Attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Policy Council of West Virginia filed suit against Women’s Health Center of West Virginia and its abortionist, Rodney Lee Stephens, this week for forcing a woman to proceed with an abortion against her will and then leaving the baby’s head inside her womb.
According to the lawsuit Gravely v. Stephens, 26-year-old Itai Gravely changed her mind about the abortion for which she was scheduled when she learned that Women’s Health Center could not provide her with the correct amount of anesthesia. Disregarding his patient’s requests to not go through with the abortion, Stephens ordered his employees to physically restrain Gravely and forcibly abort anyway.
Gravely wound up in the emergency room of a local hospital the next day because Stephens had left parts of the child—most horrifically, the baby’s head—in Gravely’s womb.
“A woman’s life and health is more important than an abortionist’s bottom line. What Stephens and Women’s Health Center did to Itai is beyond the pale. She has been exposed to extraordinary cruelty, and her life was put in jeopardy,” said Alliance Defending Freedom allied attorney Jeremiah Dys, president and general counsel of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia.
This case is disturbing for several reasons. Gravely’s allegations shed light on uncomfortable truths about abortion, the first being that often abortion is not about “choice”; rather, women are frequently coerced into abortion by various parties or even abortionists themselves.
The case also reveals the humanity of the unborn child and debunks the myth that what is inside the womb can simply be described as “products of conception,” “fetal tissue,” or another euphemism.
Stephens left a human child’s head inside the womb. This horrific, grisly detail is a reminder that regardless of how carefully an abortion is committed, it involves the painful killing of a defenseless human being in his or her earliest stages of development. If the abortion Stephens performed on Gravely had been a typical one, it would have removed all of her unborn child from her womb, not just some pieces of it. If Kermit Gosnell had been “good” at his job during his many years operating in Philadelphia, he would have ended the lives of the babies inside the womb, not right outside of it.
The abortion industry, which never fails to tout its so-called commitment to “women’s health,” actually has no regard for women’s health or safety. Gravely v. Stephens is yet another example of the abortion industry’s disrespect for women and constant commitment to making a profit. As the abortion lobby fights to keep basic medical standards out of abortion centers, women will continue to be harmed at the callous hands of abortionists and their cronies. SBA List’s ever-expanding fact-sheet on the vile conditions and practices going on at abortion centers nationwide shows that sadly, this mistreatment of women is ordinary in the abortion industry. It is up to us to stop them. Take Action by joining the www.StoptheGosnells.com coalition!
