ARTICLES

Death Travels

Itinerant Abortionists Sued

by Maggie Garcia

The Sacramento area has its share of notorious abortionists, as research into public records reveals. And it is not unusual for these abortionists to travel throughout the state plying their trade.

Sacramento-based John W. Allen, M.D., is such an abortionist. Allen, who normally works at the Sacramento Medical Group for Women, is currently involved in a lawsuit stemming from an abortion he performed at a clinic owned by another abortionist, Dr. Joseph Durante. Because Durante has been on probation with the California Medical Board, he has hired other doctors, such as Dr. Allen, to perform abortions at his Riverside County abortion clinics.

Court records reveal that on August 10, 1998, Allen performed an abortion on Ann Marie Santana at Durante-owned A Lady's Choice Medical Clinic. The lawsuit alleges that Santana's uterus and bowel was perforated by Allen during the abortion procedure. The day after Santana underwent the abortion, she went back to the clinic because of severe intestinal pain. Durante treated Santana and sent her home.

On August 12, Santana, who continued to have problems, went to an emergency clinic, after calling Durante's office, which referred her to a doctor who was unavailable. Santana underwent emergency surgery at Victor Valley Community Hospital to repair her uterus and bowel. She spent 8 days in intensive care, some of which was spent on a ventilator, the lawsuit states.

Along with Allen and Durante, Bonifacio Regis, the Inland Empire Health Plan and Vantage Medical Group were sued as well. Jack Schuler, Santana's attorney said that Regis, the Inland Empire Health Plan and Vantage Medical group were negligent when they referred Santana to Durante for an abortion.

Schuler: "These HMO's have legally taken over patients' rights to choose their own qualified doctors. That requires them to use judgement to protect their members when they subject their patients to potential risk and injuries by choosing incompetent doctors with long term problems with the medical board. By not doing so, they have abused their position. Ann Marie Santana was stripped of her right to choose her own physician and they [the HMO] abused their fiduciary duty to her in order to save a few bucks."

According to Schuler, Dr. Durante has a string of accusations against him by the California Medical Board. On April 28, 1995, the medical board filed an accusation against Durante for performing a late term abortion on a teenage patient without first performing ultrasound. According to a July 23, 1999 Riverside Press Enterprise story, Durante did not perform an ultrasound on the young woman who stated that she was 2 to 3 months pregnant. The baby survived the abortion and was later prematurely born at a hospital and survived. Durante was found at fault by the medical board and placed on probation.

Because of these past incidents and their own investigation into the Santana matter, the medical board has sent a letter to Santana indicating that they will be asking the attorney general's office to investigate the matter in hopes of having another Accusation filed against Durante. In Santana's case, the medical board determined that Durante acted with gross negligence and departed from the standard of care.

Another abortion provider that has been sued for medical malpractice is the Sacramento-based Pregnancy Consultation Group. This abortion provider, which is legally owned by non-physician Paxton King Beal, has been sued several times by women who were injured by doctors who performed abortions on them. A review of the docket at the Sacramento superior courthouse shows that one medical malpractice action against the group by Maria Almarez Caballero involves a doctor, Robert Bleasdell, M.D. who has been reprimanded by the medical board. According to the medical board records, Dr. Bleasdell resides in Fall City, Washington.

According to the accusation, filed December 16, 1994, Dr. Bleasdell entered into a core doctor agreement with three of Paxton Beale's D.B.A.'s (Doing Business As) P.S. Corporation of Oakland, S.F. Trabco and King Health Corporation. The accusation outlines how Dr. Bleasdell informed the fictitious name permit department of the medical board that "He owned and controlled the medical practice at 4301 Marconi Avenue in Sacramento and that he had contracted with a management company to provide a 'variety of services.'"

Dr. Bleasdell allowed Paxton Beale to run the abortion clinic without proper oversight by a physician. Beale owned and operated the clinics and used doctors to perform the abortions. The accusation points out that Bleasdell had "signed several blank federal drug order forms at the request of management at the San Francisco facility." The agreement between Beale and Bleasdell spelled out that in the event that Bleasdell would no longer practice at the Pregnancy Consultation Center, the patients' records would still remain with Paxton Beale. Other allegations against Bleasdell included allowing Beale to practice medicine and dispense drugs without a license. On February 23, 1996, the medical board entered into a Stipulation and Waiver with Bleasdell.

The Stipulation signed by Bleasdell called for 150 hours of free medical services to a community or charitable group. Bleasdell was required to enroll in an ethics course within 60 days of signing the Stipulation. Bleasdell also agreed to reimburse the medical board for $2,500 for "investigation and prosecution costs." Bleasdell signed the Stipulation on December 21, 1995.

An earlier case against The Pregnancy Consultation Center was filed by Linda Mazurek in 1982. The lawsuit named Donald Whitney, M.D., as the performing abortionist. According to the complaint, because of the "negligence of the defendents, and each of them, plaintiff was injured in body and mind, in that she carried and bore and delivered a full term child and she suffered great mental and physical pain and suffering and some permanent disability." A search of medical board records did not yield any information about Dr. Whitney.

On February 5, 1987, the director of health services for the state of California placed a lien on any judgements that Mazurek would have recovered from the Pregnancy Consultation Center and/or Dr. Whitney. The list of injury related services listed by the Medi-Cal program included the March 22 to March 23 (1982) fee for "Disorders relating to short gestation and unspecified low birth weight." On February 27, 1990 the Sacrament superior court filed an intention to dismiss the case on the court's own motion for Lack of prosecution. The case was subsequently dismissed for lack of pursuit by Mazurek.

Abortionist Oscar Tan, M.D. now lives in Sacramento though his legal paper trail shows that he once lived and worked in San Diego. Dr. Tan suffered a series of setbacks in San Diego during the 1980s and 1990s. Court records in San Diego show that on December 27, 1986, Dr. Tan, while working for Dr. Edward Allred, performed an abortion on a young woman named Lourdes Palacios. Palacios had crossed the border from Tijuana in order to obtain the abortion. The lawsuit filed against Dr. Tan and the Family Planning Associates (the name of Allred's clinics) says that in spite of the abortion, Palacios delivered a live baby on June 16, 1987. An April 18, 1988 United Press International story said that four months after Tan performed the abortion on Palacios, she went to another physician for a medical check-up. It was then that she learned that she was still pregnant. Palacios' attorney said that when she gave birth to her son, " The unmarried woman was shunned by her family, who forced her to move away from home and she received no support from the baby's father...Miss Palacios contracted to terminate her pregnancy, and as far as she knew, she underwent the surgery. Then lo and behold, she found out the pregnancy had not been terminated." The case was later dismissed on April 19, 1990 because no one was present, neither Palacios nor her attorney, on the day of the trial. The medical board of California filed an Accusation against Tan on September 10, 1990 because his "Failure to perform an immediate gross assessment of the tissue removed during the incomplete abortion and to later review the pathology report to confirm his clinical impressions, constitutes gross negligence. A year later on August 22, 1991, Tan and his wife Cynthia Tan, filed for bankruptcy protection with the U.S. bankruptcy court.

TOP