Abortion Providers

The Justice Department asked a federal judge yesterday to order a Reading man to stop posting violent threats against abortion providers in Philadelphia, Allentown and Reading on an Internet site. U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan alleged that John Dunkle, 72, "encouraged his readers to kill a specific clinic physician by shooting her in the head. " In a sworn statement, Mary Blanks, a doctor, said she stopped working at Reading and Philadelphia abortion clinics "out of fear of John Dunkle's threats to my life.

Abortion providers have decided not to ask the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its decision to implement the Pennsylvania abortion- control law. Yesterday, the providers allowed to expire the deadline for filing a motion to reconsider. This means, barring an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, that the law should take effect within days after Feb. 4, the day the Third Circuit will issue an order to lift an injunction that has kept the law from taking effect since 1988.

The sniper who killed Barnett Slepian here two nights ago took the life of the last remaining physician who performed abortions at Buffalo's only abortion clinic, and providers of the procedure criticized police yesterday for not doing more to guard his life. U.S. and Canadian authorities had issued warnings last Monday to abortion providers throughout the Northeast, following a series of shootings that had occurred at this time of year since 1994. Slepian's death left Buffalo GYN Womenservices, the only abortion clinic in the city of 300,000, with no physician on staff.

A federal judge has recommended that a group of abortion providers be awarded $157,339 in legal fees and costs for their appeal of Pennsylvania's abortion control law to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. U.S. District Judge Daniel H. Huyett 3d filed the recommendation with the Third Circuit on Nov. 23, following his decision to award the same abortion providers $221,971 in fees and costs for their work in legal proceedings before him. Under federal law, the winner in a lawsuit is allowed to petition a judge to order the loser to pay the legal fees and costs the winner incurred.

Abortion providers yesterday opposed Pennsylvania's request that U.S. District Judge Daniel H. Huyett 3d disqualify himself from hearing new arguments on the state's abortion control law. The state Attorney General's Office has contended that Huyett's writing in a 1990 abortion opinion left the impression that he supports a woman's right to choose. But in a brief filed yesterday in federal court, lawyers for Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania and other abortion providers argued that the request was untimely and a "disturbing and thinly veiled effort to judge-shop.

Thirty-five anti-abortion protesters who blocked the entrance of a Delaware County abortion clinic in January were sued by the U.S. Justice Department yesterday under the two-year-old federal law protecting access to abortion providers. The 35 individuals - 20 from Pennsylvania, and the remainder from New Jersey, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia - were among a group arrested Jan. 16 during a daylong protest that effectively closed the Reproductive Health and Counseling Center in Upland.

Straining for poise on the eve of a tragic anniversary, abortion providers from the two clinics where receptionists Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols were shot to death a year ago paused yesterday to remember their fallen colleagues and to highlight a planned merger growing out of the attack. One year ago today, a black-clad gunman spouting religious oaths sprayed the waiting areas of Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts and Preterm Health Services with semiautomatic rifle fire, killing Lowney and Nichols and wounding five people.

Every doctor performing abortions in North America is "vulnerable and a potential target" for the serial shooter now believed responsible for killing Dr. Barnett A. Slepian and injuring three doctors in Canada and one in Rochester, N.Y., since 1994, Canadian police said yesterday. With a pattern emerging in the wake of the Oct. 23 shooting of Slepian, "there is a legitimate concern" that the sniper attacks on physicians who perform abortions are "a North American problem," said Winnipeg Staff Sgt. Bill Vandergraaf, a member of the Canadian police task force investigating the shootings.

Pennsylvania's long-running court battle over the regulation of abortion will cost taxpayers another $221,971. A federal judge awarded that amount in legal fees and costs to lawyers for a group of abortion providers who fought for six years to block implementation of Pennsylvania's strict abortion-control law. Under federal law, the winner in a lawsuit is allowed to petition a judge to order the loser to pay legal fees and costs incurred by...

Abortion providers asked a federal judge yesterday to consider new arguments against Pennsylvania's abortion-control law, and to prevent the state from implementing it in the meantime. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania and five other abortion providers said they wanted to present new evidence that the law would "create substantial obstacles" for women seeking abortions. When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld almost every provision of the law on June 29, it articulated a new standard for laws that control abortion.

AUSTIN, Texas - A federal appeals judge stepped into the fight over the Texas Women's Health Program on Tuesday, saying he wanted to hear arguments on whether the state should be prevented from enforcing a law that bans Planned Parenthood from participating in the program. Less than 24 hours after a federal judge in Austin ordered Texas not to enforce a rule banning clinics associated with abortion providers from receiving state funds, Fifth Circuit Appeals Judge Jerry Smith granted Texas an emergency stay lifting the Austin court's order.

AUSTIN, Texas - A federal judge on Monday stopped Texas from preventing Planned Parenthood from getting funds through the state's Women's Health Program - a decision the state immediately appealed. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, sitting in Austin, ruled there is sufficient evidence that a law banning Planned Parenthood from the program is unconstitutional. He imposed an injunction against enforcing it until he could hear full arguments. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed Yeakel's decision to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking that it remove the injunction.

AUSTIN, Texas - Eight Planned Parenthood organizations sued Texas on Wednesday for excluding them from participating in a program that provides contraception and checkups to women, saying the new rule violates their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and association. The groups, none of which provide abortions, contend in the federal lawsuit that a new state law banning organizations affiliated with abortion providers from participating in the Women's Health Program has nothing to do with providing medical care and is simply intended to silence individuals or groups who support abortion rights.

Ultrasound bill becomes Va. law RICHMOND, Va. - Abdominal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions in Virginia will become mandatory starting July 1 under a law signed Wednesday by Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who had faced a national uproar when earlier versions of that measure sought to make the exams medically invasive. The measure requires all abortion providers in the state to comply or pay a $2,500 fine for each violation. It also requires patients living within 100 miles of the clinic where the abortion is performed to wait 24 hours after the ultrasound exam before having an abortion.

Maryland prosecutors on Tuesday dropped murder charges against South Jersey abortion provider Steven Brigham, acknowledging that they lacked jurisdiction to pursue the case. Cecil County State's Attorney Edward D.E. Rollins III also dropped murder cases against a codefendant, physician Nicola Irene Riley, 46, of Salt Lake City, who worked for Brigham. In a news release, Rollins said the investigation was continuing. Brigham, 55, of Voorhees, was charged with murdering five viable fetuses found in his secretive abortion clinic in Elkton, Md., which had no sign and was not disclosed to regulators.

As the new year dawned, abortion provider Steven C. Brigham sat in the Camden County Jail, awaiting extradition on murder charges. A thousand miles away, a suspicious fire gutted his company's Florida clinic, where he substituted for a doctor murdered 18 years ago. Brigham's extraordinary saga continued Wednesday, when the erstwhile physician appeared before Superior Court Judge Michael J. Kassel and agreed to be transported to Elkton, Md.,...

Steven Brigham, 55, the New Jersey-based abortion provider who has been in trouble for much of his two-decade medical career, has been charged by Maryland with murdering viable fetuses found at his secret Elkton, Md., clinic in August 2010, authorities said. Brigham, of Voorhees, was arrested by Camden County police Wednesday and is in the county jail, police said Friday. A codefendant, physician Nicola Riley, 46, was arrested in her hometown of Salt Lake City and is in jail there.

1992: Steven Brigham, a few years out of medical school, voluntarily forfeits his Pennsylvania medical license to end an investigation into his Wyomissing clinic. The landlord had successfully sued him for concealing his plans to perform abortions. 1994: New York state takes Brigham's license for botching late-term abortions, one begun in Voorhees, calling him "undertrained" with "submarginal abilities. " 1995: Florida revokes Brigham's license based on New York's action.