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Back Alley Abortions Still Available

Originally printed in Lifeline Fall 1994

BACK ALLEY ABORTIONS
ALIVE AND WELL

Southern California’s most notorious abortionist may soon have to pay thousands in attorney’s fees to the defenders of sidewalk counselors who warn women about his grisly record.

Dr. Leo F. Kenneally, who operates two abortion offices in Los Angeles, has been sued for a wide spectrum of alleged medical errors. Cases filed in L.A. courts have linked his offices with mistakes ranging from a failed abortion (a child was born after an abortion was requested but incompletely performed) to the wrongful deaths of four young women patients. When second-trimester abortions went seriously wrong, Kenneally and another doctor in his employ failed to get the immediate emergency help that could have saved the mothers’ lives, according to court records.

“I’ve read the autopsy reports (on the young women) and they are just awful,” says Andy Zepeda, a Beverly Hills attorney who serves on the Life Legal Defense Foundation board of directors.

The deaths, each involving different circumstances (a bad reaction to anaesthesia in one case, perforation of the uterus and bowel in another) were “outrageous,” he says, yet authorities have not stopped Kenneally’s practice.

Kenneally, who faced permanent revocation of his medical license, is instead currently under a one-year ban because an administrative law judge said his low-cost abortions in the inner city constituted a “beneficial service” to poor women, Zepeda reports. However, the State Attorney General’s office continues to pursue a permanent ban through an appeal that is still under way.

Kenneally’s office suffered and presumably continues to hurt from bad publicity led by an exposé in the Los Angeles Times. The Times stories, circulated by
sidewalk counselors outside the offices where thousands of “bargain basement” abortions have been performed in past years, had a detrimental effect on his business. In response, Kenneally filed for an injunction against the counselors who were trying to protect not only unborn children, but also the lives of women patients. LLDF came to the defense of the pro-lifers at that point.

Suing sidewalk counselors and two Operation Rescue leaders who once stepped inside one of his offices was characteristic, says Zepeda. Kenneally has a record of suing to defend his lucrative business, whether it is the California Attorney General’s office or the California Medical Review Board, whose investigations into malpractice allegations were “delayed by every tactic possible” over the past several years, Zepeda says.

Kenneally’s plea for an injunction to keep counselors thirty feet away from his doors, which are entered mainly by poor, Spanish-speaking women, was filed at what seemed like an opportune moment for him. A Northern California appellate court had just upheld an injunction requiring a small band of pro-lifers to stay across a four-lane thoroughfare from an abortion clinic in Vallejo.

Nevertheless, Zepeda took vigorous action to defend pro-lifers’ right to speak out. But when the fatal shooting of Florida abortionist Dr. David Gunn occurred just two days before the Los Angeles injunction hearing, Zepeda nearly lost heart. To his surprise, the judge ruled that the regular sidewalk counselors were practicing “perfectly acceptable First Amendment activity”, and Kenneally’s request for an injunction was denied. (The judge imposed some limits on the two Operation Rescue members who had stepped inside the office.)

Given that success, the pro-life team has pushed forward to see if it can collect attorney’s fees from Kenneally. In what may be a first in pro-life defense, Zepeda is citing the anti-SLAPP laws that allow repayment for the cost of defending against suits that punish people for excercising free speech rights. Anti-SLAPP laws were enacted after developers began using lawsuits to frighten citizens who spoke against their plans, but the laws also apply here, Zepeda says.

In an apparent effort to duck the fees, Kenneally immediately dismissed his suit against the pro-lifers and a trial judge “bought it,” in Zepeda’s words. Still, Zepeda is pressing in the state Court of Appeals for reimbursement for legal costs, “and we think we’re going to get something.” By the time the case is over, costs and fees will have mounted to about $20,000, he says.

Even if L.L.D.F. can’t collect (Kenneally places substantial assets offshore, where they are difficult to discover, Zepeda says), a published opinion favoring free speech rights for pro-lifers would be valuable. “It should send a signal to abortion providers” that aggressive suits against peaceful demonstrators are unacceptable. It could even influence Planned Parenthood—which has used the injunction tactic more often than any other California abortion group—even suing people who have never been near a clinic, Zepeda says.

Meanwhile, although Kenneally himself is not allowed to practice this year, his offices in poor neighborhoods near U.S.C. and in the San Fernando Valley continue to function. At the same time, a few faithful sidewalk counselors try to warn potential patients of the Kenneally track record.

Incidentally, Zepeda notes that Kenneally does not operate clinics, but ordinary doctor’s offices. Yes, he says, California law allows the surgical procedures of even second-trimester abortions to be performed outside clinic or hospital settings. Under the conditions of offices like Kenneally’s, he adds, “this is the equivalent of the back alley, which the pro-abortionists tell us they want to avoid with legal abortion.”

Anne Starr, a former local newspaper editor and now a full-time mother, lives in Novato with her husband and two children. She has an English degree from UC Davis.