Records:failed abortions at Musk clinic

MUSKEGON, Mich. (WOOD) - A Muskegon woman said she paid Dr. Robert Alexander $320 for an abortion in 2009 and left his clinic believing he had ended her pregnancy.

Three years later, her son, Jeremiah, likes to ride his bicycle in his mom's living room and play on a toy computer.

"He's a special baby," Sheria McCloud told Target 8. "Yeah. I love my baby. He's a baby that I wasn't really expecting to have, but I love my baby."

It is one of two alleged failed abortions at Woman's Medical Services that Target 8 discovered in court
documents at Muskegon County Circuit Court.

A Muskegon attorney filed a petition in 2009, trying to force the doctor to turn over medical records for
two patients -- records that Alexander told the attorney he had lost.

In the other case, Alexander allegedly performed an abortion on a woman in 2008. Eight hours later, according to court documents, the woman was taken to Hackley Hospital in Muskegon, where doctors discovered she was still pregnant.

After more than four hours of labor, the woman delivered a stillborn baby who was missing the skull, brain
and other body parts, the document shows.

But it was alleged unsanitary and unsafe conditions that led the city of Muskegon to order Alexander to shutdown the clinic last month. An inspection uncovered blood on walls and floors, syringes left in the open, and unsterilized medical equipment, among other violations.

Sheria McCloud, now 34, said the photographs of the clinic recently released by the city show conditions
similar to what she saw when she visited Alexander's clinic three years ago.

"He tried to put me in a room," she said. "It was blood all over the floor, all on the table, and I said, 'Are you serious? I'm not fixing to lay on this table.'"

McCloud already had two sons when she learned she was pregnant in April 2009. Her first two pregnancies were high-risk, she said.

"Every child I have had I have had toxemia or had gestational diabetes," she said.

Alexander's clinic was the only abortion center in the Muskegon area, she said. Records show she signed a
consent form for "termination of pregnancy," and that she understood she was "approximately 10 weeks
pregnant."  A receipt shows she paid $320.

"I remember him giving me some medication, but I was out of it," she said. "When I did wake up, I just woke up; I don't even remember how I got home.

"When I left, I thought that the procedure was done, because when I came home I was bleeding."

Records show that a month later, she was at a Muskegon emergency room after feeling "movement in her abdomen and pain."  She told doctors that Dr. Alexander had "stuck something up inside her and moved it around, removing something," records show.

Doctors at the hospital performed an ultrasound.

"I was shocked," McCloud said. "I mean, I seen the baby on the ultrasound. It said, 'It's a boy.' I was 31 weeks pregnant. That's a shocking feeling."

She told her doctor that Alexander called her "many times" offering her a refund and an extra $200.  McCloud said she never got any money back.

She said she tried to sue the doctor, but that attorneys wouldn't take her case. The petition that had been filed to get her medical records was dismissed. Records don't show why or what came of it.

McCloud said she was scared and cried a lot.

"I wasn't prepared," she said. "I wasn't prepared to have no baby. I didn't have nothing for him."

McCloud said she filed a complaint with the state’s Bureau of Health Professions
 
In that complaint, which Target 8 obtained, a doctor who treated McCloud after the failed abortion wrote his opinion: “that Dr. Alexander was grossly negligent in this case,” and that he could have killed her.
 
But records show the Board of Medicine determined that no investigation was needed.
 
A document titled “Board Review Sheet” explained the reason the state decided not to investigate McCloud’s complaint.
 
According to the document, “Appropriate evaluation of the patient was performed. She was outside the legal limit for voluntary termination of pregnancy and was informed of such by the licensee. Patient was refunded her payment. No breach of standard of care, no fraud, no unethical practice.”
 
The doctor who wrote that Alexander was “grossly negligent in this case”, also wrote that he had taken care of another Alexander patient. He wrote that Alexander perforated the woman’s uterus during an 8-week termination.

On July 17, 2009, four months after the apparent abortion, McCloud had Jeremiah by emergency c-section -- 6 pounds, 13 ounces, and healthy.

"I look at my child. I love my child, you know. He's only 3, but he was a baby that I wasn't supposed to have."

Target 8 reached Dr. Alexander by phone Thursday, but he declined to comment.