The state has shut down only one abortion clinic over the past 14 years — and only after finding out a crazed doctor who worked there had carved his initials into a pregnant woman’s belly at a previous job.
Allan Zarkin was so proud of his work at Beth Israel Medical Center that he used his scalpel to sign it “AZ.” He was fired, arrested and sentenced to five years’ probation.
But that didn’t end his career. In 2000, he landed a job as a medical director at the Choices Women’s Medical Center in Queens, an abortion clinic. It’s not clear whether the clinic knew about his carving work, but it was warned that Zarkin was trouble: A psychiatrist had informed clinic officials that Zarkin had a brain disorder.
The Health Department scrambled to conduct an inspection at the clinic after learning Zarkin worked there. It filed a lawsuit to shut it down after finding numerous safety violations, including hasty abortion surgeries occurring every five to six minutes.
“The surgery schedule does not allow time to assess patients prior to surgery, to monitor patients or to clean and prepare the room for the next patient,” the department said.
Inspectors also found nursing staff was inadequate and the anesthesiologist complained there were no functioning monitors for patients as required. And medical logs recorded that one doctor performed surgeries in two different operating rooms at the same time.
The clinic was fined $60,000 but was eventually allowed to reopen after overhauling its operations.