'A slap on the wrist': Delaware fines abortionist $1,500 for running filthy 'meat-market' clinic
Timothy Liveright would perform an abortion every 10 minutes, often with unsanitized instruments on blood-spattered tables, his former nurses testified.
Wed Jan 8, 2014 - 4:07 am EST Sat Jun 19, 2021 - 11:45 am EDT
DOVER, DE, January 8, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An abortionist who ran a "meat-market" style Planned Parenthood facility – singing hymns to Jesus while performing abortions with unsterilized equipment on bloody tables – has been fined $1,500 and given a letter of reprimand.
The Delaware Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline decided on Tuesday to accept a consent agreement that Dr. Timothy Liveright signed in November.
Liveright, who has performed abortions in the state since 2002, surrendered his state medical license and agreed not to seek another. However, he retained his credentials in nearby Pennsylvania.
The settlement ends a drama that began last year when two of his former nurses went public about his practices, following futile attempts to alert the abortion industry and state authorities to his behavior.
Joyce Vasikonis and Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich said Liveright's "meat-market" style of operation made the Wilmington Planned Parenthood an "absolute nightmare."
Liveright has said he has performed 50,000 abortions in his life, sometimes doing 30 terminations a day. Charging approximately $60 per procedure, he said he has sometimes made $5,000-$10,000 a month.
In an effort to keep the profits flowing, Liveright would perform abortions every eight-to-10 minutes, the nurses testified. Mitchell-Werbrich told the state Senate in May that Liveright rushed "patients back into unclean procedure rooms, where the examination table would still have bloody drainage and body fluids from the previous patients."
He would reuse bloody gloves and unsterilized instruments, as well, she said.
In the first few months of this year pro-life activists witnessed ambulances visiting the clinic five times.
But when the nurses tried to alert authorities – including the state Planned Parenthood affiliate – they ran into a stone wall. Liveright later said that "Planned Parenthood is partly to blame for all this," since it turned a deaf ear to his former employees' complaints.
The nurses say they also got "the run-around" from a myriad of state regulatory agencies, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the state Division of Professional Regulation, the governor's office, the Board of Nursing, and Delaware Health and Social Services.
After they blew the whistle on his office, State Attorney General Beau Biden, the vice president's son, launched an investigation that found Liveright posed a "clear and immediate danger to the public."
The attorney general's complaint listed 10 "acts of incompetence and negligence" in Liveright's treatment of five abortion clients over a one-month period. These included oversedating patients, performing unnecessary suction procedures, improperly administering oxygen, and failing to "act with due competence and diligence" in such a manner that patients required emergency hospital visits.
The Delaware Division of Public Health found another 14 violations of state health regulations at the Wilmington Planned Parenthood affiliate. The office was briefly closed last June, then reopened when state health officials accepted Planned Parenthood's proposals to address their concerns.
But eyewitnesses say the criminal and administrative charges do not encompass the range of unprofessional, exploitative, and purely bizarre behavior Liveright regularly engaged in.
Liveright would sign hymn to Jesus while performing abortions, Mitchell-Werbrich testified. She said he also told one black patient that "Belgians took over Africa and did really bad things," and that "the United States is a big bully." He added, "I didn't think you'd know anything about that."
The nurse told Jill Stanek that Liveright would ogle, slap, or play peek-a-boo with his patients.
He would "look up and down patients, as well as staff members, in a sexual kind of way," she told Stanek. "He actually stands back with a grin and slowly directs his eyes up and down a patient's body." As part of his consent agreement, he will also receive training on sexual harassment.
Vasikonis, who describes herself as "rabidly pro-abortion," attended the hearing – unlike Liveright, who skipped the proceedings. On Tuesday, she told the Wilmington News Journal she was "disappointed" with the light penalty.
"A reprimand seems very mild to me and a $1,500 fine – to me it's like nothing," she said.
Mitchell-Werbrich said the paltry fine would soon be recouped. "A $1,500 fine? That's a couple abortions. That's a joke," she said.
"I have lost much more than $1,500," Vasikonis said, adding that she has been unable to find work since she exposed her employer's negligence. "There is no real resolution."
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But Planned Parenthood Delaware CEO Ruth Lytle-Barnaby said in a press statement that her organization was "pleased that this [case] has been resolved," and pledged to "remain focused on providing high-quality, affordable health care to the 11,000 women, men and young people in Delaware."
Under the terms of the agreement, Liveright admitted only that he did not properly record procedures performed on three patients.
Liveright initially denied all wrongdoing, calling the charges "bull—t" and pro-life complaints that he perforated a woman's uterus "nit-picky."
"It's one lousy incident," Liveright said about the potentially deadly injury, "a tempest in a teapot."
"Most people in favor of abortion, I think, would be pretty happy with what I've done," he said.
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