{"id":181893,"date":"2018-04-25T18:23:59","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T22:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=181893"},"modified":"2018-04-30T00:18:23","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T04:18:23","slug":"died-late-term-abortion-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/died-late-term-abortion-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"She died during a late-term abortion. Now, her mother wants answers."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tina Atkins, the mother of a 23-year-old Keisha Atkins, who died from complications during a late-term abortion<\/a>, is now seeking a wrongful death investigation. Keisha went to Southwestern Women’s Options — an infamous late-term abortion facility which has already been a subject in a congressional investigation — to obtain an abortion at approximately six months’ gestation.<\/p>\n

New Mexico Alliance for Life (NMAFL)\u00a0reports<\/a> that Atkins has retained Albuquerque attorney Michael Seibel as she seeks answers about her daughter’s untimely death:<\/p>\n

Keisha\u00a0Atkins was a healthy young woman with no prior medical history. At 24 weeks gestation, Atkins checked in to Southwestern Women’s Options (SWO) abortion clinic on Tuesday, January 31, 2017, then again, each day through Friday, February 3, 2017, for a multi-day abortion procedure when she was transported to University of New Mexico (UNM) Hospital for emergency care, where she died. Atkins died during the highly dangerous late-term procedure that is known to carry high risk.\u00a0Despite these factors, the Office of the Medical Investigator, located at the UNM School of Medicine,\u00a0found\u00a0Atkins’ “manner of death is natural.”<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/abortiondocs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Autopsy-Report-Keisha-Atkins.pdf\"<\/a>

Autopsy report, obtained by Operation Rescue<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

See the autopsy report here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Did conflict of interest play a role in Keisha’s death?<\/b><\/p>\n

But the spokesperson for Atkins’ family, NMAFL director Elisa Martinez, sees nothing \u201cnatural\u201d about the events\u2014especially in light of the history of the abortion facility. Martinez is serving as spokesperson so that Tina Atkins and her family can have privacy as they deal with the situation.\u00a0Martinez said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is well established that UNM Hospital and Medical School have a deeply-aligned collaboration with Southwestern Women’s Options abortion center, whether it’s conferring faculty appointments for Southwestern abortion doctors or the free supply of aborted baby body parts for UNM’s experimentation. We want to ensure no conflict of interest played a role in the handling of Keisha’s situation, however serious questions remain surrounding Keisha’s cause of death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

UNM and its partnership with SWO have been the subject of many headlines. SWO is the facility run by late-term abortionist, Curtis Boyd<\/a>. Boyd and his partnership with the university’s OB-GYN program<\/a> were part of the investigation by the congressional Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives<\/a>. SWO provided the university with fetal tissue. In fact, the university abruptly halted its training program with SWO after an investigation by NMAFL<\/a>. Yet even after halting the program, the university health center told<\/a> the Albuquerque Journal it had “no plan to stop accepting fetal tissue from Boyd’s clinic\u00a0\u2013 despite an internal policy that appears to call the practice into question.” The Journal added:<\/p>\n

The policy does not prohibit the practice, they say, but conceded that its wording could be misunderstood by a \u201clay\u201d person.<\/p>\n

Boyd isn\u2019t compensated for the tissue samples, which are provided after a patient at his clinic consents, they added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

READ: Late-term abortions are dangerous for women, say late-term abortionists<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Live Action News reported<\/a> on Atkins’ death last year, noting that an autopsy by the UNM Office of the Medical Investigator\u00a0\u201cdetermined that Atkins\u2019 cause of death was \u2018pulmonary thromboembolism due to pregnancy,\u2019 in other words, blood clots in the lungs,\u201d adding that “[Operation Rescue] believes this is a ‘whitewash’ meant to blame Atkins\u2019 pregnancy for her death, instead of laying the blame on a mismanaged abortion procedure.”<\/p>\n

Did Keisha really die from pregnancy… or from the brutal, four-day abortion process?<\/b><\/p>\n

Operation Rescue noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There is evidence that Atkins suffered from sepsis, a bacterial infection caused by the four-day abortion process, which brought about symptoms consistent with Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation<\/a> (DIC). Atkins suffered hemorrhaging in her brain and left adrenal gland, a buildup of fluid around her lungs, and other symptoms of DIC that the autopsy ignored.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These reasons are part of why Atkins’ mother is determined to get to the bottom of the cause of losing her daughter during a late-term abortion — and her grandchild. According to NMAFL, Atkins said, “All I want is justice for my baby and my grandbaby and every other woman who has put her life and health at risk to endure this brutal procedure,” adding, “My grandbaby would have been a year and 3 months now, but instead I have to deal with the constant pain of two deaths, my daughter and grandbaby, as well as the injustice.”<\/p>\n

At 24 weeks of pregnancy, and with a four-day process, it sounds as if Keisha endured a late-term abortion by induction, a procedure explained below by former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino:<\/p>\n