The Germantown Reproductive Health Services abortion business that employs late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart, will close this week as hundreds of pro-life advocates from across the country participate in a week-long pro-life protest.
The coalition of pro-life advocates kicked off their 9-day pro-life event over the weekend with two well-attended rallies and prayer vigils featuring powerful national speakers, a live-ultrasound of a pre-born baby, and testimony from a woman who was scheduled for a late-term abortion at Carhart’s but instead gave birth to a healthy daughter.
“This is a huge victory,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “While this event is in progress no babies will die in Germantown. That is an answer to our prayers.”
Newman says the pro-life advocates hope to inform the local community of the numerous abuses at Carhart’s abortion business in Nebraska and the problems he’s carried over into Maryland. Those include a criminal investigation in his home state of Nebraska based on affidavits from his former employees who allege Carhart engaged in criminal conduct and a medical board investigation in Maryland for allegations he misled authorities to gain licensure.
In Maryland, Carhart claimed to be a university professor, but was stripped of any formal duties by the University of Nebraska in the 1990s. He claimed to be an emergency room physician even though he has had no relationship with any hospital since 1987. Never once did he mention his long work history at abortion clinics around the country or his defense of partial-birth abortion in two cases that were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Nebraska, a non-disciplinary agreement was made with Nebraska authorities where Carhart agreed to stop falsifying medical records, falling asleep during abortions, and interrupting abortions to take personal phone calls. Some of the shoddy abortion practices resulted in numerous emergency hospitalizations and at least one patient died from a late-term abortion at Carhart’s hands, according to OR.
“After years of investigation, we can confidently say that Carhart is a dishonest man who is a danger to the public that belongs behind bars. We can document everything we say about him. He cannot do the same,” Newman said. “We are using every legal tool available to expose abortion abuses and see to it that abortionists like Carhart are arrested and jailed and their clinics closed.”
In a keynote address Saturday to open the pro-life event, Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, said the nine-day protest outside the abortion center that employs Carhart will “put a spotlight on the type of abortion most people oppose.”
Speaking to several hundred people at Covenant Life Church, Father Pavone said poll after poll show the majority of Americans oppose abortion beyond the first trimester.
“Most people – even those who call themselves ‘pro-choice’ — are closer to our position than to that of Carhart,” he said. “But who is mobilizing those who would oppose what Carhart is doing? No one. We need to focus the attention of Americans to the reality of what Carhart does.”
Father Pavone distributed literature with quotes from late-term abortionists that leave no doubt about the nature of the brutal procedure, and urged those fighting abortion to do so using the words of the abortionists themselves as found in medical textbooks and court testimony. He also called for prayers for Carhart, so he will realize himself that what he is doing is wrong, the way the late Bernard Nathanson was converted to the pro-life cause.
“Let us pray and work that the day will come when Leroy Carhart will be the next Bernard Nathanson,” he said. “This week is going to make history in the pro-life movement.”
Joe Scheidler of the Pro-Life Action League, Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, David Bereit of 40 Days for Life, and Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition are some of the pro-life leaders participating in the event.
Carhart is the abortion practitioner who frequently used the partial-birth abortion procedure in Nebraska until the Supreme Court upheld the ban Congress approved. He then performed late abortions until Nebraska lawmakers approved legislation to ban abortions after 20 weeks based on the scientific evidence that unborn children feel pain. Although he retains an abortion center in Omaha, Nebraska legislators largely drove him from the state when they passed a law banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the scientific evidence showing unborn children feel pain at that age.
