ARTICLES

It Is a War Against Hispanics

NEW ABORTION CLINIC OPENS IN SAN YSIDRO

By Ivan Barrera

December 8, 1997, marked the third anniversary of the murder of a young Tijuana woman by an abortionist in San Ysidro. Magdalena Ortega Rodríguez was a 23-year-old single mother when she died at the hands of Dr. Suresh Gandotra, leaving behind her 11-month-old daughter, Ashley.

According to medical reports, parts of the bowels, cervix, bladder and uterus of Magdalena were lacerated by Gandotra while performing the abortion. This caused heavy internal bleeding, which eventually caused her death. Parts of the baby girl were found inside Magdalena by Dr. Francisco Anguiano of Scripps Hospital in Chula Vista. The evaluation of the child's gestational age by Dr. Anguiano was 30 weeks (approximately 7 months), while Dr. Gandotra had written in Magdalena's medical records that she was only 22 weeks pregnant.

A week after the fatal incident, El Norte Clinic on San Ysidro Boulevard was shut down, and the medical license of Dr. Gandotra was suspended. A few months later a warrant for Dr. Gandotra's arrest was issued. He has been evading justice ever since. It is believed he fled to India.

"Someone suggested that we should file a lawsuit against Dr. Gandotra, but we were too hurt to even think about it," said Cecilio Ortega, Magdalena's 57-year-old father.

Later, however, Magdalena's parents changed their minds. "After a while, my wife and I decided to seek justice on behalf of our granddaughter, Ashley, who is now four years old. I want him caught, locked up and punished because of what he did. That man killed our daughter."

"We don't want money," said María de los Angeles Ortega, Magdalena's 53-year-old mother, tears welling in her eyes. "I can't buy my daughter's life with all the money in the world. I want justice. My granddaughter, my little Ashley, was left without a mother. I am not going to buy her a mother or buy me another daughter with money."

Today a new abortion clinic is operating in the same shopping center on San Ysidro Boulevard as the El Norte Clinic. Just a few feet away, an abortion clinic with the unlikely name "The Birthplace" has opened its doors and continues to kill babies.

The Birthplace did not offer abortions when it opened as a Sharp Hospital­affiliated clinic right after the closing of El Norte. The physician whose name appears on the storefront window, Karl Evelyn, had, according to a 1991 story in News Notes, stopped performing abortions. But, according to a March, 1995 News Notes survey, Evelyn started up again at the Hillcrest office of the Birthplace and the new San Ysidro clinic. The physician listed in the white pages of the phone book under "Sharp The Birthplace... San Ysidro Office" is Dr. William Swartz, a late-term abortionist at least since 1980, who coincidentally signed the 1986 death certificate of a young San Diego woman who ended up as poster child in the 1994 pro-euthanasia campaign in Oregon. Up to 1988 Swartz was doing saline abortions (where baby is burned alive) for later than five months.

Calls to Sharp/The Birthplace in January revealed that abortions through 11 weeks' gestation are done in San Ysidro; later abortions are sent to central San Diego. The receptionist would not reveal which doctor does abortions on which days.

Father Ricardo Mejía of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in San Ysidro is familiar with the tactics of the abortion industry and the methods they use to lure women.

"The name 'maternidad' [maternity] means 'life of a mother,' and abortion clinics use these kinds of words to deceive women, to gain their trust and make the women rely on them for their medical needs, but in reality they are slaughterhouses where innocent children are killed," said Fr. Mejía.

Martha Echegoyen, a member of Fr. Mejía's parish, has been a pro-life activist for seven years. "The first time I participated in a pro-life rescue mission was at El Norte Clinic in San Ysidro in 1990," she recalled. "The invitation came from Operation Rescue. When I got there that Sunday there was a lot of police cars and trucks outside the abortion clinic, even the SWAT team was there. Even though nobody got arrested, I was very scared.

"The demonstration that we were engaged in was very peaceful. The police were looking for something illegal that we would do in order to arrest us. That was my first rescue experience. That same day somebody gave me a video about abortion and it really opened my eyes. That video gave me the courage to go to the abortion clinic the next day. There is where I met Jaime and Carmen Beatriz Bernal. This couple taught us the do's and don'ts of sidewalk counseling.

"We had some rescues at that clinic. I remember a 14­year-old girl that was raped by her own father, and after speaking with us she decided to have her baby. The baby was born without any mental or physical problems. That was one of the first rescues we did at El Norte Clinic. Another rescue that I remember is of a young girl that also did not abort her child, and a few years later she married and had another baby. She is very happy she chose life."

Carmen Beatriz Bernal is one of the most experienced pro-life activists in Southern California. Today she is dean of Tecnologico de Baja California, a Catholic university in Tijuana, Mexico. For years she provided sidewalk counseling at different abortion clinics, and has given numerous talks on pro-life issues.

"The time to act is now," said Bernal in a telephone interview. "Until recently, you could not even distribute pro-life fliers outside Sunday Mass because some priests would tell you to leave. Abortion was considered a political issue, and churches were afraid to lose their non-profit organization status by speaking against abortion to their flock. But lately I have seen an increase in prayer at Masses to end abortion. At different Masses that I have attended, I have heard some priests asking for prayer for women that are thinking of having an abortion.

"I was very surprised when I recently heard a Mass in St. Rose of Lima parish in Chula Vista in which we were asked to pray for the aborted babies, their mothers and pro-abortion politicians, so that they would change their way of thinking. Today there are a lot of congressmen and many politicians that are pro-life. The time to act is now."

"It is a war against Hispanics," says Hilaria Baez, a San Diego County pro-life activist who has concentrated much of her activity in the South Bay's predominantly Latino communities. "The majority of women who abort are between 16 and 27 years old. Ninety-five percent of women who come to the United States to have an abortion are Mexican. During the five years that I was giving sidewalk counseling outside the El Norte Clinic, only two women were not Hispanic, one of them was a black woman and the other was a Filipina. The rest of them were Mexicans from Tijuana, Rosarito, Tecate, Mexicali, and even from Guadalajara and Mexico City.

"During the 1960s Tijuana was the abortion emporium because in the United States it was illegal, but with the legalization of abortion in 1973, the amount of abortions done in Tijuana declined drastically. Still, today many abortion doctors in Tijuana receive some kind of monetary compensation for sending women to the United States to have an abortion done.

"Many abortion clinics give free pregnancy tests and then offer the abortion. I knew of many cases that the pregnancy test was altered so that the result was positive, but after the same test was done by a pro-life doctor, it showed that the young woman was not pregnant. The abortion clinics lied and women paid for a fictitious abortion. Money is the main interest in this industry.

"Another way these clinics get customers is by distributing fliers or business cards in places like maquiladoras or outside of hospitals and clinics in Tijuana. Some women are even sent by doctors that work for government hospitals in Mexico to have an abortion done in the United States. I knew some women that got pregnant by their supervisors in the maquiladora industry and were brought to the United States to have an abortion. Some girls did not even have a passport to come in to the United States so they hired a man to cross them over illegally. At the sidewalk counseling we tried to persuade them not to kill their babies, but they would often tell us that they paid a lot of money to cross over illegally and that they had to abort after all of that effort to come here."

Currently, Hilaria is training a group of young men and women that will provide sidewalk counseling outside of abortion clinics. "People that come to abortion clinics are usually deceived," she said. "Abortion is not a solution to their problem and we do offer them other options, among them, adoption."

Under the guise of 'women's health care,' abortion is heavily promoted through advertising in Spanish-language television, newspapers and radio stations. The abortionists offer to resolve the pregnancy 'problem' at their clinics. In many cases, the clinics take advantage of the confusion and fear these women feel, and push them to make a decision that they will later regret.

Such is the case of Gabriela Gonzales, a 28­year-old mother of three who, at the age of 16, had an abortion. "I was pregnant, alone and very scared," she explained. "A friend drove me over to Chula Vista to have an abortion. After the doctor gave me a very brief exam, I was lying on the hospital bed. I decided at that moment not to have the abortion, but the nurse and doctor grabbed me and held me down and told me to be calm. They must have injected me with some kind of sedative because I immediately felt no strength to fight them off. They started the abortion procedure and I felt very bad afterwards. I wish that somebody would have talked to me before my terrible decision." Gabriela now gives her testimony to other women who are thinking of having an abortion.

"Tijuana is like a suburb of San Diego County," says father Rich Perozich, pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish. "I was at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in San Ysidro from 1992 to 1994, and I used to protest with some other people several times a week at the El Norte abortion clinic. We prayed the rosary and gave sidewalk counseling to the women who entered the clinic, but most women ignored us. There is no respect for human life. Many people see abortion as contraception. Most kids have no shame; they see sex and pregnancy at their age as normal. It is like a reputation, an attitude that they should follow, and abortion offers them the easy way out." *

Those who wish to join the sidewalk counseling/protest/prayers at the Birthplace may call 619-235-3000 ext. 222 for more information.