Biskind Convicted of Manslaughter for Botched Abortion

By Liz Townsend

Three years after LouAnne Herron bled to death from a botched abortion, a Phoenix, Arizona, jury convicted abortionist John Biskind of manslaughter February 20. Biskind tore a two-inch gash in Herron's uterus during the April 17, 1998, abortion, and later left the A-Z Women's Center without giving her emergency care.

Biskind and clinic administrator Carol Stuart-Schadoff, who was convicted of negligent homicide for failing to schedule a registered nurse to work on the day of Herron's death and failing to quickly call paramedics, will be sentenced March 20.

Biskind is the first doctor in Arizona to be found guilty in a criminal court for killing a patient. Usually such charges are resolved by the state medical licensing board or in civil cases.

"We don't usually prosecute doctors for bad medicine," prosecutor Paul Ahler told the Associated Press, "but this case was so bad we had to make a stand."

The jury agreed with the prosecution. "The evidence kind of spoke for itself," jury foreman Russell Craig told the Arizona Republ ic. "We felt [Biskind] didn't provide the standard of care any person should expect."

Herron's unborn baby was between 23 to 26 weeks old at the time of the abortion. Biskind performed the 45-minute procedure, which cost the 33-year-old Herron $1,250 due to the advanced gestational age of the baby, and sent Herron to a recovery room that had no registered nurse to monitor her condition.

Medical assistant Teresa Jensen told the court that Herron was in pain and frightened as she lay in the recovery room, the Republic reported. Jensen testified that Herron asked, "Is everything OK? What's wrong with me?"

When medical assistant Michele Price lifted the sheet covering Herron in the recovery room, she saw that Herron was covered with blood "all underneath her, down to her knees," Price testified, according to the Republic. "It was more than I had ever seen before."

The staff members insisted that Biskind knew that Herron's condition was serious. Jensen testified that Biskind checked the intravenous tube that held blood-clotting medicine and told Herron, "just lay down . . . everything would be fine," the Republic reported.

By the time Biskind left the clinic a little after 4 p.m., Herron had been in the recovery room for almost three hours, far longer than any other patient that day, according to the Republic. Biskind testified that he did not know that Herron was bleeding more than usual and believed her condition was stable, and he wanted to keep an appointment at a tailor shop.

Stuart-Schadoff finally called paramedics at 4:24 p.m., and they arrived at the clinic two minutes later. Phoenix fire captain Brian Tobin testified that he immediately saw that Herron was in grave danger.

"I very quickly felt that there wasn't a lot of competent medical care going on at the time," Tobin said, according to the Republ ic. "It was very difficult for me to believe that they could get vital signs of a woman who, even as we walked in the door, looked really dead."

An autopsy revealed that Herron's uterus had a two-inch by 3/4- inch tear, and that she lost two to three liters of blood, " nearly the total in her body," the Republic reported. Despite defense suggestions that a "fetal body part" could have caused the tear, former Maricopa County medical examiner Dr. Julie Brown testified that a medical instrument, which must have been wielded by Biskind, did the damage.

Herron's father, Michael Gibbs, told the Republic that the family considered the guilty verdicts "just step one."

The family has filed a civil suit against Biskind, Stuart- Schadoff, and clinic owner Moshe Hacha-movitch. The civil trial is scheduled to begin this June.

Many in Arizona have criticized the state's Board of Medical Examiners (BOMEX) for failing to stop Biskind from performing abortions.

Despite the death of another woman in 1995, the near-abortions of very late-term babies in 1989 and 1998, and other complaints, according to the Republic. Biskind had only received "censure" and "letters of concern" from BOMEX.

Legislation is moving through the Arizona legislature that would require BOMEX to consider a doctor's record in other states when deciding whether to issue a medical license, consider previous complaints when investigating a doctor's professional conduct, and hold a roll call vote on disciplinary actions.

Other regulations giving more protection to patients in abortion clinics and other medical facilities have been proposed in the wake of Herron's death, but the slow legislative process has frustrated many in the state.

"The convictions of those whose recklessness contributed to Herron's death are just," insisted a Republic editorial. "But the answer to Herron's tortured question about whether everything is OK remains unequivocally and resoundingly, no.

"Everything is not OK."