An Operation Rescue Special Investigative Report

By Cheryl Sullenger

When the U.S. Supreme Court decriminalized abortion with its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, those who supported abortion took a moment to celebrate, then immediately got to work opening new abortion facilities nationwide.

But by 1992, the members of the Abortion Cartel realized they had a problem.  That year, one of their own, Dr. David A. Grimes, published an often-cited article called “Clinicians Who Provide Abortions: The Thinning Ranks.”  He bemoaned the fact that the number of abortion facilities nationwide was not increasing as they had hoped.  The reason for that was because those who conducted abortions were aging, retiring, or passing away with very few newly trained abortionists to take their places.

Abortion supporters believed that the stigma of conducting abortions would evaporate as abortion on demand became commonplace.  Yet, the stigma stubbornly continued, and even deepened as pro-life groups worked to inform the public, and new technologies – such as the advent of the sonogram – provided new evidence of the humanity of the unborn baby.  Medical schools and hospitals simply did not want to enter the disreputable world of abortion.

According to a 2010 article that appeared in the New York Magazine, “In a 1992 survey of OB-GYNs, 59 percent of those age 65 and older said that they performed abortions, compared with 28 percent of those age 50 and younger. The National Abortion Federation started warning about ‘the graying of the abortion provider.’”

However, in 1996, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) mandated that residency programs training in the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology must provide access to abortion training.  That opened a door that population control advocates gladly walked through.

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health

This “graying” trend quietly began to change with the founding of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in 1999.  It is located on the campus of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where it trains residents and fellows to conduct abortions through the end of the second trimester — and some beyond.

This a shadowy private organization’s efforts over the past 20 years have promoted and advanced a radical abortion agenda that has greatly influenced abortion policy, practice, and public opinion both domestically and globally. 

Bixby Center programs, accredited by the ACGME, were a way for ObGyn residency programs to fulfill the new abortion training accreditation requirements.

The Bixby Center is currently under the direction of abortionist Jody Steinauer, MD, PhD, who oversees all nine programs at the Bixby Center, including the Ryan Residency Training Program in Abortion and Contraceptives (Ryan Program) and the Fellowship of Family Planning (FFP), which both train new abortionists in the U.S.  Steinauer rose to prominence with the development of Bixby’s “Innovating Education in Reproductive Health.”  This is an online video abortion training curriculum with tutorials on everything from how to do first trimester aspiration abortions to treating common abortion complications such as hemorrhages.

Uta Landy serves as the National Director of both the Ryan and the FFP programs, as she has done since their inceptions in 1999. Both women support a radical population control/reduction philosophy that seeks to promote and expand abortion services in the U.S. and around the world.

Landy is a former director of the National Abortion Federation, a group of loosely affiliated clinics that has historically opposed abortion facility oversight and advocated for the disastrous policy to allow the abortion industry to self-police their clinics.

Landy is also the wife of Phillip Darney, an abortionist who served for years as the head of the Bixby Center, and continues to serve as a UCSF professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences. 

Darney, who has conducted abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy at the Women’s Option Center at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, has worked to protect abortionists who have caused serious abortion injuries.  Perhaps most notably, he was instrumental in helping the state of New Mexico to absolve late-term abortionist Shelley Sella of responsibility for causing a life-threatening uterine rupture during a 35-week induction abortion after ignoring the patient’s medical history that included a recent Caesarian Section delivery.

Through its programs, the Bixby Center claims to have trained a combined total of over 7,100 “health care providers” to conduct abortions, according to the its 2017-2018 Annual Report, the most recent available as of this writing.

It is estimated that Bixby Center’s Ryan Program alone trains approximately 360 new abortionists each year. This does not include Fellowship of Family Planning graduates.

In a change from the early days of abortion, the new trainees are mostly young women. 

Through the application of political pressure and assistance from the ACGME accrediting mandates, the Bixby Center has helped ensure that 64 percent of ObGyn resident training programs now include abortion training – up 13 percent since 2004.

But they are not stopping there. The Bixby Center is pushing to expand abortion training into Family Medicine training programs, which traditionally do not offer abortion training since it currently is not mandated for accreditation by the ACGME.

In addition to expanding mandated abortion training, the Bixby Center is heavily promoting Long Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARC), which are said to be effective at preventing pregnancy for 3-12 years. These include injections, intrauterine devices (IUDs) and subdermal contraceptive implants (such as Norplant). Adolescents are particularly targeted for LARCs.

The Ryan Program works through training sites such as Planned Parenthood to provide free IUDs to low-income women who agree to insertion for training purposes.

This push to increase LARC use in women and adolescents is a high priority for Bixby Center training programs at home and abroad and is evidence of the Center’s radical depopulation agenda.

“This just isn’t about replacing a few retiring abortionists.  This is a well-funded program with a radical globalist agenda that aims to expand abortion and long-acting contraceptives in America for population reduction purposes,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “While these people work day and night to shore up the failing business of abortion and expand it worldwide, most Americans have no idea that they even exist.”

Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program in Abortion and Family Planning

This is a program for residents that provides in-depth, hands-on training in abortion methods and practices throughout the second trimester of pregnancy. 

The Ryan Program is a “four-column” training program that provides abortion training as an “Incoming Resident, Resident-in-Training, Graduating Resident, and Area Expert.”

The Bixby Center has established 85 known Ryan Programs in the U.S. operating out of Universities, hospitals, and abortion facilities in 37 states. 

Of those 85 programs, at least 40 conduct training at 48 different abortion facilities.  Most of the other programs train at hospitals or facilities associated with universities that host Ryan Programs.  Some programs do not identify where training takes place.

In a five-year period between 2013 and 2018, according to one Bixby Center report released in 2019, “Residents did an average of 38 abortions on the rotation . . . [including] 8 medication abortions, 11 manual uterine aspirations, 14 electric uterine aspirations, and 6 dilation and evacuations. When asked about their post-residency plans, 82% intend to do abortions for medical reasons and 59% for all reasons.”

The Ryan Program is more secretive than the Fellowship in Family Planning, although some participating institutions are hesitant to mention either.  While some continue to proudly post their affiliations to these abortion training programs on line, many institutions have recently removed all mention of these programs, especially the Ryan Program.

It is important to note that not every on of its 85 programs are currently funded and active. Due to a lack of public transparency, it is difficult to know which programs are currently operating and which are inactive.

So where are all these training programs? The table below shows the institutions that host Ryan and FFP programs along with their training sites. [VIEW IN PDF]

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health U.S. Abortion Training Programs – Table – Final by Cheryl Sullenger on Scribd

Fellowship in Family Planning

The Fellowship in Family Planning is a two-year program with goals very similar to the Ryan Program.  It provides training in all abortion procedures and various aspects of abortion, contraception, sterilization, and gynecologic surgery.  The FFP has a greater emphasis on research.

Fellows are expected to graduate with a Master’s Degree, preferably in the fields of Public Health or Science, and are offered global networking opportunities for future placement after completion of the training program.

There are 28 known Fellowship of Family Planning programs in the U.S. located in 17 states.  All 28 FFP locations except one co-exist at the same institutions as Ryan Programs.  Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts is the only program location to only have a FFP program.

Notoriously Dangerous Ryan/FFP Programs

Operation Rescue has documented 241 medical emergencies and four maternal deaths at 21 of the abortion facilities used by U.S. Bixby Center programs for abortion training purposes.  This raises serious questions about the safety of the training programs.

Three training sites shared by both Ryan and FFP Programs are particularly notable. 

The Margaret Sanger Center Planned Parenthood is used by Ryan and FFP programs that are operated by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and by New York University Medical Center. 

Operation Rescue has documented 34 medical emergencies at the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood, including 13 that took place in 2019 alone.  Mount Sinai Hospital ambulances are nearly always used to transport women suffering medical emergencies to the hospital.  That hospital is home base for the Ryan and FFP training programs at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The facility requires the use of an elevator to access women that require emergency medical care and transport.  However, the elevator is too small to accommodate a gurney, so women are often brought down to the first floor in wheelchairs where they are then transferred to gurneys.  This is a problematic situation, especially for women suffering life-threatening emergencies.

“There are huge safety concerns at the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood.  The number of emergencies coupled with the lack of gurney access is a recipe for disaster,” said Newman. “We believe the facility is extremely unsafe.”

Case Western Reserve University, located in Cleveland, Ohio, trains Ryan Program and FFP fellows at Preterm.  Research on these often-secretive programs shows that a second Cleveland Ryan/FFP Program site, The Cleveland Clinic, likely also trains at Preterm, where Cleveland Clinic staff abortionist Mitchell Reider also works.

This abortion facility has been responsible for 18 known medical emergencies and two documented abortion patient deaths.

Tia Archeiva Parks was a 26-year-old mother of a little girl that had just turned four when she walked in to Preterm, a Cleveland abortion facility, on June 7, 2019, for what seemed like a routine abortion in her first trimester of pregnancy. Preterm staff conducted an abortion on the baby implanted in her womb, but failed to diagnose that another baby was growing inside her fallopian tube.  That ectopic pregnancy ruptured, most likely due to the force of the suction abortion.  She died the next day from internal hemorrhaging after spending a night in excruciating pain.

Lakisha Wilson was nearly 20 weeks pregnant when she visited Preterm for an abortion on the morning of March 21, 2014.  During the procedure, something went terribly wrong. Eight minutes into the second trimester dismemberment abortion, her blood pressure began to drop. Eleven minutes after that, Wilson suffered cardiac arrest.

Nine minutes after she stopped breathing, Preterm staff decided to all 911.  Emergency responders were delayed in getting to her in an abortion procedure room on the clinic’s third floor because of a malfunctioning elevator. She could not be intubated inside the clinic because the elevator, which had started working again, could not accommodate a gurney in the prone position.  At the hospital, efforts to save her failed. She died six days later at the Case Western Medical Center when hospital staff removed her from life support.

Wilson’s abortionist was Lisa Perreria.  Instead of facing much-deserved discipline, Perriera was presented with an award by the Physicians for Reproductive Choice for holding up under “adversity” after pro-life groups demanded she be held accountable for Wilson’s avoidable death.  A year after Wilson’s death, Perriera was awarded again with a new position as the Ryan Residency Training Program Director at Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she still works today.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, has used Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood in St. Louis as a training site for both Ryan Program residents and FFP fellows until last fall when the program was moved to the new Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Fairview, Illinois, due to efforts on the part of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) to revoke the RHS Planned Parenthood’s abortion facility license over safety concerns.

Seventy-five medical emergencies have been documented by Operation Rescue at the RHS Planned Parenthood abortion facility.  Since the opening of the Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood in October 2019, one additional medical emergency has occurred there.

RHS Planned Parenthood’s licensing troubles began with a failed re-licensing inspection last year when the DHSS discovered four women who suffered major abortion complications.  Some had to undergo as many as three abortions for the same pregnancy, one developed a dangerous infection known as sepsis after multiple abortion procedures, and another suffered a life-threatening hemorrhage that required emergency surgery and treatment in the Intensive Care Unit.

Abortionist Colleen McNicholas now serves as Medical Director for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri – the organization that operates both the St. Louis and Fairview abortion facilities.  She is also responsible for oversight of the Ryan Program and Fellowship of Family Planning trainees.

McNicholas was questioned in a deposition under oath about the mishandled abortions, where she confessed that she did not remember if she was present for one life-threatening abortion complication caused by one of her trainees.

“In all cases, I am always present on the surgical floor either in the procedure room or nearby, depending on the patient’s needs and the trainee physician’s skill,” McNicholas said.

“Imagine allowing a surgical trainee to conduct an operation while the trainer is in another room.  That is exactly the situation that McNicholas describes occurring at RHS Planned Parenthood as a matter of course,” said Newman.  “No wonder we have documented 76 medical emergencies at abortion facilities overseen by her.”

It is a troubling fact that trainees with the Ryan and FFP programs involved in those botched abortions refused to cooperate with the DHSS investigation, prompting the DHSS to notify RHS Planned Parenthood of intent to revoke their abortion facility license.  Planned Parenthood sued and the case ultimately was sent to the Administrative Hearing Commission for hearing.  A decision as to whether RHS Planned Parenthood will be allowed to keep its abortion facility license is expected in March 2020.

Secretive Funding from Globalist Sources — And the U.S. Taxpayer

Funding for both the Ryan Program and the Fellowship in Family Planning, which has never been very open, has become extremely secretive in the past few years.  While Bixby Center annual reports once detailed the financial state of the Bixby Center, the most recent annual report available published in 2018 has expunged all references to its finances.

However, the annual report published in 2017 contains funding sources and a list of contributors that should raise eyebrows.

According to that report, the Bixby Center received a total of $52 million in “research support.”

Governmental sources provided 51 percent (over $27 million) of its funding.  Some of this money came from California state and local health agencies, including the California Health and Human Services Department of Health Care Services.  But the rest of the funding appears to have come from Federal sources, including the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Office of Population Affairs, and several programs associated with the National Institutes of Health, at least as of 2017.

It is possible that some of the federal funding has since been curtailed by the Trump administration, which has worked to halt funding to organizations that conduct and refer for abortions in the U.S. and internationally.

“It seems that Bixby Center funding at taxpayer expense is an overlooked waste of taxpayer funding.  The fact that our Federal government hands over millions of dollars to the Bixby Center to help train a new generation of abortionists is completely unacceptable,” said Newman.

The Bixby Center also receives 41 percent of its funding from private foundations, six of which wish to remain anonymous. Conspicuously absent from the named list is the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after the late wife of Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett. This foundation is considered “one of the most substantial nongovernmental funders of pro-abortion activities in the United States and the world,” according to InfluenceWatch.org.

In 2010, the New York Times wrote that the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation was the sole source of funding for the Ryan Program and FFP, although no specific amount of grant money was available due to the secrecy of the foundation.

Other foundations that support the Bixby Center’s programs are well-known globalists and international promoters of depopulation policies favored by the radical left.  Those foundations include:

  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Famous for its population control agenda, in 2017, the Gates Foundation committed $375 million to population control and abortion over the ensuing four years, with the Bixby Center being one of the recipients of that money.
  • Children’s Investment Fund Foundation: As an example to their commitment to depopulation, one of the programs funded by CIFF is “In Their Hands,” which provides so-called “safe” abortion for adolescents in Kenya.  The program boasts that over three years, it will provide 250,000 Kenyan girls with contraception and abortion.
  • David & Lucille Packard Foundation: Another financier of abortion at home and overseas, this foundation’s focus in America is to expand abortion and address the clinic/abortionist shortage, primarily in the states of Mississippi and Louisiana.
  • Fred H. Bixby Foundation: This foundation was founded by a rancher who was concerned about global overpopulation.  In 2009, it gave $15 Million for a new Center for Population and Sustainability on the University of California Berkley campus.
  • Greenwall Foundation: Primarily interested in bioethics research, but in addition to the Bixby Center, it supports a program called “Advancing the Dialogue about Reproductive Medicine.”
  • JBP Foundation: A major supporter of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the JBP Foundation granted it with $6.9 million in 2017.  In addition to the Bixby Center, it also supports the Guttmacher Institute and the pro-abortion legal group, Center for Reproductive Rights.
  • Wallace Global Fund: This foundation is interested in environmentalism and population control.  It has funded Planned Parenthood, Center for Reproductive Rights, and Physicians for Reproductive Rights along with the Bixby Center.
  • William & Flora Hewlett Foundation:  This is a significant funder of global abortion whose grantees include Planned Parenthood, Gynuity Health Projects (which is working with Planned Parenthood on a scheme to distribute abortion pills via the U.S. Mail), and a host of other abortion/depopulation programs.

Other funding sources for the Bixby Center include numerous universities, the pro-abortion American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and the radical Ibis Reproductive Health, a left-wing organization whose top goal is to increase access to abortion.

Funding is used to compensate faculty and staff, purchase necessary equipment, and compensate institutions that host Bixby Center programs. Residents participating in the Ryan Program receive a salary and benefits, which can include health insurance, a retirement plan, and contacts for possible future employment.

Bixby Center “Partners”

In the event there is still any question about the Bixby Center’s globalist roots and population control agenda, it proudly lists online 28 organizations with which it has partnered.  That list is a veritable “who’s who” of abortion organizations with population control agendas, many of which support abortion as a crucial part of their radical environmental agenda.

  • American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: Supports and promotes abortion and recommends decriminalization of dangerous, self-induced abortions.
  • Bedsider: Targets women 18-29.  Promotes free sex and birth control. Affiliated with Power to Decide, a group that opposes, President Trump’s effort to defund abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood.
  • Center for Research on Environment Health and Population Activities: Globalist efforts to promote abortion and IUD use, and oppose Trump administration policies that deny international abortion groups U.S. funding.  Works primarily in Nepal.
  • Centers for Disease Control & Prevention: Supports research done by the Bixby Center.
  • Coalition Advancing Multipurpose Innovations: Global promoters of abortion and contraception. Website states, “This project is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)…”
  • Cochrane Collaboration for Systematic Reviews: Provides “evidence” for “health care decision-making.” Abortion appears to be a favorite topic.  Funded by the National Institutes of Health.
  • EngenderHealth: Global promoters of LARCs and sterilization.
  • Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health: Global leaders in depopulation efforts.
  • Guttmacher Institute: Provides “facts” in support of abortion.  Former affiliate of Planned Parenthood.
  • Gynuity Health Projects: Big promoters of abortion-inducing drugs worldwide.  Working with Planned Parenthood in the U.S. to develop an abortion pill distribution scheme that uses a smartphone app and distribution of drugs by mail.
  • Ibis Reproductive Health: Big promoters worldwide of abortion, late-term abortions, and dangerous self-managed abortions. Promotes over-the-counter access to contraceptives and other population control projects.
  • International Committee for Contraception Research: A project of the Population Council, which promotes abortion and contraception world-wide, often in conjunction with United Nations programs.
  • International Confederation of Midwives: Promotes universal health care for all, an expensive and unsustainable version of socialized medicine.
  • International Federation of Obstetricians & Gynecologists: Promotes abortion expansion and IUD use worldwide.
  • Ipas: Focus on world-wide expansion of abortion and contraceptives.
  • John Snow, Inc.: Variety of programs, including “Family Planning and Reproductive Health,” which includes abortion training.  Works with Planned Parenthood to expand contraceptive use.
  • Marie Stopes International: A world-wide chain of abortion businesses.  Some Stopes clinics have been shut down over safety concerns.
  • National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association: Works to protect and expand abortion and contraception in the U.S.  Focused currently on opposition to the Trump Administration ban on Title X grants for groups/businesses that conduct or refer for abortions.
  • National Institutes of Health: Government agency that works with Bixby to produce studies supporting abortion.  This is one of the government programs that needs to stop collaborating with population control radicals.
  • National Health Law Program: Legal organization that supports “healthcare for all” using California as an example.
  • National Women’s Law Center: Legal organization seeking “gender justice,” apparently through the promotion of abortion.
  • Planned Parenthood Federation of America: Largest abortion provider in America.  Seeks government funded abortion and contraceptives and removal of abortion accountability laws.
  • Population Action International: Globalist organization seeking universal access to abortion and contraceptives.
  • Pathfinder: Promoting abortion and population reduction for the sake of the environment.
  • Population Council: Mentioned previously, this is another population control organization through abortion, contraception, and sterilization.
  • Society of Family Planning: Another U.S. research group with a focus on promoting abortion and contraception.
  • White Ribbon Alliance: Global alliance of groups working to promote abortion world-wide. They toss in the “rights of newborns” to appear altruistic.
  • World Health Organization: United Nations organization that promotes abortion and contraception all over the world, among other projects.

Conclusions

There is an old adage that says, “Birds of a feather flock together.”  Certainly, the organizations that partner with the Bixby Center draw a clear picture of a well-financed global depopulation effort that is aggressive and attempting to expand.  These programs are not confined to Third World countries, either.  There is a good deal of effort and money being put into preventing births within the U.S., as evidenced by the Ryan and FFP programs.

If a group can reduce populations by preventing births, either through abortion or long-acting contraceptives, that gives the group power to control the people. That is what this is all about.  Smaller populations are easier to control.

“The Bible say that children are a gift from God.  The elitist globalists want to deny American families that precious gift.  Strong families that raise their children to love God and Country are a threat to their plans to weaken America and bring about a global government that controls every aspect of our lives,” said Newman.  “We must resist organizations like the Bixby Center and their collaborators – including Planned Parenthood – and expose their evil schemes whenever possible.  And we must demand an immediate end all government funding to these groups in order to protect innocent lives and preserve our freedoms.”