By Liz Townsend

Abortionist Steven Brigham in 2000.

The New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners is expected to rule today on whether notorious abortionist Steven Chase Brigham should permanently lose his state medical license, according to the Associated Press. Brigham, who has been the subject of investigations for botched abortions and other violations in New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, and California, is accused of operating a secret abortion clinic that performed late abortions in a two-step process that took place in New Jersey and Maryland, the Newark Star-Ledger reported.

New Jersey law requires abortions over 14 weeks to be done in a hospital or ambulatory care facility. Brigham's clinic is not licensed as such a facility, and he lacks both hospital admitting privileges and obstetrical training in the state, according to the Star-Ledger.

Prosecutors said that, in order to evade the law, "he allegedly inserted absorbent rods called laminaria to widen patients' cervixes over 24 hours or more, and gave their fetuses lethal injections" at his clinic in Voorhees, New Jersey, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. He then transported the women 100 miles to his Elkton, Maryland, facility, where the unborn babies were dismembered and removed. Maryland has no restrictions on late abortions.

Brigham's defense is based on the fact that the New Jersey board exonerated him in 1996 for much the same scheme. At that time, he began the abortions in New Jersey and brought the women to New York to complete the procedure, according to the Star-Ledger. Brigham's actions came to the attention of authorities when "[o]ne patient bled so profusely during the abortion she was taken to a hospital for an emergency hysterectomy," the Star-Ledger reported.

The New Jersey board, however, based its ruling on testimony that late abortions are inherently dangerous and decided that the two-state procedure was not illegal, then-board president Fred Jacobs told the Star-Ledger.

Since the board did not hold Brigham accountable in the 1990s, he believes they should rule the same way now. "The repeated investigation and harassment by [the attorney general], even after [Brigham] was exonerated by the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners in 1996 for the very same alleged wrongdoings that are now claimed again, raises real questions as to the good faith" of the allegations, according to Brigham's legal filings.

The New Jersey attorney general's office, however, has asked the board to permanently remove Brigham's license for his repeated actions to flout the law. "The doctor stepped over--far over--the board's line, and his conduct poses a clear and imminent danger to the public," Deputy Attorney General Jeri Warhaftig said in court documents. The previous ruling "did not relieve [Brigham] of the burden of exercising good medical judgment or the obligation to play by the rules," she added.