Pro-Life News in Brief.

Abortionist to Be Tried for Late-Term Abortion

The Michigan Court of Appeals cleared the way for former abortionist Jose Higuera to be tried for aborting a 28-week-old unborn baby in 1994. Lower courts had refused to allow prosecutors to charge Higuera with performing an illegal late-term abortion, ruling that Michigan's 1973 law barring abortions after viability was too vague and had been effectively repealed by court decisions in other cases, the Detroit Free Press reported.

However, the appeals court panel, on a 2-1 decision, ruled January 30 that the "Michigan law may be applied in cases where the fetus is believed to have been viable outside of the womb and the abortion was not needed to protect the life or health of the woman," according to the Free Press.

Higuera, who no longer lives in Michigan or practices medicine, performed a two-day abortion procedure on an unidentified woman in his Highland Park clinic on October 14-15, 1994, the Free Press reported. According to a case summary included in the appeals court decision, nurse Rebecca Black told authorities that she performed an ultrasound and determined the unborn child was 28 weeks old, and told the mother that an abortion might not be possible at that late date.

After Higuera repeated the ultrasound and determined the same date, Black testified, he merely told the woman the abortion would cost more. Higuera inserted labor-inducing laminaria into the woman's cervix and warned her "that if she went into labor before returning to his clinic the next day for completion of the abortion process she should not go to a hospital or call 911 for emergency service because `they' [the hospital] would deliver a live baby for her," according to the appeals court decision.

The woman told prosecutors that she wanted the abortion for "purely personal reasons and she was aware of no medical need supporting an abortion."

After the abortion, Black testified, Higuera changed the woman's medical file, removing the ultrasound form dating the pregnancy at 28 weeks and replacing it with a form showing the baby's age to be 24 weeks.