Abortion clinic operator is charged in felonies by San Diego County D.A.

SAN DIEGO – A 48-year-old woman who ran an abortion clinic in Chula Vista was charged Friday with 10 felony counts of practicing medicine without a license and grand theft.

Bertha Pinedo Bugarin, who faces similar charges in Los Angeles, is accused of telling women that she was a doctor, performing abortions on them and prescribing drugs. One woman had to be rushed to a hospital with life-threatening complications, prosecutors said.

“This defendant preyed on women in the Hispanic community,” said San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis. “By passing herself off as a doctor, she put these women’s lives in serious danger.”

Dumanis said nine former patients from Bugarin’s Clinica Medica de la Mujer have identified Bugarin, including one woman who gave birth prematurely to a baby that lived for only three hours. Another patient paid $500 for an abortion but had to return for a second procedure when the first was not successful, prosecutors said.

Chula Vista Police Chief Rick Emerson, who led a yearlong investigation, said patients “were subjected to pain and risk of great bodily injury because of Bugarin’s lack of medical training.”

At one point, Bugarin ran six abortion clinics in Southern California, advertising them on Spanish-language television. If convicted on all counts, she faces more than nine years in prison, prosecutors said.

Tony.perry@latimes.com