Atlanta -- A Fulton County judge on Friday shut down Georgia's biggest abortion facility based on state claims that Atlanta's Midtown Hospital is so filthy and badly run that lives are endangered there every day.
The Department of Human Resources says the abortion facility is "overcrowded, understaffed and dirty" and shows "a complete disregard for, or the inability to care for, the health and safety of its patients."
Superior Court Senior Judge William Alexander ordered the Ponce de Leon Avenue clinic closed while the state pursued attempts to shut it down permanently. Administrator Ignatius DeBlasio said they would appeal next week.
The state investigated for more than two years and found dozens of violations, according to the complaint it filed in Fulton Superior Court. Among them:
* Unborn children were expelled on the floor and in the commode, because of overcrowding and a lack of patient monitoring;
* Equipment was not sterilized adequately
* Employees could not prove their qualifications
* Medical records were inadequate
* The facility lacked emergency policies
* Maintenance and housekeeping failures included an opened window within feet of an operating room table, a hole in an operating room wall, dirty floors, stained ceiling tiles and peeling paint.
State investigators began finding rules violations during licensing inspections in February 1996, the complaint says. They found 17 infractions on Oct. 3, when DHR told the abortion facility it would be fined $25,000. Then, after three more visits early this year, the state issued a 60-page statement of deficiencies, revealing "a startling array of severe rule violations which have a direct adverse impact on patient care."
In further visits, abortion facility employees refused to allow inspectors to review part of its operations and to provide some records, DHR alleges. The state told the abortion facility March 9 it would revoke its permit, and returned March 14, accompanied by a warrant and sheriff's deputies, and again on April 6 in response to complaints. The state found "a continuing, shocking disregard for the welfare" of patients.
On April 21, the abortion facility sent the state its compliance plan. But a follow-up tour May 5 found continued problems, the state says.
The abortion facility performed more abortions than any facility in Georgia -- 7,465 in 1996, including second trimester abortions -- said DHR spokeswoman Fran Buchanan.
Mary Boyert, executive director of the Georgia Right to Life Committee, called the state's allegations frightening.
"I'm just very concerned for the women who might have abortions there and hope that there's some way to close it down immediately," she said. "It's bad enough that they're taking the life of the child, but it sounds like they're putting [women's] lives at risk, too."