By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
One of the largest abortion clinics in New Jersey has agreed to pay $1.9 million to a woman who sustained life-threatening injuries after undergoing a botched second-trimester abortion several years ago.
Metropolitan Medical Clinic in Englewood, New Jersey agreed to pay Rasheedah Dinkins after the mother of two suffered massive hemorrhaging, a coma, a stroke and a hysterectomy after a 2007 mid-term abortion.
Newark’s Beth Israel Medical Center, which treated Dinkins after the abortion, filed a formal complaint with the state which prompted an investigation of the facility. The clinic was temporarily shut down after the Department of Health found dirty forceps, rusty crochet hooks used to remove IUDs, and a quarter-inch of dirt and debris under an examining table in the Englewood clinic.
“I think it’s horrible what I had to go through,” Dinkins told The Associated Press while still recuperating from her injuries. Looking back over what had happened to her, she admitted “I probably wouldn’t have made this choice.”
Dinkins is not the only woman who has filed a complaint about the facility. Christina Ruvolo, 23, of Boonton, New Jersey said she began to hemorrhage in the bathtub five weeks after undergoing the abortion at Metropolitan Medical Associates in May. She said she was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors told her the abortion was incomplete and that parts of the baby were still inside her body.
Gloria Mozas of Cliffside Park is also suing the clinic, claiming doctors there wrongly diagnosed her tubal pregnancy in 2003 and told her she had miscarried, when in fact, she was carrying two live fetuses. She said a doctor there performed an abortion on her, telling her he was removing dead tissue from her womb. About a week later, she said she had to undergo a second procedure to remove the remaining fetus after she developed severe internal bleeding.
Metropolitan Medical, which performs more than 10,000 abortions a year and is one of the largest abortion clinics in the state, has declined comment.
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