License hearing today for N.J. abortion doctor

On Wednesday, Steven C. Brigham, the New Jersey doctor who runs a chain of abortion clinics in at least three states faces a hearing where he must show why the state board of medicine shouldn't take away his medical license.

Inquirer medical reporter Marie McCullough has been covering the Brigham saga for months. You can check out several of her earlier stories here, here and here.

Wednesday Marie will be sending updates from the hearing in Trenton to Check Up, so you can follow what's happening.

Here's what she wrote in advance of that hearing:

Abortion doctor Steven Brigham may be feeling a sense of deja vu.

Brigham, 54, on Wednesday has a hearing in Trenton before the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners to say why he should not lose his medical license. He will be defending himself against some of the same charges he faced in the mid-1990s, including falsifying medical records, misleading advertising, and endangering patients by doing late-term abortions in his Voorhees, N.J. clinic even though it does not meet safety requirements for outpatient surgery.

In legal papers, Brigham contends New Jersey's Attorney General can't prosecute him again because he was "exonerated" in 1996 of all but the misleading advertising charge, and his license was fully reinstated.

New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Jeri Warhaftig, who is leading the current prosecution, responded that Brigham's contention is "ludicrous."

Brigham has spent much of his 20-year career fighting lawsuits and disciplinary actions in multiple states. His Voorhees-based chain of abortion clinics, called American Women's Services, operates in New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia. (Pennsylvania in July barred him from owning clinics there because he persistently employeed unlicensed caregivers; he is appealing that ruling.)

A key issue now — just as 17 years ago — involves Brigham's practice of beginning late-term abortions in Voorhees, then completing the procedures in a different state.

Authorities allege that Brigham inserted rods to gradually dilate patients' cervixes, and gave drugs to kill their fetuses and induce labor, all in Voorhees. The next day, he led patients in a car caravan to his clinic in Elkton, Md., where he or a doctor under his direction extracted the fetuses.

The N.J. Attorney General alleges that this scheme not only put patients' health at risk, but enabled Brigham to do abortions beyond 14 weeks of pregnancy, in violation of state rules. Brigham's six New Jersey clinics are not equipped for such risky operations.

In legal papers, Brigham contends he is not violating the law because an administrative judge concluded in 1996 that inserting dilators is not the same thing as an abortion.

However, that judge did not address the killing of the fetus and the induction of labor in Voorhees. Brigham's legal filings don't, either.

Although Brigham regained his license in New Jersey in 1996, he lost it in New York State over charges of "gross negligence" stemming from two botched abortions, one started in Voorhees and completed in Flushing.

Brigham, who has never had a license in Maryland, is currently under investigation there for criminal as well as regulatory offenses.

In August, an 18-year-old New Jersey woman who was 21 weeks pregnant, suffered life-threatening injuries during an abortion that Brigham oversaw in Elkton. She had to be airlifted to a Baltimore hospital for emergency surgery to repair her uterus and bowel. She and the surgeon subsequently filed complaints against Brigham, triggering the latest actions against him, according to medical records and documents released by investigators.

Brigham has voluntarily agreed to a temporary license suspension in New Jersey while his case proceeds, just as he did in 1994.

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