Local News in Brief : Women Picket Hospital
Members of the Feminists for Life coalition demonstrated outside Inglewood Women’s Hospital, demanding that Medi-Cal funding for the hospital be halted while health violations there are investigated.
State officials last week cited the hospital, which performs about 1,000 abortions a month, for 33 health violations. These included doing abortions in an operating room where tables and floors were stained with the blood of previous patients, and physicians’ failure to adequately monitor patients under anesthesia and before release. The hospital had been cited for similar violations earlier this year and in 1986.
About 15 women marched and chanted in front of the building for more than an hour Thursday while hospital administrators watched.
State officials said the hospital could lose its license if it fails to come up with an adequate plan for improvements by Dec. 15.
State and federal officials are also investigating a report from County-USC Medical Center that a woman who suffered complications while having an abortion at the Inglewood facility was transferred to County-USC in unstable condition and without warning.
If the report is true--federal law prohibits dumping patients into emergency rooms of other hospitals--it could force a cutoff of federal and state funds to the Inglewood hospital.
A spokeswoman for the coalition said it and a sister organization, the Right to Life League of Southern California, are planning to follow up their protest with formal letters to federal agencies involved in funding the hospital.
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