In my last article, I shared a photo that a patient at Planned Parenthood of White Plains posted on Yelp. It showed a bloody ultrasound probe that was left in a room where she was taken. I also highlighted negative reviews of the facility.
I made a mistake in that article—I said that Planned Parenthood White Plains was closed. Apparently, I misread the Yelp website. It is, in fact, still open six days a week and is seeing patients.
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The photo and reviews were featured on the Problems at Planned Parenthood website, a joint project of Rachel MacNair and me, where we document failed health inspections, bad reviews, and malpractice cases from Planned Parenthood facilities across the country.
The site is constantly being updated and is a work in progress.
While I have been collecting negative reviews from Planned Parenthood patients and staff, MacNair has been looking up lawsuits. So far, she’s found two of them regarding White Plains, one of which is truly shocking.
The Death of a Near-Full-Term Baby
A lawsuit filed in 2021, brought by a woman identified only as Jane Doe, documents the death of a near-term baby after Doe took the abortion pill. Not only did Planned Parenthood neglect to perform an ultrasound to date Doe’s pregnancy, but abortionist Meera Shah failed to conduct a physical exam of any kind.
Shah wrote the pro-abortion book You’re the Only One I’ve Told: The Stories Behind Abortion. In a puff piece promoting the book in Elle, reporter Roxanne Fequere described Shah as “uniquely positioned to discuss the details of an abortion procedure with compassion, care, and knowledge.”
Fequere also quoted Shah calling pregnancy resource centers “fake health centers.” Keep that in mind as you read about what Shah and codefendant nurse practitioner Abigail Mensah put Jane Doe and her baby through.
No Informed Consent, Ultrasound, or Examination
According to the lawsuit, Doe was prescribed the two-drug regimen of Mifeprex and misoprostol on May 4, 2020. She did not sign a Patient Agreement Form or any other document before being given the medication.
The lawsuit says that the defendants “failed to conduct a physical exam of any type … let alone a bimanual pelvic exam or abdominal exam.” Shah also declined to perform an ultrasound.
Somehow, Shah and other staff at Planned Parenthood didn’t realize that, rather than being in the first trimester, Doe was actually 33 to 36 weeks pregnant – almost full term. Instead, based on Doe’s mistaken recollection of her last menstrual period, they decided she was six weeks pregnant.
Doe took the abortion-inducing drugs on May 4, 2020. That night, she began experiencing “painful cramping and pressure,” which soon escalated into full labor. Doe endured the agony of labor with no doctors present and no treatment for pain. According to the suit, this led to a vaginal laceration.
The Death of a Baby Boy
At about 3:00 AM, Doe delivered her fully formed, dead baby boy into the toilet in her home.
The lawsuit states that Doe was “shocked and traumatized” when she saw the “lifeless, fully-formed baby” in the toilet, “covered in mucous, blood, and the placenta.”
She named her baby boy JT.
In the morning, Doe contacted Planned Parenthood about her ordeal. She spoke to Mensah and described JT’s body as being the length of her forearm, not including his legs. Mensah repeatedly asked whether the body was the size of a fist. Doe and her mother kept correcting her.
Even though Doe had just gone through labor and delivery and was suffering a complication, she was told to come directly to Planned Parenthood instead of going to the nearest emergency room. She was also told to bring in JT’s body, which meant transporting it across county lines.
Mistreatment and Deception
The lawsuit described Doe as “just hours post-partum and in shock” when she arrived at White Plains. Nevertheless, she was made to wait for “many hours.”
Dr. Shah belatedly performed an ultrasound and physical exam and examined JT’s body. She concluded that “JT’s length and femur size were consistent with that of a thirty-three to thirty-six week old baby.”
Shah and Mensah told Doe and her family that they would “dispose of” JT, which, the lawsuit says, had the effect of “further upsetting Plaintiff and her family.” They also told Doe not to contact law enforcement.
But Doe refused to hand over JT’s body and called the police anyway.
When the police arrived, the defendants allegedly made “misleading statements,” such as the “indisputably untrue” claim that Doe had been examined before the abortion. In addition, they claimed that Doe decided to transport JT’s body across county lines on her own, hiding the fact that they instructed her to do so.
Fortunately, Doe wasn’t arrested or charged with transporting the body.
JT was taken to the Westchester County Morgue. The lawsuit reiterates that he was a “fully formed and otherwise healthy baby.” An autopsy performed on May 7, 2020, determined JT’s cause of death to be a “medically induced termination of pregnancy of a 30-week fetus.”
The lawsuit states that:
Plaintiff had no intention of aborting a near-term baby, did not consent to the termination of a near-term baby, and would not have aborted a near-term baby or any baby after her first trimester.
Pro-abortion activists have been pushing to make abortion pills available over the counter, and they defend telehealth abortions, in which a doctor never examines the pregnant patient. Jane Doe’s lawsuit shows what can go wrong with this.
More Malpractice and an Award Despite It
This isn’t the first time Shah has been sued for malpractice. She was also a defendant in another lawsuit that was non-abortion/non-Planned Parenthood related.
She was sued for malpractice after a botched biopsy, where a man suffered third-degree chemical burns to an intimate part of his body when Shah used the wrong chemical solution — trichloroacetic acid instead of vinegar.
Shah was honored in 2018 by Senator Brad Hoylman of New York. This was before Doe’s ordeal, but after the lawsuit concerning the botched biopsy.
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Another Lawsuit Alleging “Pain and Suffering”
There is less information available about the other lawsuit against White Plains Planned Parenthood.
In this case, the woman concerned was named in the court document. Out of respect for her privacy, I’ll identify her by her initials, PA.
PA visited Planned Parenthood White Plains several times in early March 2020 for “medical and surgical care and treatment.”
The lawsuit itself doesn’t specify what type of treatment or surgery PA underwent and doesn’t contain the word “abortion.” So, we can’t say for certain that this case concerns an abortion and not some other procedure.
The lawsuit states that because of Planned Parenthood, PA suffered:
severe and serious personal injury, conscious pain and suffering, mental anguish, emotional distress, psychological trauma and loss of enjoyment of life, all of a permanent nature.
Lack of Informed Consent
Allegedly, staff did not explain “the risks, hazards and alternatives” connected with the “treatment” so that “informed consent could be given.”
The lawsuit further stated:
Reasonably prudent persons in plaintiff’s position would not have undergone the treatment utilized if fully informed of the risk, hazards and alternatives connected with the treatment.
The lawsuit also sought damages on behalf of PA’s husband, Timothy, who was deprived of “the support, services, and consortium” of his wife.
These two lawsuits are more evidence (piled on to a mountain of other evidence) that Planned Parenthood gives substandard medical care.
LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here.
