ARTICLES

Murderers' Row

DIMINISHING MARKET HAS ABORTIONISTS FIGHTING AMONG THEMSELVES

By Lesley Payne

Nearly 90 percent of doctors of freestanding abortion clinics are on probation with the state Medical Board, according to the February 28, 1998 newsletter of the pro-abortion group Feminist Women's Health Center. California pro-life activists are not surprised by the figure. For years, probation has been the board's token punishment for abortionists who repeatedly injure and kill their patients. When Los Angeles-area abortionist and plastic surgeon Patrick Chavis lost his license last year, it was for a botched liposuction procedure that resulted in a woman's death.

So why, within the last year and a half, were two Southern California abortionists -- Bruce Steir and Gordon Goei -- charged with murder? (Goei's charge was later reduced to practicing medicine without a license and performing an illegal abortion.)

The answer may lie in the politics of California's abortion industry. According to long-time pro-life advocates, there appear to be two major camps: the Allred camp -- abortionists friendly with mega-abortionist and horse-racing magnate Dr. Edward Allred -- and the Feminist Women's Health Center camp, affiliated with that statewide chain of women's clinics. Local pro-life observers say that both Goei and Steir are on the "outs" with Allred and fall within the opposing camp. In a May phone conversation, Eileen Schnitger of the Feminist Women's Health Clinic main office in Chico said that, before his arrest, Steir was one of the doctors her facility relied on to perform its later-term abortions.

While the boom has been lowered on Steir and Goei, pro-lifers find it interesting that abortionists friendly with Allred -- whose political largess to Governor Pete Wilson is well-known -- have gone virtually unpunished for their offenses:

* Leo Kenneally killed four women in a two-year period, was prosecuted by the Medical Board, and had his license reinstated by an administrative law judge on the grounds that low-income areas need abortionists, even bad ones. Dixon Arnett, executive director of the Medical Board at the time Kenneally was disciplined, was moved to the State Department on Aging by Pete Wilson shortly after the Kenneally case. Allred took over Kenneally's abortion mill, Her Medical Clinic, made it an affiliate of his Family Planning Associates chain during Kenneally's one-year probation, then turned the business back over to Kenneally, who continues to operate it.

* Milton Barke's clinic, Inglewood Women's Hospital, was the source of most of the 16,433 dead fetuses found in 1982 in a metal storage container, a case infamous as the "American Holocaust." Inglewood Women's Hospital was subsequently shut down by the state health facility licensing division because of several deaths to mothers and repeated violations of the health code. Allred bought the facility in 1988, reopened it as part of his Family Planning Associates chain of abortion clinics, and hired Barke as a staff abortionist.

* William Waddill failed in his attempt to abort a baby girl at Westminster Community Hospital in 1977, so he strangled her to death. He was tried twice in 1978; in both instances, the jury deadlocked, and the district attorney dropped the case. Allred subsequently hired Waddill as a staff abortionist. He still works at Family Planning Associates facilities in Newport Beach and Orange.

Feelings between the camps of the wealthy Republican businessman Allred and the more ideological Feminist Women's Health Clinic have apparently changed little since 1984, when Allred made the following comments to a group of pro-life Christians in Downey, who had invited him to "dialogue": "They've been very bitter opponents of ours -- and I try basically to ignore them....They're basically lesbian-oriented and...they despise everything this country stands for. They're trying to sovietize this country."

An Allred employee, Dr. Michael Morris of the Riverside Family Planning Associates office -- a local competitor of the Moreno Valley clinic where Steir killed Sharon Hamptlon in December 1996 -- will be testifying against Steir at his murder trial.

"What is driving this is economics," says a Riverside pro-lifer. "Abortions are down. It's a shrinking pie. As long as there was plenty of business to go around, the political in-fighting among the holders of differing pro-abortion ideologies didn't matter. But as the number of abortions declines year to year -- it's hard to say precisely why -- then, if a clinic is going to shut down for lack of business, I'm sure Allred is determined that he's not going to be the one to bite the dust and that it might as well be somebody he doesn't like, anyway."

However, according to Feminist Women's Health Clinic's Schnitger, who is a member of the group's "Dr. Bruce Steir Constitutional Litigation Fund," Family Planning Associates made a donation to Steir's defense fund. Schnitger said she was unaware that one of Allred's doctors was going to testify against Steir. She said the anti-Steir testimony of another local competitor, Dr. Eugene Albright from the Riverside Planned Parenthood office, might very well be motivated by a desire to put a competitor out of business.

Feminist Women's Health Clinic views Steir's murder charge as evidence of "harassment and discrimination of abortion doctors by the Medical Board" and persecution by a fundamentalist Christian, anti-abortion judge, according to their newsletters. Their March 3 "Steir Defense Committee Update" describes Steir in glowing terms, not mentioning his several previous negligence charges, the disciplinary measures for which the medical board failed to enforce. The feminists express no remorse for the death of Steir's victim, 27-year-old Sharon Hamptlon, presenting her throughout their report simply as the "patient," and claiming that the care she received "met or exceeded that standard of care."

Though they think Steir's murder charge may be justified, many pro-lifers agree it seems odd coming from a legal system which has consistently declined to prosecute abortionists who kill women (Kenneally), strangle babies born alive during abortions (Waddill), leave the survivors of their botched abortions severely handicapped (Joseph Durante, at San Diego's Womancare), sexually molest patients on the operating table (Scott Ricke, a former employee of Inglewood Women's Hospital) or defraud Medi-Cal (Durante, Allred employee Joseph Marmet, and a host of others).

In March, Steir's friend and fellow abortionist Dr. Forrest Smith, operator of the Pregnancy Consultation Services chain of clinics in Northern California, attended an Operation Rescue rally in Walnut Creek at which Norma McCorvey spoke. After the rally, he asked to be permitted to speak.

According to OR members who were present, Smith asked that the pro-lifers join the fight against Steir's murder charge on principle. He compared the abortionist's situation to that of Operation Rescue leader Flip Benham, who was held in jail for many months without bail on a charge of trespassing. Smith said in light of what his friend Steir was going through, he was considering making a donation to Benham's defense fund.

After hearing of Smith's request, L.A-area pro-life activist Tim Wilson spoke with Steir personally then wrote a letter on his behalf to the Riverside district attorney's office.

"[A]s long as there exists the legal fiction that the unborn child is not a person, entitled to protection by the state, then it is unjust to charge Bruce Steir with murder," wrote Wilson. "I do not know of any abortionists who have intended to kill a woman while performing an abortion. Their intent is to take the life of the unborn child, which, unfortunately, is legal....He has already given up his medical license and his occupation. I think a charge of involuntary manslaughter would be more appropriate."