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Doctor Admits Letting Patient Bleed To Death In Botched Abortion

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Grace Carr Reporter
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An abortion doctor pleaded guilty to letting a woman who was six months pregnant bleed to death in a botched abortion procedure.

New York doctor Robert Rho allowed Jamie Lee Morales to bleed to death after a failed abortion procedure in the summer of 2016. One week after learning she was pregnant, 30-year-old Morales came to Rho’s clinic and paid him $6,000 to abort her unborn child.

Rho performed the procedure, but severe bleeding began during the operation. Despite signs of grave danger, the doctor allowed Morales to leave the clinic with her sister. He gave Morales no further instructions or advice to seek immediate medical attention.

While driving home, Morales fell unconscious and her sister called 911. By the time the medics arrived, Morales was dead. Rho — whose clinic had previously been investigated for inadequately trained medical staff as well as unsanitary operating conditions — closed his clinic shortly after Morales’ death.

Authorities arrested the doctor three months after Morales’s 2016 death, according to the Associated Press.

Rho entered a plea deal with prosecutors Friday in order to avoid 15 years for second-degree manslaughter, the original charge issued against Rho. The doctor will now likely receive a four-year prison sentence under the plea bargain, but Rho’s attorney posits that the doctor may serve only months rather than years behind bars.

“It’s about greed and arrogance,” assistant district attorney Brad Leventhal said during Rho’s trial in Queens Criminal Court, according to Fox News. Morales “bled to death because this defendant did nothing,” he added.

This type of behavior is “very common in abortion clinics across America,” Americans United For Life said in a statement, Fox News reports.

No other doctor has faced criminal prosecution in New York save obstetrician David Benjamin who was convicted of murder after letting a patient bleed to death in 1995.

Former abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell was also charged with three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced with life in prison in 2013 after years of medical malpractice and murder of born-alive babies, according to The New York Times.

The judge will sentence Rho on June 26.

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