State shuts down Birmingham abortion clinic

And for good reason. This is horrible:

(Birmingham News) State health officials on Wednesday shut down a Birmingham abortion clinic after investigating a complaint that a woman was told she was six weeks pregnant and was given an abortion-inducing drug, then delivered a 6-pound, 4-ounce stillborn child at a hospital.

The State Board of Health issued an emergency order of license suspension against Summit Medical Center of Alabama on Southside.

"That's not something we do very often," said Dr. Donald Williamson, state health officer. "The incident involved multiple and serious violations of the rules. There was no other means to address it except an emergency suspension."

The suspension order said a patient went to Summit on Feb. 20 and received an ultrasound administered by a non-physician, in violation of state rules for such facilities. She was told by a Summit staff member she was six weeks pregnant. "She was almost certainly in the third trimester and near term," Williamson said.

The same day, the clinic gave her a dose of Mifeprex, or RU-486, an abortion-inducing drug, also without a physician administering it as required. "What's clear here is that it wasn't used appropriately," Williamson said.

The patient had a "critical and dangerously high" blood pressure reading of 182/129 at the clinic, the suspension order said. "That in and of itself would have demanded immediate medical attention," Williamson said.

Instead, the staff went ahead with the medical abortion.

The patient was also given four tablets of the prostoglandin Misoprostol - a hormone administered by vaginal suppository to induce premature labor contractions and expel a fetus - and was old to insert the tablets on Feb. 22.

On Feb. 26, the patient went to the emergency room at a Birmingham hospital "with the head of a baby protruding" and delivered a "stillborn, macerated, six pound, four ounce baby," according to the suspension order.

The AP has more.

A further note: The unlawful act here was not that a baby was killed during the third trimester of pregnancy. That is entirely legal, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court. The main thing that got the clinic into trouble is that a doctor wasn't present to supervise the killing. If the clinic had followed the correct procedures, everything would have been hunky-dory: just another day in the life of the abortion industry.