Published March, 2001
The verdict is in. Dr. John Biskind is guilty of manslaughter. It took only four hours for eight jurors to sift through a month’s worth of testimony, concluding that Dr. Biskind “recklessly caused death” of LouAnne Heron in her late term abortion.
The trial of Dr. John Biskind and his associate, clinic administrator Carol Stuart-Schadoff, began on January 22, 2001, in Superior Court on manslaughter charges stemming from the death of Ms. Heron. Facing the breakup of her marriage, the 33-year-old mother of two went to A-Z Women’s Clinic for an abortion.
Four weeks of testimony opened the door on an abortion industry long cloaked in secrecy. While A-Z Women’s Clinic is no longer open and was only one of many clinics providing abortions, evidence from the trial revealed examples of serious deficiencies affecting the operation of abortion clinics in general.
The trial began with testimony from seven young medical assistants who worked at A-Z on the day that LouAnne Heron died. Prosecutor Ahler pointedly asked each woman about her training–extensive educational programs ranging from six to twelve months long. Many of them were young mothers, supporting families.
Yet, for A-Z Women’s Clinic, the bottom line of profit controlled employment practices. Medical assistants earned only $7.50 per hour, with no benefits and no insurance. They consistently worked from 36 to 38 hours per week, just under the required 40 hours that would classify them as full-time. Instead of a regular lunch hour, they routinely snatched a ten-minute lunch together with the doctor in the front office–only a brief pause in a day packed with up to 25 surgeries and procedures.
With their hourly wage little more than that of fast-food servers, it is no surprise that help was difficult to keep. The two medical assistants attending LouAnne following her abortion were on duty in the recovery room for their first time. As one nurse testified, “There was a big turnover in general.”
Staffing problems at A-Z Women’s Clinic included the nurses, as well. Clinic administrator Stuart-Schadoff tried for a week to find a nurse to cover the afternoon of LouAnne’s surgery on April 17. Though no nurse was available to supervise the medical assistants in the recovery room, the regular schedule of surgeries was planned. For this, jurors returned a negligent homicide verdict against Stuart-Schadoff.
Medical assistants and nurses are not the only staff problems for abortion clinics. John Biskind, at 75, is one of a growing number of elderly doctors leaving the practice of medicine. As malpractice insurance rates climb and the field of medicine expands, fewer universities offer training in abortions, and even fewer doctors care to make a career of performing them.
These may be positive signs that support of abortion is weakening, however, they also belie major safety concerns in abortion clinics. Time and again, as employees quit and leave their jobs in the abortion industry, they tell of understaffed clinics, surgeries hurriedly performed, and frequent injuries to patients that were ignored or mishandled.
The Biskind trial provides a vivid background for legislation pending in the Arizona legislature ensuring a woman’s right to receive medically accurate information about the abortion procedure and its related risks. Although consent forms were used at A-Z Women’s Center, abortion counseling consisted only of a brief group meeting of the 12-20 patients led by a medical assistant on the same morning of their surgery.
Proposed legislation will require clinics to provide set standards of informed consent protecting the woman’s right to know about her surgical procedure. Public support of this legislation is vital to its success. A verdict in the Biskind trial serves justice. But there’s no better way to honor the memory of LouAnne Heron than to support a Woman’s Right to Know.