ARTICLES
October 2005 ARTICLES
Contents © 2005
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Death Hucksters
Competition is Bitter in the Abortion Biz
BY MARIA ELENA KENNEDY
Downtown Santa Ana is a gritty working-class neighborhood, a conglomeration of storefronts housed in large buildings of impressive architectural detail -- a reminder that at one time Santa Ana was an upscale community. Now all that is left of the downtown are shops where the largely Latino immigrant community shops for every thing from tee shirts to abortions. The competition among the numerous abortion clinics in the downtown is intense; several abortionists station Latina women throughout downtown to pass out flyers advertising abortion services. Sometimes, the women stand outside a competitor's clinic in order to lure away business.
A building at 517 N. Main Street in Santa Ana houses an abortion clinic, according to a woman who on July 28 was standing near a competing abortion clinic handing out flyers advertising the clinic's family planning services. As I passed by, the woman asked whether I needed family planning services. "It's all free," the woman (whose name I learned was Victoria) said to me in Spanish. The flyer she handed me listed the clinic as Clinica Medica Famil iar. The clinic offers pregnancy tests, pre-natal care, and childbirth classes.
I asked Victoria, who was now whisking me away to the clinic a few blocks away, whether it offered abortion services. She replied, "yes, we can perform those as well." Victoria said that my 15-year-old Latino-looking son who accompanied me was eligible for family planning services and insisted that he be examined immediately by the clinic's medical personnel. We soon arrived at the clinic, a large storefront filled with Latina women and their children. When I told the receptionist that neither I nor my son had time for an exam, she seemed disappointed and assured me that it was all free. She handed me a card noting the doctor's name -- Francisco Jimenez, M.D. Medical Board records show that Jimenez graduated from the Autonomous University of Mexico in Guadalajara in 1975.
The flyer that Victoria passed out states that the clinic's free physical exams are provided by the Child Health and Disability Prevention Program. According to its web site, the state-funded program offers medical services to children who are covered by Medi-Cal; but for the child or adolescent who is not covered by Medi-Cal, there are income qualifi ca tions that must be met in order to receive services. But when I called the clinic, the recep tionist said that I did not have to be eligible for Medi-Cal if I wanted family planning services. "There is no require ment," she said. As for children, she said, they do not need to be enrolled in Medi-Cal, and income would not be verified. "Just bring them before 4 p.m." When asked if the clinic performed abortions, she said no -- despite what Victoria told me -- but she said she could refer me to a nearby clinic.
On a hunch, I took the flyer Victoria gave me to Clinica Medica Para La Mujer de Hoy, one of a chain of clinics run by Bertha Bugarin, at 120 W. 5th Street. The receptionist took the flyer and asked if I wanted to set up an appointment. When asked about prices, the receptionist scrawled on the back of a card and handed it to me. The card was for the Community Women's Medical Clinic and was in English. Yet a flyer that a Bugarin employee passed out soliciting business states that the name of the clinic is Clinica Medica Para La Muejer de Hoy, which is the name for a chain of abortion clinics formerly owned by Nicholas Bramer, an abortionist who is no longer allowed to practice because of numerous abortions he botched. On the back of the card, the Santa Ana clinic receptionist indicated that a first trimester abortion costs $350 dollars. "If you want an appointment, call me and I can get you in," she encouraged me.
The card the receptionist gave me lists eight clinics, including a clinic in Ontario. When I called the Ontario clinic, the receptionist who answered said that the clinic had been closed for two years and had relocated to Baldwin Park, another working class Latino neighborhood. "The Baldwin Park clinic is only ten minutes away from Ontario," the receptionist assured me in Spanish. "I live in Ontario and I work in Baldwin Park," she said. The Baldwin Park receptionist told me that her clinic performs abortions on Wednesdays and Saturdays at noon. Apparently, Bugarin's clinics move frequently. The Los Angeles clinic apparently has moved, since on the card the Santa Ana receptionist gave me, one address is crossed off and a new address is penciled in. Victoria told me that she is tired of crossing things out on her flyers. "These flyers are old, they need to give me new ones," she said.
On August 11, I spoke by phone with Tim Nissan, who sidewalk counsels outside the Santa Ana clinics on a regular basis. Nissan indicated that Buga rin's Santa Ana clinic would be perform ing more abortions, since, he learned, two abortionists instead of the usual one would be coming to the clinic. Nissan said that he had an interesting encounter with one abortionist. "Last Saturday, the doctor was dropped off by a man in a white Dodge Caravan. The reception ist used to pick him up, but she wasn't there. Later I saw the same heavy-set man with white hair in the receptionist area. When he came out, I spoke to him. He looked like he was in poor health. His legs were swollen like a diabetic's. He asked me, 'do you pray for us?' I replied, 'yes I do.' He then said, 'I should go to church tomorrow, maybe you can go in my place.' Because of his German accent, I asked him if he was German, and he replied, 'no, I'm Austrian.' So I asked him, 'are you Dr. Reich?' He answered, no, in a funny way. I thought it was Dr. Reich."
Dr. Lawrence Reich, who has worked for Bugarin for many years, is an osteopath who practiced in Beverly Hills and San Diego. In 2002 Reich was criminally convicted of sexually exploiting his female patients. He has been accused as well of negligence, repeated negligence, and prescribing controlled substances to an addict.
Bugarin's penchant for having Latina women pass out flyers advertising her abortion services in high traffic areas is not restricted to Santa Ana. But her entrepreneurial interests don't center on abortions. Public records also show that Bugarin owns several restaurants in the San Fernando Valley. "El Sabripollo" on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Sun Valley is listed as a Bugarin-owned business, as is "Espeto's Do, A Brazilian Restaurant," on Pathernia in Panorama City.
True to form, Bugarin has women passing out literature in the San Fernando Valley. When I stopped at a supermarket in Panorama City near Bugarin's abortion clinic, the clerk told me that flyers advertising the Panorama City abortion clinic are also passed out at Panorama Mall. The address given for the Community Women's Medical Clinic is the same one listed for "Espeto's Do, A Brazilian Restaurant."