This is part two of the five part series "Abortion Capital" delving into the lucrative late-term abortions in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Click to read Abortion Capital, Part 1: The Wild, Wild West
Albuquerque, NM – At age 73, Curtis Boyd is old enough to know better. Having committed thousands of illegal abortions in the days prior to Roe v. Wade, Boyd has, in recent months, positioned himself as the new late-term abortion kingpin in the wake of the murder of George R. Tiller last year.
Boyd is a mousy, white-haired wisp of a man who was born in Texas and raised in a Christian home. Early in his life he felt the call to preach, and became an ordained Baptist minister. But fundamental Christian morals did not permanently stick with Boyd. In the sixties he decided to expand his horizons. He left the Church and began a back-alley abortion business in Athens, Texas. Eventually the truth came out about Boyd's back-alley enterprise to the shock of the small rural community. He was forced out of Athens and moved to Dallas where he continued to ply his illegal abortion trade.
Women came to him in droves, according to Boyd's account. He knew it was possible that he could be arrested and jailed, but he thought he knew better than the law.
I thought the law needed to be changed, the service needed to be provided, and I was going to do it understanding the risk that I was taking, which may have included going to prison. That's the way a social activist needs to think. Deciding to disobey a law is not something you take lightly.
In those days, the big fear was someone would either file charges against me or I would have some major complication or patient death. I knew that every patient I saw had the potential to not only take my medical license, but to put me in prison.
People thought I was dealing drugs because there were so many of these young people coming from college and university campuses…They knew something was going on, because all these people were coming and many of them had out-of-county license tags. Was I supplying them with some sort of drugs? Fewer suspected that the people were coming for abortions.
There were never any charges filed because I was not dealing drugs. And fortunately no woman ever told why she was coming to see me or filed any complaint with the police. But they did keep me under surveillance. I'd see them parked down the street. They'd just sit there watching.
In 1973, when Roe v. Wade decriminalized abortion, Boyd was relieved. His days of looking over his shoulder were over. Now, he could openly do abortions, and he was proud to do so. He established the first abortion clinic in Texas, and later expanded his business to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Experimental abortions
Boyd was a founding member of the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion clinics that has become infamous for having more than their fair share of filthy conditions, botched abortions, abortion deaths, and other violations.
He is known for his invention of new second-trimester abortion techniques. He experimented on his patients trying to develop pain management protocols and discover ways to reduce the risks of abortion surgeries.
"I shudder to think of what the women had to endure that suffered through Boyd's ghoulish 'pain management' experimentation or his development of new surgical techniques," said Newman. "We wouldn't experiment like that on animals."
Religious Pretenses Cover "Works of Darkness"
To this day, Boyd attempts to couch his justification for decades in the abortion business with religious pretenses. But Boyd, in Christian terms, is apostate having fallen away from the truth of the Bible to embrace the unorthodox teachings of the Unitarian Universalist Church that are considered heretical by the standards of most Christian denominations.
Boyd worked with the Clergy Consultation for Problem Pregnancies, and later with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice to give women seeking abortions the false sense that God somehow approves of their decisions to take the lives of their innocent babies.
"It is an interesting thing that so many abortionists try to justify their actions in religious terms," said Newman. "Somehow they need to think God approves of them and what they are doing. Deluding themselves is probably the only way they are able to sleep at night. Deep down in their hearts, unless they are completely reprobate, they have to know that what they are doing is wrong. Boyd admits as much."
Boyd raised eyebrows recently when he stated during an interview that he understands that he is killing.
"Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that."
He says he prays for his abortion victims.
"I'll ask that the spirit of this pregnancy returns to God with love and with understanding."
"I wish Boyd had actually studied the Bible a little closer when he was a Baptist, because clearly God says that the shed blood of the innocent cries out to God for vengeance that belongs to God alone. In fact, according to Proverbs chapter six, the hands that shed innocent blood are among six things that God says He hates. The Bible also teaches that we should have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness, but should rather expose them. I can't think of anything that qualifies better as an 'unfruitful work of darkness' than taking the life of an innocent baby in the womb," said Newman.
"Boyd may find himself in for a rude awakening when he finally faces his Maker and is required to give an account for his life."
Vanessa Preston
For years Boyd operated what was known as the "Fairmont Center" in Dallas, which was the site of numerous abortion protests as well as abortion tragedies.
On January 22, 1980, Vanessa Preston arrived at Boyd's Fairmont mill for a second-trimester abortion. According to the RealChoice blog, which documents cases of abortion abuse, Preston was the wife of a local minister who was accompanied to the abortion clinic by her husband and young son. During the Dilation and Extraction abortion, Vanessa began to seize and suffered cardiac arrest.
Boyd and his staff called for an ambulance and began CPR, resuscitating Vanessa only to have her slip into cardiac arrest again before the ambulance could arrive. They again applied CPR until emergency crews arrived and stabilized her for transport to the hospital.
RealChoice gives the following account:
About 40 minutes into exploratory surgery, trying to address a retained placenta and multiple vaginal punctures, Vanessa again went into cardiac arrest. She was given a total of 24 units of blood to try to keep her circulation intact despite her massive, unstoppable blood loss. For an hour and a half, hospital staff tried in vain to resuscitate Vanessa before finally pronouncing her dead.
An autopsy revealed that she had developed amniotic fluid embolism (AFE – amniotic fluid in the mother's bloodstream) and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC – a blood clotting disorder) during the abortion. This is what caused her cardiac arrest. When Boyd's staff resuscitated Vanessa, they caused a small laceration of her liver. This is typical in even properly performed CPR, and is not usually life-threatening. However, because of the DIC, Vanessa's blood couldn't clot, and she bled to death from the liver laceration. Since second-trimester evacuation abortions were still new (read "experimental") at the time, Boyd and his staff didn't realize that there was a risk of DIC.
Now days, Texas law requires that abortions done after 16 weeks gestation must be done in a hospital or ambulatory surgical center. When he decided to expand his abortion services to the maximum legal limit in Texas, Boyd was forced to close his Fairmont mill because that location could not meet the minimum safety requirements. In 2009, he reopened his Dallas clinic at a new location as Southwest Women's Surgical Center and expanded his gestational limit to 24 weeks.
However, that was not late enough. Tiller had been providing abortions through the full nine months of pregnancy. If he was to fill in the gap in the late-term abortion business left by the closure of Tiller's Wichita, Kansas abortion mill, then he would have to do that elsewhere. With few laws regulating abortion, New Mexico seemed the perfect place.
The later the gestational age of the pre-born baby at the time of the abortion, the greater the abortion risks. It is only a matter of time before serious late-term abortion complications or even maternal deaths, such as in the case of Vanessa Preston, begin to occur at Boyd's new late-term abortion clinics.
Abortion is a Family Affair
Boyd shares his abortion practice with his second wife, Glenna Halvorson-Boyd. Glenna is the past president of the National Abortion Federation, of which her husband is a founding member and where the couple still wields considerable influence. Today, Glenna works in Boyd's abortion clinics as a psychologist.
The Boyd's are abortion ideologues who are politically involved, especially in New Mexico where their money has gone to insure that abortions remain unencumbered by restrictions that have caused legal headaches – and sometimes criminal charges – for other abortionists around the nation. Together, the couple has dumped at least $24,600 into New Mexico politics in the past few years. The Boyd's also have an extensive history of contributing to pro-abortion political campaigns in Texas.
"Maybe money can't buy love, but it can buy political cover and favors," said Newman. "We want the people to know the truth about Boyd and his sordid abortion business so they can hold their elected officials accountable to enforce the laws that are on the books, and enact further protections for women and their pre-born babies. Abortionists thrive in secrecy, but knowledge is power for those who protect life."
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