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Abortion Invasion

Notorious Chula Vista Abortuary Advertising on Tijuana Television Station

BY FRANCISCO PANDURO

One recent evening, while watching the news on cable Channel 21 in Tijuana with her husband, Lucía de Flores says she couldn't believe what she saw and heard: an impeccably dressed woman speaking in Spanish -- though with an obvious American accent -- advising viewers, "If you have an unwanted pregnancy, we can help. No appointment necessary. We offer help 24-hours a day." The advertisement was for the notorious abortion clinic La Clínica Médica Para la Mujer de Hoy at 1550 Broadway in Chula Vista, part of a chain of Southern California abortuaries that has long targeted Hispanics.

Flores, who runs the pro-life pregnancy-counseling center Centro de Ayuda Para La Mujer in Tijuana, immediately called Channel 21 to complain. She says it took several calls before she was able to reach a station executive. The executive she finally spoke to told her that the abortion clinic purchased the advertising through the station's agency in Chula Vista and falsely advised Channel 21 that it did not perform abortions. "It was a matter of bad faith," the station executive told Flores. Once the contract with the abortion clinic expires, he said, it will not be renewed.

Other television stations in Tijuana refuse advertising from abortion clinics. At Channel 12 (XEWT-TV), an advertising executive said that it is the policy of the station to refuse ads for abortion because abortion is illegal in Mexico. At Channel 33 (XHAS-TV), a spokeswoman said the station also will not run ads for abortion.

Flores, the mother of seven children and grandmother of six, called the telephone number she heard during the ad and discovered the following: the charge for an abortion is around $300 for a first-trimester abortion, and the fee goes up as the pregnancy advances. After six months, the abortion requires two days, and the patient must stay somewhere near the clinic.

What they did not tell Flores when she called the clinic was that La Clínica Médica Para La Mujer de Hoy has a long history of employing physicians who have been suspended or otherwise disciplined by the California Medical Board for injuring women while performing abortions.

The current doctor at the Chula Vista abortion clinic is Dr. Phillip Rand, who is 84 years old and graduated from medical school in 1944. Dr. Rand has had nearly 40 lawsuits for personal injury filed against him by women he has treated. Among them are a 1990 case in which a woman delivered a dead fetus in her home after Dr. Rand said he had performed an abortion, another 1990 case in which a woman had her uterus perforated during an abortion performed by Rand, and a 1988 case in which a woman was required to undergo a hysterectomy after her uterus became infected following an abortion in which Rand failed to removed all of the fetus.

In 1992, Rand declared bankruptcy, making it impossible for women injured by him to collect money awarded to them by the courts. He is currently again facing disciplinary action before the state medical board for allegedly repeatedly prescribing tranquilizers to a known drug addict. The latest accusations by the medical board were filed against Rand in October 2003 and allege "gross negligence, repeated negligent acts and incompetence."

La Clinica Médica Para La Mujer de Hoy was once owned by Dr. Nicholas G. Braemer as part of a chain of 10 abortion clinics in Southern California with the same name. Braemer was forced to surrender his license to practice medicine in California in August 2000 after the medical board accused him of gross negligence in a case in which he punctured the uterus and injured the bowel of a woman during a 1996 abortion. Previously, Braemer had been disciplined by the medical board after he was convicted of criminal fraud for cheating the Medi-Cal program. Braemer was also accused by the medical board of injuring another woman in 1987 by failing to remove the entire fetus during an abortion, causing the woman to suffer a severe infection.

Two other physicians, who were working at La Clinica Médica Para La Mujer de Hoy in April 1999 but are no longer there, were also disciplined by state authorities for misconduct: Dr. Mohamed F. Dia, who surrendered his license to practice medicine in September 1999 after being accused by the state of California's medical board of negligence and incompetence in two different cases, including one in which he perforated the uterus of a woman undergoing an abortion; and Dr. Laurence A. Reich, an osteopath who is still practicing (but not in Chula Vista) after completing 10 years of probation following criminal convictions in which two women claimed he sexually assaulted them when they went to him for an abortion.

Flores said that at her pro-life counseling center in downtown Tijuana many clients return for counseling because the center offers a wide range of help to pregnant women in difficult circumstances. "But at La Clínica Medica Para La Mujer de Hoy in Chula Vista, all they are interested in is that the woman authorize an abortion. They don't try to explain all the negative consequences that accepting an abortion can bring," she said.

The Chula Vista clinic has long attracted the attention of pro-lifers, who have followed it from its old address on H Street, half a block from Saint Rose of Lima parish, where it was forced out of business by redevelopment, to its new location on Broadway. Since February, about 15 people gather outside the abortuary once a month to pray the rosary and offer counseling to women considering abortion.

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