* Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:23 EST
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/botche ... illborn-ba
Abortionist Martin Haskell
by Kathleen Gilbert
SHARONVILLE, Ohio, October 5, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The mayor of Sharonville, Ohio has taken state health officials to task for letting late-term abortionist Martin Haskell off the hook for violating health standards.
The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) recently updated a “variance” for Haskell that allows him to continue doing abortions without having to comply with laws that require physicians at such facilities to maintain valid Ambulatory Transfer agreements or have admitting privileges at local qualified hospitals.
In July, Mercy Hospital had informed Haskell that his courtesy privileges would not be renewed.
Fears for the safety of Haskell’s patients were soon validated: in his recent statement, Mayor Virgil Lovitt, who also serves as the President of the Sharonville Board of Health, revealed that Haskell’s Sharonville abortion clinic has already caused at least two serious abortion complications.
“Haskell’s two-day process for late term abortions has already produced one stillborn baby in a hotel toilet and another in a car on the way to an ER. These complications are difficult to track, and there are probably more than we know,” stated Lovitt.
Lovitt went on to describe a meeting that took place in August , 2011, where he and several pro-life leaders discussed the Haskell variance issue with the new director of the Ohio Department of Health, Dr. Ted Wymyslo.
“In that meeting I begged the new director not to liberalize the variance if Martin Haskell’s privileges at an area hospital changed,” he said.
But ODH records dated September 13, 2011, show that the ODH has done just that. Haskell’s partner, Roslyn Kade, along with two Ob/Gyns with privileges at The Christ Hospital, will now be allowed to substitute for Women’s Med Center abortionists who cannot meet the legal requirements.
“We should all be appalled that the health and safety of women takes a back seat to the profit-margin of this late-term abortion business in Ohio,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “The fact that Haskell, who is 71, and several of his abortionists cannot get local hospital privileges should send up a red flag. The laws were enacted for a reason, and to grant abortionists special permission to violate those laws is as dangerous as it is wrong.”
Mayor Lovitt had expressed concerns about Haskell’s abortion business when it relocated to Sharonville from Cincinnati last year. In particular he expressed concern that Haskell’s Women’s Med Center did not comply with the law requiring that abortionists maintain valid Ambulatory Transfer agreements or have admitting privileges at local qualified hospitals.
“It is the belief of the Sharonville Board of Health that this waiver/variance was improperly granted and compromises the health, safety and welfare of the general public,” Lovitt wrote to the ODH at that time.
