Doctor Charged in Botched Abortion : Medicine: The state Medical Board accuses the physician of gross negligence and wants her license. The procedure was incomplete, and left the patient permanently injured.

A doctor at an El Monte medical clinic has been charged with gross negligence after performing an abortion that allegedly left a patient permanently injured, the state attorney general’s office said.

The charges are contained in a lawsuit that seeks suspension or revocation of the medical license of Dr. Rebecca Stanley of Hermosa Beach. It alleges that Stanley perforated a patient’s uterus last year while performing a second-trimester abortion and that she failed to remove all the fetal parts, including the head of the fetus.

The abortion took place at Clinica Eva, a facility located in a mini-mall on Valley Boulevard that has been the target of anti-abortion protesters and was charged by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office last year with operating without a county health permit. The clinic is also known as the Family Planning Center.

Through her attorney, Stanley declined to comment on the case or on whether she is still practicing. Representatives of Clinica Eva, which is still operating, did not return repeated phone calls from The Times.

In December, Eva Winchell, the clinic’s last owner of record, was fined by Los Angeles County, placed on one year’s probation and ordered not to operate the clinic until she obtained a permit. She was also arrested for failing to pay her fine on time.

Winchell told county officials in December that she was in the process of selling the clinic to a doctor.

The case has not been pursued since the court action by either the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services or the district attorney’s office because Winchell sold the clinic, officials say.

Clinics owned by doctors come under the jurisdiction of the state Medical Board and are not regulated by the county.

But as of this week, the clinic is not under the Medical Board’s jurisdiction, a spokesman for that agency said. Dr. Nicolas Braemer, who practices in El Monte, has applied for a permit to operate the clinic, but the permit is pending, according to Vern Leeper, chief of the Medical Board’s enforcement program.

The lawsuit against Stanley, filed in May on behalf of the Medical Board by the attorney general, lists Winchell as the clinic owner.

Leeper said that the Medical Board issues perfunctory operating permits to doctor-owned clinics but that there is no agency responsible for monitoring and inspecting them. Because of the apparent sale, Leeper says responsibility for inspecting Clinica Eva may have fallen through the cracks.

“We have authority over the doctor, not his facility,” Leeper said. “There’s nobody that regulates these places and there’s nobody who walks in and says, ‘Do you have the right medical equipment.’ You just have the shingle out.”

The Medical Board has about 12 suits pending statewide against doctors for botched abortions, some of which have resulted in death, Leeper said. Three women died in 1986-87 after undergoing abortions at Her Medical Clinic in south Los Angeles. A fourth woman died shortly after undergoing an abortion at Inglewood Women’s Hospital, which health officials said was rife with unsanitary conditions and inadequate care.

Leeper said the administrative charges against Stanley were filed after a three-step review by Medical Board investigators and a panel of doctors concluded that gross negligence had occurred. An administrative hearing on the charges will be scheduled within 60 days, he said, and the hearing process could take up to a year.

The suit alleges that on May 20, 1989, Stanley performed a second-trimester abortion on a patient but failed to remove all the fetal parts. During the process, Stanley also allegedly perforated the patient’s uterus, then sent the woman home without telling her about the complications.

Three days later, the patient returned to Clinica Eva in great pain and was referred to Los Angeles County/USC Women’s Hospital, where doctors found the head of the aborted fetus lodged in the patient’s abdominal cavity, the suit said.

As a result of medical complications, the patient will have to undergo a hysterectomy and may be forced to have her right kidney removed, the suit says.

In addition to gross negligence, the suit charges Stanley with failure to transfer the patient immediately to an acute-care facility and failure to keep adequate records of the office visit, surgical procedures and complications related to the abortion.

Additionally, the suit charges Stanley with performing an abortion in an unlicensed medical facility and failing to follow up on the patient despite post-surgery complications.

According to the suit, Stanley told the patient that the abortion had been successfully completed and failed to tell her that her uterus had been perforated.

A second Clinica Eva is located on South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. State and county officials say there are no lawsuits or investigations pending against the Los Angeles Clinica Eva.