Ex-abortion doctor: Procedure ‘brutal’
A former abortion doctor praised a Texas law banning second-trimester abortions on living fetuses, telling a federal judge Monday that the regulation was intended to limit a “brutal procedure.”
Dr. Anthony Levatino of New Mexico said he had done about 1,200 abortions in the early 1980s, including 120 dila- tion and evacuation procedures that were the target of Senate Bill 8, before having a change of heart and becoming an advocate against abortion.
The procedure “is an abso- lutely brutal procedure in which a living human being is torn to pieces” by medical instruments after the 15th week of pregnancy, Levatino said.
During the first two days of the federal court trial in downtown Austin, abortion providers testified last week that the state law would force them to use untested, pain- ful and risky procedures to attempt fetal demise before a second-trimester dilation and evacuation abortion.
In addition to plac i ng women at higher risk of health complications, the doctors testified, the fetal-de- mise methods advocated by state lawyers are not fully effective, putting them in the difficult position of repeating the procedure — adding to the health risks — or face time in prison for violating the law.
State lawyers began chip- ping away at the arguments Monday by suggesting that abortion providers had exag- gerated the difficulty and risks associated with two common forms of causing fetal demise — injections of digoxin or potas- sium chloride into the fetus.
Dr. David Berry, an Austin specialist in maternal-fetal medicine, estimated that he had injected potassium chloride into fetuses 150 to 200 times. All were success- ful in causing fetal demise, and none were affected by obesity, fibroid tumors or other factors that abortion providers had complained about last week, Berry said.
The procedure is not par- ticularly difficult to teach to other doctors and can be done using the type of ultrasound equipment typically found in an obstetrician-gynecol- ogist’s office, he said.
Berry also scoffed at claims by abortion doctors that the injections, typically done through a woman’s abdomen, raise the risk of infection. Intro- ducing forceps into the uterus during a dilation and evacu- ation procedure is far more likely to cause an infection than a thin needle, he said.
State lawyers also called Dr. Farr Curlin, a professor of medical ethics at Duke University, who said the Texas restrictions on dilation and evacuation abortions were consistent with the ethical practice of medicine. Unlike abortion-rights advocates who focus almost exclusively on the rights of the woman, the Texas law “merely requires that the fetus be given a minimal level of respect ... by keeping them from being dismembered alive,” he said.
“It’s never ethical to intent ionally k ill an innoce nt human being,” Curlin said.
Carter Snead, a law profes- sor and director of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, testified that he was chosen by the Texas attorney general’s office to put Texas’ abortion laws into a global perspective.
Of 194 nations studied, 178 have abortion laws that are more restrictive than Texas, Snead said, adding that SB 8 would move Texas only “incrementally” closer to most of the world’s nations.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel wondered aloud how the information could help him decide the constitutionality of the Texas law.
“I might question the rele- vance of this and some of the other witnesses,” Yeakel said, noting that he has to determine how SB 8 intersects with the “Supreme Court-defined right” to abortion.
The trial is scheduled to end Wednesday. tioned in the affidavit. At 1:52 a.m., officers handling an unrelated call several blocks south of El Nocturno heard gunshots. An Austin police detective later found nine .223-caliber spent shell casings in the nightclub’s parking lot.
Five minutes later, a man called 911 and said someone shot at his vehicle about 4 miles from El Nocturno, near Interstate 35 and Air- port Boulevard.
At 2:25 a.m., a report said three people had been shot in North Austin.
A 7-year-old girl was shot in the head and critically injured, and a 29-yearold man and a 3 1-year- old woman also were seri- ously injured in the shooting, police and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services officials said. It was unclear Monday how the three are related, but they were together on Diamond- back Trail — a street north of West Rundberg Lane — when they heard a pop, the affidavit says.
Police found several bullet holes in the family’s vehicle.
Two minutes after that shooting, police got a call about a man who had pointed an assault-style rifle at several people in the parking lot of a Valero gas station at Braker Lane and I-35, less than a mile from Diamondback Trail.
About 3 a.m., police got two 911 calls from people who said a man had threatened them with a gun in the area of 51st and 52nd streets.
At 3:08 a.m., a driver with her 4-year-old son in the car called 911 to report that a man in a vehicle had chased her aggressively before intentionally rear-end- ing her vehicle when she stopped at a light at Cameron Road and 53rd Street, the affidavit says. She ran the light to get away from him, and he ran the light as well, she said. She rolled down her window and saw that he was pointing a rifle at her, she told police.
Two minutes later, the trooper reported seeing Martinez run away from his car in the 5900 block of I-35, near where the driver with the 4-year-old son had been, the affidavit says.
The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force eventually tracked him down at a home in the 500 block of Middle Lane in North Austin, said Hector Gomez with the U.S. Marshals Service.
Records show that Martinez was booked into jail at 3:48 p.m. Saturday on four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of injury to a child.
Hours later, detectives reviewing surve illance footage from the Valero at Braker Lane and I-35 said the car of the person shown pointing a rifle at people matched the Pontiac GTO that the trooper saw Martinez run from, the affidavit says.
In S epte mber, Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez ordered her office to start honoring all federal immigration detention requests placed on local jail inmates suspected of being in the country illegally after a federal appeals court ruling Sept. 25 allowed parts of Senate Bill 4, the controversial “sanctuary cities” ban, to go into effect.
Sheriff ’s spokeswoman Kristen Dark said that since Martinez was cha r ged with four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, sheriff ’s officials reviewing this ICE request would probably have honored the request even if this incident had occurred before the court’s ruling.
Records show that Martinez has one prior criminal charge in the United States. He pleaded guilty in 2016 to assaulting a public servant in Travis County. It was not immediately clear what his immigration status was at that time or whether ICE was involved in that criminal proceeding.