christin. This drug is approved for medical abortions in pregnancies prior to the 6th week of gestation. The drug has been responsible for at least six deaths in the United States between 2001 and 2006.

RU 486 was apparently meant to be an “insurance policy” to make sure everything had been expelled from the uterus, but the drug was not approved by the FDA for that purpose. RU 486 was also approved as an oral medication, not as a vaginal suppository, which many believe contributed to life-threatening complications and deaths in women who used it in this way. It is believed that Carhart administered RU 486 to Christin as a vaginal suppository even though her uterus had suffered a laceration and was susceptible to infection.

Symptoms that Christin experienced after the administration of RU 486 were comparable to the symptoms of other women who have died from RU 486 nationwide, which include hemorrhage and sepsis.

Needless to say, the results were equally tragic.  Christin Gilbert died at the age of nineteen.

CORRECTION: In my previous post, I mistakenly wrote that Morbelli slipped into a coma before passing away.  She went – tragically – into Code Blue (cardiac/respiratory arrest) six times before she died.