January 3, 2012 (Chicago, Illinois) – After three months of being closed due to egregious health code violations, the Northern Illinois Women’s Center (NIWC) abortion clinic will have a public hearing Wednesday before the Illinois Department of Public Health at the Bilandic Building on North LaSalle beginning at 9;30 am.
This hearing will determine if the Rockford clinic will remain temporarily closed, will be permanently closed, or will be reopened.
In December, attorneys Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, and Jason Craddock, special counsel for the Society, expressed concerns regarding the reopening of the NIWC on the part of its clients, concerned citizens residing in the Greater Rockford area, including the Rockford Pro-Life Initiative. The letter pointed out that after public health authorities finally conducted a series of inspections of the NIWC abortion facility, after a protracted period of nearly 14 years, during which no inspections had taken place, the Illinois Department of Public Health’s long overdue inspections had uncovered a laundry list of “egregious health and safety violations.” A copy of that letter, with several of its attachments, may be viewed here.
Among these cited violations, of which “many members of the public remain unaware,” were the following:
• “3 of 3 operating rooms inspected failed to ensure a sanitary environment”;
• Failure to prevent contamination of clean surgical equipment;
• Autoclave equipment used to sterilize medical instruments failed biological testing on at least two occasions; such equipment should have been tested weekly but was untested for four months and then failed, leaving an undetermined number of patients exposed to unsterile surgical instruments;
• Failure to meet legal requirement for a qualified Registered Nurse to be present in the operating room during procedures, leaving unqualified and unlicensed personnel to do tasks reserved by law for licensed, qualified, professional personnel.
Tom Brejcha comments, “On behalf of the citizens of Illinois, we will do all we can to assure that NIWC is held fully accountable for compliance with Illinois law before it is permitted, if ever, to reopen and continue its grisly business of the slaughtering of human beings.”
