Another woman has died at the hands of notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart (shown). Maryland Coalition for Life (MDCFL), a state pro-life activist group, reported that the 29-year-old woman, later identified as Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli of New Rochelle, New York, died February 7, four days after arriving at Carhart’s Germantown, Maryland, abortion clinic for a third trimester abortion. It was later determined that Morbelli was in her 33rd — or eighth month — of pregnancy.
According to MDCFL, the young woman arrived on a Sunday at the Reproductive Health Center in Germantown, and as she returned over the next three days, appeared “pale and weak,” said witnesses. She had reportedly been told that her pre-born baby daughter suffered from fetal anomalies, and had decided to end the baby’s life. She had traveled from New York with members of her family and was staying each night in a local motel, traveling daily to the abortion clinic for Carhart’s grisly procedure.
Operation Rescue reported that early on the morning of February 7, four days into the procedure, “the woman began suffering chest pain and other discomforts.” After desperate attempts to reach Carhart were unsuccessful, the woman’s family rushed her to a nearby emergency room. “The patient suffered massive internal bleeding into her abdominal cavity,” reported Operation Rescue and “slipped into a Code Blue condition approximately six times before finally succumbing to her injuries at around 9:30 a.m.” Continued attempts by the hospital to reach Carhart were unsuccessful, and the case has now been referred to the county medical examiner.
Operation Rescue noted that Morbelli, a kindergarten teacher in White Plains, New York, and her husband had already named their pre-born daughter Madison Leigh, and said mother and child would be buried together following a joint funeral service February 13.
“Jennifer was a beautiful woman, loved and cherished by many, whose future appeared bright,” said Operation Rescue president Troy Newman. “Her passing is an unspeakable tragedy. We are dedicated to working through the legal system to ensure that no more women will suffer Jennifer’s fate.”
Newman recalled that in 2005 another Carhart patient, 19-year-old Christin Gilbert, died from a late-term abortion procedure similar to the one Carhart inflicted on Morbelli. He noted that Operation Rescue has documented nearly a dozen instances of serious complications that have arisen from late-term abortions over the past three years. Morbelli’s tragic death “dramatically illustrates the dangers of third trimester abortions that are done outside of the safety of obstetrical standards,” Newman said. “It is time for medical boards to put an end to these horrifically dangerous and barbaric third trimester abortions. If they do not, we can only expect Carhart and his associates to send more women to the morgue.”
The fact that Carhart remained inaccessible throughout the emergency is particularly troubling, said Newman. “This is a case of not only shoddy practices, but patient abandonment that we believe rises to the level of criminal conduct,” he charged. “We will press for criminal charges in this case, in addition to Board discipline.”
MDCFL executive director Michael Martelli noted that on the day Morbelli died, Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene posted on its website that it had issued a license to Carhart’s abortion clinic, even though it had not performed a single inspection of the facility. “It is so tragic that this family had to lose not only their nearly full-term child, but also their wife, daughter, and sister,” said Martelli. “What is most appalling is that the state of Maryland … has allowed this man to continue to butcher women and children. He already killed Christin Gilbert in Kansas in 2005, and now another senseless tragedy has come as a result of Carhart’s so-called women’s healthcare and the apathy of the pro-abortion Maryland state government.”
Ironically, just last month a film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival that portrays Carhart and a handful of other doctors as courageous for their determination to continue late-term abortions in light of the assassination several years ago of late-term abortionist George Tiller, an associate of Carhart. The Los Angeles Times coos over the movie, entitled After Tiller, calling it “an intimate and heartfelt look” at the four abortionists. Ignoring that the babies murdered by the killing team are, almost without exception, completely viable humans, Times reporter Mark Olsen writes that the movie offers “emotional clarity to an issue in which every nuanced turn of phrase has been made politically complicated.”
As for Carhart himself, Olsen quotes him as saying that, with regard to any scruples about murdering babies, “I never even give it a second thought.” As noted above, Carhart remained unavailable for comments concerning second thoughts he may have over the late-term abortion death of Jennifer McKenna-Morbelli.
Shockingly, almost no major media organs in the Maryland vicinity, not to mention nationwide, have picked up on the abortion-related death of the 29-year-old woman. “Neither the Washington Post nor the Baltimore Sun has yet reported on this woman’s death,” noted the American Spectator, despite a widely publicized February 7 press conference on the story by the MDCFL in front of Carhart’s notorious clinic. “The story is also being ignored by the Associated Press, USA Today, the New York Times, and television news networks” — as well as the Los Angeles Times, which had, up to Morbelli’s death, seemed intently interested in bringing “emotional clarity” to the work of Carhart.
Photo of LeRoy Carhart: AP Images
