By Dave Andrusko
Robert Alexander’s Women’s Medical Services
Another chapter in the long story of Muskegon abortionist Robert Alexander whose Woman’s Medical Services abortion clinic authorities shut down last December. As you recall, the order revoking the abortion clinic’s operating license came after the fire marshal and building inspector investigated and found potential fire-, health- and building-code violations, according to Jeffrey Lewis, Muskegon’s director of public safety. Put more bluntly, Alexander’s abortion clinic was a filthy pit, with blood and water everywhere [http://nrlc.cc/15slHvn].
In our last NRL News Today story we reported on two suits brought against Alexander for “botched” abortions [http://nrlc.cc/15slmst]. There’s now further information, particularly about how an abortion that took place in April 2009 which resulted in a live birth of a child who, fortunately, survived the ordeal and is now a healthy three year old.
The following is from Right to Life of Michigan, after which I will add a few additional details:
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Target 8 continues to investigate abortionist Robert Alexander
After the city of Muskegon closed down abortionist Robert Alexander’s abortion clinic due to deplorable conditions in December 2012, WOOD TV Target 8 investigator Ken Kolker found a woman from Muskegon named Sheria McCloud whose physician filed a complaint against Alexander after he botched an abortion on her.
In a new report from WOOD TV Target 8, an investigation reveals that a complaint against abortionist Robert Alexander was cleared by his mentor, Dr. George Shade Jr. At the time Shade was the Board of Medicine Chairman. After Alexander served two years in federal prison for illegal distribution of controlled substances, Shade vouched for him and took him under his wing and helped him regain his medical license. Shade’s help allowed Alexander to regain his medical license in 1998.
While Dr. Shade was on the Board of Medicine (starting in 2004) he reviewed complaints about Alexander and failed to authorize investigations and dismissed the complaints, including the one filed by the doctor who treated Sheria McCloud.
[RTL of Michigan then quotes from the story by WOOD TV Target 8]
“He shouldn’t have been investigating my case if he was his (Alexander’s) mentor,” said Sheria McCloud of Muskegon, the patient in the complaint against Alexander. “It should have been somebody else investigating. Why would you investigate my case and you are his mentor?”
Dr. Michael Engel, the former Muskegon OB-GYN who filed the original complaint alleging botched abortions, said he was shocked to learn about the connection between Alexander and Shade.
Both Engel and McCloud said no one from the state contacted them about the complaint, which he filed in June 2009.
“It’s a travesty,” Engel said in a telephone interview. “The government protects him. That’s terrible. This guy knew him, talked to him.”
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In his story Kolker quotes both State Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker–who called Shade’s decision a “clear conflict of interest” that “should never have occurred”—and Shade—who insisted that the “process was followed.”
According to Kolker, McCloud thought she was 10 weeks pregnant. A month after the abortion, according to the complaint, “McCloud felt pain and movement in her abdomen, sending her to the ER,” Kolker wrote. “An ultrasound found she was 30 weeks pregnant. She eventually gave birth to Jeremiah, a healthy boy who is now 3 years old. Also in his complaint, Engel alleged that Alexander had perforated a second patient’s uterus during an abortion. It ‘rendered the patient unable to walk for a month due to the pain,’ he wrote. ‘She could have bled to death,’ Engel told Target 8.”
Kolker said that the Target 8 investigation of Muskegon court records found allegations of a third botched abortion—“that Alexander performed an abortion on a woman who hours later delivered a stillborn baby missing the skull, brain and other body parts. However, this allegation was not part of the state complaint against Alexander.”
In addition, “Engel told Target 8 he treated about 10 of Alexander’s patients after abortions over about six years for either bleeding or infection.”
The last quarter of Kolker’s story [which can be read in its entirely at www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/target_8/muskegon-abortion-clinic-conflict-of-interest] is a thorough recap of Shade/Alexander association which goes back at least 16 years.
Not only did Shade play an instrumental role in helping Alexander get his medical license back in 1990 (after Alexander served time for writing prescriptions for controlled substances to patients he never saw), “Alexander worked in a ‘training program’ under Dr. Shade’s supervision at Detroit Riverview Hospital, records show.”
Alexander told Kolker he had no plans to reopen his abortion clinic and was not working.
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