Abortion clinic gives up license after death

A Birmingham abortion clinic has surrendered its license amid allegations that a woman delivered a nearly full-term stillborn baby after a clinic staffer gave her an abortion-inducing drug and performed other medical treatments without a doctor present, health officials said.

The Alabama Department of Health issued a suspension order against Summit Medical Center on May 17, citing numerous violations of state health rules. The center has been closed since it was shutdown the next day and will not reopen, said Rick Harris, director of the state health agency’s bureau of provider standards.

Wednesday’s move avoids a June 20 hearing where the state would have presented its case against the center and sought to revoke Summit’s license.

“We got the same remedy we were trying to get in the hearing,” Harris said.

State health officials say in February a Summit staff member, rather than a doctor, performed an ultrasound on a woman seeking an abortion and determined she was six weeks pregnant, even though she was nearly full term. The nurse practitioner, rather than the doctor, gave the woman the RU 486 abortion drug even though the woman’s blood pressure was dangerously high.

The state health department said in a report that the woman went to a hospital emergency room six days later with the head of a baby protruding and “delivered a stillborn, macerated, foul smelling, 6-pound, 4-ounce baby.”