Editor’s note » The second of two stories, this draws on records released by medical licensing boards in New Jersey and Maryland, including interviews with physician Nicola Riley, injured patient D.B. and her mother, C.B. See part one at http://bit.ly/AhlI8i
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Editor’s note
This story draws on records released by the New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners and Maryland Board of Physicians, which included transcripts of investigators’ interviews with physician Nicola Riley, injured patient D.B. and her mother, C.B.
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The life of Nicola Riley
This is the second of two stories exploring the life of Utah doctor Nicola Riley and the abortion she performed in 2010 that led to her December indictment in Maryland for murder.
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Soon after she discovered she was pregnant, D.B. went online to find a way to end it.
The yellow advertisement from American Women’s Services beckoned, and the 18-year-old quickly made an appointment. Clinic staff explained she would have to cross the state line — she was five months pregnant, and in her home state of New Jersey, the law limits later-term abortions to hospitals and surgical centers.
Physician Steven Chase Brigham gave her pills to start her contractions at his Voorhees clinic on Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. D.B. was in pain and nervous as she and two other patients followed him in caravan to a destination she said he would not name in advance.
Once in his clinic in the tiny town of Elkton, Md., Brigham introduced D.B. to Nicola Riley, a Utah doctor who would finish the abortion. Brigham rubbed the teen’s shoulders and told her to relax as Riley administered the anesthesia.
When D.B. awoke, she was in nearby Union Hospital. She had been seriously injured during Riley’s procedure, staff told her, and she needed to go by helicopter to Johns Hopkins Hospital for emergency surgery.
Now, nearly a year and a half later, Riley is charged with murder for killing the fetus D.B. paid $2,000 to abort.
While prosecutors decline to explain their reasoning, New Jersey’s attorney general has attacked Brigham’s two-state procedures as illegal. Brigham, who is not licensed in Maryland, was indicted with Riley in December for D.B.’s abortion. He also faces murder counts connected to four abortions the previous month.
Riley’s lawyers see her charges as an attack on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
"If doctors can be prosecuted for criminal offenses in connection with providing critical medical care to women who are in need of it, there is going to be a chilling effect," said Edwin Wall, Riley’s Utah attorney.
But pro-choice groups don’t appear to be taking up Riley’s cause. "We want to make sure women’s access to care is not restricted as a result of this," said ChristieLyn Diller, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Maryland. But the organization was glad, she said, to see the state investigate the Elkton clinic.
"There’s a lot of questionable things happening."
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‘Call the ambulance’ » D.B.’s mother, C.B., could hear the teenager screaming during the abortion. Waiting with D.B.’s boyfriend, C.B. told a staff member, "I can’t stand this," and walked down a hallway.
Eventually, Brigham and Riley emerged. "We’re having complications," C.B. remembers one of them telling her. Still under anesthesia, D.B. was dressed and wheeled out of the room, a nurse holding her legs up in the air.
The doctors proposed pushing D.B. to the nearby hospital, C.B. remembers. "I said, you can’t wheel her over there like that, call the ambulance."
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What’s next?
Utah abortion doctor Nicola Riley was arrested Dec. 28 in Utah for a Maryland indictment for murder in the first and second degree, and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. She has been moved to Maryland and is awaiting prosecution there. On Friday, her attorneys sought her release, arguing that the law used by prosecutors does not apply to doctors performing legal abortions.—
What is Utah’s abortion law?
Abortion in Utah is illegal if the fetus is “viable” — meaning able to live outside the womb — except in specific circumstances. Utah law does not define viability. It leaves it up to the woman’s attending physician.
Aborting a viable fetus is legal if the abortion is necessary to avert the death or “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” of the mother; if the fetus has a lethal defect or the pregnancy has occurred due to rape or incest.
Of the 3,446 abortions Utah women sought in 2010, the most recent year data is available, all but 11 were performed before 21 weeks gestation.
Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
