The following comes from a Sept. 13 release from Operation Rescue.

When an ambulance running with lights and sirens screamed onto Miramar Road in San Diego carrying an injured abortion patient, it was the second known woman that abortionist Robert Santella, 71, sent to the emergency room this year.

The incident, which took place on September 5, 2015, was video recorded by local pro-life activist Joan Pernicano.

According to Pernicano, from her vantage point the abortion-related emergency appeared to be very serious. She could hear an upset woman she believed was the mother of the injured woman yelling as the patient was loaded into an ambulance and transported to Scripps Trauma Center for emergency treatment. See video here.

Later, Pernicano was put in touch with the patient’s mother and learned that it was she that called 911 when the abortionist and his staff would not. The mother had been angry because Santella refused to let her see her daughter even though her daughter was calling for her in obvious distress.

“The mother did not want her daughter to have the abortion and tried to talk her out of it. She had a premonition that something was going to happen so that’s why she accompanied her,” Pernicano told Operation Rescue. “No doubt the daughter would have bled to death if her mother hadn’t been there and called 911.”

The patient was hospitalized for eight days. She received a hysterectomy and suffered an infection.

“Dr. Santella had the nerve to show up at the hospital the next day and tell the staff that he was her doctor. When the daughter saw him she called security to have him removed from her room!” said Pernicano.

When sidewalk counselors arrived for their usual shifts outside FPA the following Saturday, September 12, they found that the abortion clinic was closed for the day. According to an e-mail from a local pro-life group, the clinic staff “only do surgical abortions on Saturdays, and this was the first non-holiday Saturday they have been closed since October 19, 2013.”

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said, “It usually takes something pretty serious for an abortion mill to shut down on its only surgical abortion day of the week.”

Santella has worked as an abortionist for decades for Family Planning Associates in San Diego.
Earlier this year, another of Santella’s patients was hospitalized with abortion-related injuries.

On January 17, a woman walked past sidewalk counselors and into the abortion facility — ignoring their pleas and offers of help — only to be rushed away by ambulance just an hour later.