By Cheryl Sullenger
Wichita, Kansas – When abortionist Cheryl Chastine left South Wind Women’s Center, none of the pro-life activists on the street in the late afternoon of April 15, 2015, thought much about it – until they witnessed what happened next.
Mark Gietzen, Director of the Kansas Coalition for Life, noticed a wobbly Black woman slowly making her way across the parting lot with great effort. She couldn’t take more than “baby steps” and appeared to be in a great deal of pain.
By the time the woman reached the sidewalk, she was exhausted and barely able to stand. One of the female sidewalk counselors offered her help and allowed the woman to lean on her as she tried to recoup her strength. As the two spoke, it was confirmed that the woman, who was apparently from a foreign country, had received an abortion.
“It appeared that this woman should have still been in the recovery room, because she was having a hard time keeping her balance and she appeared to be in pain,” said Gietzen.
Once she was able, the woman slowly inched her way down the street, stopping often to summon her strength and balance herself. She came to rest precariously on a curb two doors down from the clinic’s gate, and there she waited nearly a half-hour until her ride arrived. With difficulty, she climbed into the vehicle and drove away.
“It is obvious the clinic staff just wanted her out of the office so they could go home. There’s really no other reason why she wasn’t allowed to wait for her ride in the clinic, rather than out on a street curb. This is the kind of callous treatment women get not only at South Wind, but at abortion facilities around the country,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “It really is despicable.”
Violation of Patient Care Standards
Patient care standards require woman to be in stable condition before being discharged. In addition, it is a violation of the accepted standard of care for an abortionist to leave the clinic before the last patient is discharged.
Operation Rescue has documentation of other abortionists being cited by Health officials or disciplined by medical boards for leaving the abortion facilities before the last patient has been discharged.
Placing Women in Danger
This irresponsible practice creates a hazardous situation for abortion patients who may suffer complications that manifest during the recovery period. With the abortionist gone, decisions about medical care are left to unqualified workers.
One such example occurred in 2005 with California abortionist Phillip Rand left a Santa Ana abortion clinic immediately after conducting a second-trimester abortion on a patient. Clinic workers noticed that the patient had begun to hemorrhage and contacted Rand via his cell phone, asking him to return to treat the woman. Instead, Rand refused to do so because he had abortion appointments waiting at another facility in San Diego County. The woman died from blood loss, and Rand was eventually forced to surrender his medical license.
More recently, Ohio abortionists Mohammed Rezaee and Lee Rubenstein were caught by inspectors in 2013 routinely leaving the Cleveland Surgi-Center before all the surgical abortion patients had been “discharged from post-anesthesia care.” They were cited and the abortion facility was forced to change their careless practices.
Chastine Patient Hemorrhages
There is more evidence that patient care standards at South Wind Women’s Center are far below what is acceptable.
On March 26, 2015, Operation Rescue documented an ambulance at the South Wind abortion facility, which transported an abortion patient to Galichia Hospital across town. Operation Rescue obtained 911 records that indicated the woman was hemorrhaging. The abortionist on duty that day was Cheryl Chastine.
As reported by Operation Rescue earlier, Chastine never conducted an abortion prior to her employment with South Wind beginning in April, 2013, when the clinic first opened.
“Standard of care issues are plaguing Cheryl Chastine and South Wind. It is inexcusable kick a patient to the curb when her condition was obviously still sketchy, no matter how close to quitting time it was. It is only a matter of time before a patient dies there. It’s bound to happen as sure as the sun rises in the east,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “We have an open complaint with the Kansas Board of Healing Arts against her, but that process is excruciatingly slow. We pray someone in authority will act to protect women and their babies before yet another abortion patient ends up on a slab in the morgue.”
View additional documentation related to South Wind’s abortionist, Cheryl Chastine, at AbortionDocs.org.
