NRL News Today has reported in exhaustive detail about how efforts to strip high-profile abortionists of their licenses, no matter how grievous their offenses, can go on literally for decades.
As we reported last year Oklahoma abortionist Naresh G. Patel was charged in a fraud cause of providing pricey abortifacients to three undercover agents whom he told were pregnant but were not.
Patel entered what is known as an Alford plea to avoid trial.
“He’s not saying he is guilty, but the state has enough evidence that he believes he would be convicted by a jury if the evidence was presented to a jury,” Deputy Attorney General Megan Tilly told Abby Broyles of KFOR, News Channel 4. At that juncture he agreed never to practice medicine again in Oklahoma.
Thursday it became official, according to Broyles. Nadel, 62, was a no-show as the state medical board officially stripped him of his medical license.
“Our main goal in this case was to ensure Dr. Patel no longer practices medicine in the state of Oklahoma and no longer ran any medical clinics in the state of Oklahoma,” said Tilly.
But that is only a part of his sordid story and only Patel’s latest brush with the law. For example, he was fined but never disciplined by the Oklahoma medical board or charged with a crime back in the 1990s when it was discovered he was burning the bodies of aborted babies in a field near Shawnee.
And then there was the way in which his abortifacient scam came to light. According to Nolan Clay and Robby Trammell of The Oklahoman
The complaint that led to the undercover investigation came from a sister of a former patient who paid $520 for a medical [chemical] abortion procedure in August 2011. The former patient, Pamela Michelle King, died four months later of complications from cervical cancer. The doctor who cared for her at the time of her death reported she had not been pregnant within the past year.
After Patel’s arrest, Attorney General Scott Pruitt said, “This type of fraudulent activity and blatant disregard for the health and well-being of Oklahoma women will not be tolerated,” adding, “Oklahoma women should be able to trust that the advice they receive from their physicians is truthful, accurate and does not jeopardize their health.”
According to the arrest warrant, the undercover investigation began in early June 2014 when an investigator went to Patel’s Warr Acres clinic. Subsequently, on October 16, an Oklahoma City police detective visited the clinic followed by an Oklahoma attorney general agent who visited the clinic October 22.
“Each time, Patel gave the woman an ultrasound, told her she was pregnant and gave her five RU-486 pills to induce an abortion, according to the affidavit,” Clay and Trammell reported. “Each paid $620 for the unnecessary procedure, according to the affidavit. Each time, the investigator secretly recorded Patel inside the clinic, according to the affidavit.”
News 9 provided more extensive coverage of the sting. Referring to the first investigator, according to court documents, Patel “performed an ultrasound on her abdomen and told her she was very, very early pregnant.” She was given five abortion pills.
The second investigator was wearing a hidden video camera. Patel “performed an external ultrasound on her abdomen, and he told her she was pregnant” and that her pregnancy urine test was positive. News 9 also reported
Later that month [October], another agent visited the clinic wearing undercover surveillance equipment. Patel performed an ultrasound and told the not pregnant agent that she was “early in her pregnancy” and gave her five abortion pills to take. The agent “put one pill into her mouth and concealed the pill until she was able to place it into a Kleenex.” Patel then prescribed the agent “Tylenol#3 with codeine.” The agent was not pregnant.
And as we reported elsewhere, another woman came forward when she learned Patel had been arrested. The unnamed woman, who actually had been pregnant, told KFOR News Channel 4 that her abortion at the hands of Patel was “like torture.” These memories resurfaced, she told Channel 4, when she learned about the latest charges against Patel.
Back in December 2014, she told the station that had decided on an abortion a few month before because her heart was enlarged, leading to early complications.
“I actually felt like I was having a heart attack a lot of the time. I’d gone into the hospital on two other occasions with chest pains,” she said. So she arraigned to go to Patel’s Warr Acres abortion clinic.
According to the woman, after first being told she would be charged $1,100 for the abortion, Patel’s office did a quick ultrasound and said to her “You’re two weeks further along than what you’re telling me.” They told the frightened woman that they wanted another $500.
She agreed. The story from Channel 4’s Broyles continues:
“A nurse came into the room and strapped my wrists down to the table. They strapped my ankles down where my feet were, and she held my forehead down to the table,” she said.
She says they didn’t give her any anesthesia and the pain was unbearable.
“I’d never known anything like it in my life. It was like torture,” she said.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
