This is part four of the five part series "Abortion Capital" delving into the business of lucrative late-term abortions in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Read Abortion Capital, Pt. 1: The Wild, Wild West Read Abortion Capital, Pt. 2: "Am I Killing? Yes, I am. I know that" Read Abortion Capital, Pt. 3: "A baby came out and it was moving"
Wichita, KS — Susan Celina Robinson was disillusioned with the work-a-day world. A San Diego trained obstetrician-gynecologist who was working on staff at a clinic in New Hampshire, Susan was tired of endless staff meetings and the pressure to be ever more productive. She longed for more freedom to pursue a simpler life.
Born a baby-boomer on March 19, 1946, in New York City, Susan grew up in the 60s and had embraced the "counter-culture" ideology of the times. This ideology developed over time, and in 1985, Susan authored a book called Having a Baby Without a Man that explored a trend, popular among lesbians at that time, of having babies through artificial insemination, and parenting them in single-family or all female households.
Sometime in the early 1990s, Susan met and married David Peterson, a contractor and artisan who shared Susan's romantic views of traveling the country and working only enough to support their freestyle, neo-hippie life.
In 1997, Susan and David quit their jobs, purchased a motor home and began a nomadic trek across the country in search of Utopia.
Dancing Dog Ranch
But it wasn't long before they realized that life on the road wasn't the carefree, romantic adventure they had hoped. They began to look for property where they could build their dream home and live to pursue their passions in life, which included dancing (Susan was particularly fond of Swing and Flamenco), dogs, and for David, woodworking arts.
They found that spot in the picturesque mountain foothills near the Ukiah, California, and purchased 170 acres in a remote but beautiful area. There they founded "Dancing Dog Ranch," which seemed the perfect home for the couple and their two dogs, Woof and Roo. So passionate is she for her hobbies that she often goes by the screen name "Dancing Dog."
Don't say, "You'll be fine. This won't hurt."
Susan began per diem work at nearby hospitals and in May of 1999, she began to work for various Planned Parenthood organizations.
She complained to family and friends that the driving distances to the two Planned Parenthood clinics were 100 miles to one location and 200 miles to the second, but said she found solace in knowing that her work was "helping people."
But the reality was that Susan was an abortionist. For years she never mentioned the true nature of her work to her friends and family. She spoke to them of the joys of teaching others her medical skills, when she was actually training abortionists to kill pre-born babies. Because of her teaching experience in the abortion field, she served in an advisory capacity on a paper produced by the University of California, San Francisco Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy, titled "Early Abortion Training Workbook," which, among other things, advised budding new abortionists on page 33 to avoid giving abortion patients such "false reassurances" as, "You'll be fine. This won't hurt."
Meanwhile, David began doing woodworking and light construction jobs for residents in the area. In a macabre twist, he began making and selling simple pine caskets – including infant sizes – in his meticulously ordered workshop at Dancing Dog Ranch.
Leaning Left
Susan has been something of a low-key public activist championing leftist causes. She has spoken out against genetically enhanced foods and refused to patronize pet stores that sell puppies because of what she perceives is the cruel way they are raised. Susan once received an award in Ukiah for her volunteer work at a homeless shelter. She voiced public opposition to a narrowly defeated California initiative that would have allowed for parental notification of minors before abortions.
Her liberal world-view fit right in with the New Age thinking of abortionist Curtis Boyd, who has opened a new late-term abortion clinic, Southwestern Women's Options, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He hired Robinson in the fall of 2009, because of her experience with risky late-term abortions in Kansas.
"This is not a nice woman doing a brave thing at a safe clinic, as pro-aborts would have us believe. Robinson's history in Kansas should raise red flags in New Mexico. Her presence there in the dangerous late-term abortion business presents health and safety risks to the public," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
In the Kansas Killing Fields
In October, 2005, Robinson began to work as an independent contractor providing abortion services on a part-time basis for George Tiller, who famously ran the largest late-term abortion clinic outside Communist China, in the unlikely community of Wichita, Kansas. It was a tumultuous time at Tiller's Women's Health Care Services. He was under investigation by the Kansas Board of Healing Arts for his involvement in the third trimester abortion death of Christin Gilbert. After the KSBHA determined that the "standard of care" was not violated in Gilbert's excruciating death, pro-life groups suspected a politically motivated cover-up and launched the first of two grand juries investigating Tiller for illegal abortion activity.
Among the charges were allegations that post-viability abortions conducted by Tiller, Robinson, and abortion associates Shelley Sella and LeRoy Carhart were done illegally. Kansas law banned abortions after viability with strict exceptions. If abortions were to be done under those exceptions, the medical necessity of the abortion had to be confirmed by a second referring physician who was "not legally or financially affiliated with the physician performing or inducing the abortion."
However, Operation Rescue discovered that abortionist Ann Kristin Neuhaus was the sole "physician" who signed off on all of the late-term abortion done at Tiller's Women's Health Care Services. She had no office, used a car registered to Tiller (which she later bought), and used his security personnel and office space. Rubber-stamping late-term abortions at WHCS was Neuhaus' only professional source of income. She had closed her own abortion clinic after she was disciplined by the KSBHA, which had twice declared her a "danger to the public."
Tiller was as financially dependent on Neuhaus as she was on him. Without her, there could be late-term abortions that generated between $5,000 and $20,000 in fees, which accounted for the lion's share of his clinic's income and profit.
Tiller was charged criminally in June, 2007, for his illegal affiliation with Neuhaus, but was acquitted after a trial in March, 2009. The court case had not been without controversy and drama. It included several appeals to the Kansas Supreme Court and a series of hearings — not to mention the trial itself — that called on testimony from former Attorney General Phill Kline, three of his staff members who investigated Tiller, the illicit lover of former Attorney General Paul Morrison who charged Tiller, and was capped by often surprising testimony of Tiller himself, who claimed that the arrangement with Neuhaus was instigated by former KSBHA director Larry Buening, who denied the allegation.
Moments after Tiller's acquittal, the KSBHA, by then under new leadership, issued a statement and a copy of an 11-count petitioncomplaint filed by Operation Rescue. The strongly worded statement read in part: that charged Tiller with illegal late-term abortions based on a
The petition filed includes 11 counts, alleging violations of the Healing Arts Act. Violations alleged include performing an abortion on a fetus that was viable without having a documented referral from another physician not legally or financially affiliated with him; unprofessional or dishonorable conduct or professional incompetency; and commitment of acts likely to deceive, defraud or harm the public…The criminal case and outcome is not determinative of the Board's administrative case. The administrative case will proceed on its own merits.
The Board made it clear in subsequent statements that the burden of proof is different in an administrative action than in a criminal case. Petitions like this were almost never filed in Kansas if disciplinary action was not inevitable. Possible discipline included license revocation.
But before that could happen, Tiller was murdered in a despicable act that was swiftly denounced by Operation Rescue. After Tiller's death, the case was regrettably closed. However, a complaint filed by another pro-life group sought to include Robinson, Sella, and Carhart in Tiller's alleged wrong-doing since all late-term abortions done by them also used Neuhaus as the second signer. After yet another change at the helm of the KSBHA, that case against Tiller's three independent contractors was also closed.
Robinson has since cancelled her Kansas medical license, a move that will preclude any further attempts at disciplinary action against her related to her abortion work in that state.
Circuit Rider
Robinson has long been a "circuit riding" abortionist who currently splits her time between Boyd's late-term abortion clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Planned Parenthood of Mar Monte in San Jose, California, and Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara, Venture, and San Luis Obispo.
There is no record of legal or disciplinary action having been taken against Robinson, as there is with her associate Shelley Sella, but that could be because she never seems to stay in one place very long. Of her current employers, she has worked longest for Planned Parenthood SBVSLO, and that has been only for the past 23 months.
Robinson now lists as her home address a mailbox drop in Northhampton, Massachusetts, where she holds no medical license, and at the headquarters for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in San Jose. However, information contained in public records indicates that Robinson resides in neither city, but in Paso Robles, California.
"We understand Robinson's security concerns, and we certainly would do nothing to compromise that, but the question of the possible false reporting of her true address raises the concern that she may be trying to mislead authorities in Kansas and in New Mexico. We have to wonder if she is not telling the truth about where she lives because that would make it harder for the authorities to prosecute her in the event that disciplinary action or criminal charges are initiated. Given her association with Sella, Tiller, and LeRoy Carhart, who is currently under investigation in Nebraska, that is a legitimate concern," said Newman.
"The public and the authorities in New Mexico need to be aware of Robinson's background of involvement in late-term abortions of dubious legality in Kansas. That information could inspire them monitor Boyd's late-term abortion business more closely, and that would only serve the safety interests of the public."
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