The physician once said that in his native India “doctors are considered as God.”
But some might say Dr. Nareshkumar Patel (shown) is more akin to the Devil.
And now the sign on his little hell-on-Earth reads “Clinic Closed” after the Oklahoma abortionist was arrested shortly before 8:00 a.m., Tuesday, December 9, at his Warr Acres practice, Outpatient Services for Women.
The charge: fraud.
Patel would tell female patients they were pregnant when they weren’t and then prescribe abortion-inducing drugs — extracting a hefty fee in the process.
The arrest was the fruits of an investigation in which three female operatives posed as patients, as the Oklahoman explained last week:
The undercover operation began June 4 when an investigator from the state medical licensure board went to the clinic, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. An Oklahoma City police detective visited the clinic Oct. 16 and an Oklahoma attorney general agent visited the clinic Oct. 22.
All three women were not pregnant.
Each time, Patel gave the woman an ultrasound, told her she was pregnant, and gave her five RU-486 pills to induce an abortion, according to the affidavit. Each paid $620 for the unnecessary procedure.
… The complaint that led to the investigation came from a sister of a former patient who paid $520 for a medical abortion procedure in August 2011. The former patient, Pamela Michelle King, died four months later of complications from cervical cancer. The doctor who cared for her at the time of her death reported she had not been pregnant within the past year.
And Patel’s actions were as risky as they were rapacious. As the Oklahoman told us on Sunday, “Keep in mind, even when RU-486 is used as approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to induce abortion, it’s known to cause hemorrhaging, in some cases so much so that female patients require medical intervention. Yet it appears Patel was willing to subject women to this potential trauma because he was primarily interested in financially exploiting women.”
And his financial health was apparently robust — the doctor lives in a $3.8-million home in north Oklahoma City — but the same cannot be said of some of his patients’ health; as to this, the Oklahoman cites a source reporting that “ambulances have been seen in the clinic’s parking lot on several occasions.”
Nonetheless, police cars apparently weren’t seen in Patel’s parking lot until just last week — despite accusations of impropriety and criminality dating back to 1984. This prompted the Oklahoman to write on Sunday that while abortion-rights supporters “often claim that clinic regulations represent a ‘war on women,’” Patel’s arrest “demonstrates that, without oversight, some individuals working in the abortion industry are capable of exploiting and harming women to an astounding degree.”
And Patel has quite a history. Among his acknowledged or alleged transgressions, he:
• was disciplined for botching an abortion in 1989,
• admitted in 1992 to dumping and burning 55 aborted babies in a field near Shawnee, Oklahoma. No charges were filed for lack of an applicable law, and the state medical board refused to discipline Patel after being unable to decide if he acted unprofessionally,
• was arrested in 1993 after a former patient accused him of molestation. After he was charged with one count each of forcible oral sodomy and sexual battery, two other women came forward and testified against him, saying they also had been raped by the doctor. He was ultimately acquitted.
And earlier this year, the Oklahoma attorney general’s office began investigating Patel after a complaint claiming, writes News 9, that the abortionist,
violated the law a number of ways[,] including:
• dumping confidential medical records,
• not reporting abortions they have performed,
• improperly disposing medical waste,
• failing to protect and properly dispose of employment applications, and
• failing to observe the 24 hour voluntary and informed consent rule.
Patel was also disciplined in 1990 by the Oklahoma Medical Board for unprofessional conduct. It was that year when Patel, in a deposition, made his statement that in his native country “doctors are considered as God.”
And Patel isn’t the only abortionist to deify himself but then play the Devil. A former associate of his, Oklahoma osteopath Dr. Sidney Laughlin, was investigated in 1992 for performing illegal late-term abortions in his bedroom and was fined and imprisoned in 1993 for Medicaid and mail fraud.
Then there’s Philadelphia, Pa. abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell, found guilty last year on more than 200 misdemeanor counts and 21 felony counts — including the murder of three infants — for running an abortion mill dubbed a “house of horrors.” Among his many transgressions, he would murder infants born alive by severing their spines with scissors and, like a serial killer, keep babies’ body parts in jars as “trophies.” In fact, his story is so shocking a made-for-TV movie about it is in the works.
As with Patel, Gosnell had complaints going back decades (from 1989), yet his abortion mill, Women’s Medical Society, hadn’t been inspected or visited by state officials since 1993; this was “for political reasons,” say critics. Gosnell is currently serving life in prison without parole.
Of course, it’s intuitive to many observers that someone willing to kill unborn babies wouldn’t bat an eye at committing lesser trespasses such as fraud and ethical violations; thinking otherwise is like supposing a mafia contract killer would shrink from involvement in racketeering and the breaking of gun laws.
In fact, it is only our laws that could manage such a bizarre moral inversion. And this brings us to an interesting irony in the Patel case: If the doctor hadn’t scammed his patients and instead had committed only the greater moral violation that is abortion, he’d be able to continue plying his dark trade today, tomorrow and beyond — unabated.
