Nearly 2,000 pro-life people turned out for a prayer event and rally at the abortion facility where late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart works in Germantown, Maryland outside the nation’s capital.
The pro-life advocates crowded the sidewalks this morning around Germantown Reproductive Health Services to mark one year since Carhart was hired there after pro-life legislation in Nebraska forced him to stop most of his abortion practice there. Participants displayed 720 crosses to memorialize the estimated 720 babies who have been killed by abortion since Carhart’s arrival.
“Since Carhart’s arrival in Maryland, the people in that state have risen up and said no to his late-term abortion business,” said Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, one of the organizers. “Members of the faith community have mobilized, a pregnancy referral center has opened directly across the parking lot from the abortion clinics, and sidewalk counselors are dissuading women from abortions on a regular basis, saving countless lives. We are proud to serve a supporting role in this amazing work.”
“The abortion clinic thought the first protest would also be the last, and that the community would soon lose interest. However, they underestimated the resolve of the good people of Maryland. The numbers standing in support of life swell by the day,” he said.
The protest was sponsored by the Maryland Coalition for Life and it comes on the heels of news from the Maryland Board of Physicians that they had issued an advisory letter to Carhart, admonishing him for less than truthful answers to questions on his application for medical licensure in that state.
“Carhart portrayed himself as an emergency room physician even though he has not had hospital privileges since the 1980s. There was no mention that the true nature of his business for the last three decades as been abortions – late-term abortions in particular,” Newman said.
Carhart was under investigation by the Board of Physicians of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene based on a complaint filed by a pro-life advocates who said Carhart possibly misled the Maryland medical board when applying for his license in the state.
Allegations in the complaint included claims that Carhart misrepresented his practice on his Maryland medical license application when he indicated he was an emergency room physician and university professor. In reality, Carhart has not had an affiliation with a hospital since 1987, and was stripped of any formal duties with the University of Nebraska in the late 1990s.
Carhart’s Maryland application omitted his decades of job history as owner and abortionist at the Abortion and Contraceptive Clinic in Bellevue, Nebraska, and 12 years of employment at Women’s Health Care Services in Wichita, Kansas, where he specialized in late-term abortions.
The complaint also noted that Carhart conducts risky late-term abortions in Maryland without hospital privileges and he has a history of involvement in multiple botched late-term abortions during his employment in Kansas, including the third trimester death of 19-year old Christin Gilbert.
He applied for a license to practice medicine in Maryland in September 2010 and the pro-life group Operation Rescue alleges he intentionally concealed the true nature of his risky late-term abortion practice from the Maryland Board of Physicians. The group received a redacted copy of Carhart’s application for Maryland licensure, obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request.
Despite the complaints, OR was notified by the Maryland Board of Physicians that it has completed its investigation and issued an “Advisory Letter” to him, based on their findings. The Board informed Operation Rescue that the Advisory Letter will not be made public.
Newman says Carhart was once issued a similar non-disciplinary admonishment from his home state of Nebraska wherein he agreed to stop falsifying medical records, falling asleep during abortions, and interrupting abortions to take personal phone calls. In 2009, several of Carhart’s former Nebraska employees submitted affidavits to the Nebraska Attorney General to support a complaint that Carhart was engaging in illegal practices, including using unlicensed workers to conduct medical duties for which they were not qualified. That investigation is ongoing, Newman says.
“Carhart was also the abortionist on duty when a 19-year old Down syndrome girl named Christin Gilbert was killed during a botched third-trimester abortion in Kansas. Carhart was never held accountable for his part in her death,” Newman complained.
The Maryland Coalition for Life is planning a demonstration outside Carhart’s Germantown abortion clinic, located at Wisteria and Executive Park Terrace, on the morning of December 5 to mark one year since Carhart located his late-term abortion business to Germantown. The demonstration will feature 720 crosses to memorialize the estimated 720 lives lost to abortion over the past year.
