Tallahassee Abortion Center Announces Closure
By Jay Rogers
Published March 10, 2014
Local abortionist plans to open new clinic
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (www.forerunner.com) – A few days after a legal notice appeared announcing the closure of an abortion center that has operated in Tallahassee since 1981, clinic workers announced that Stephen Wiley Duncan, the primary abortionist at North Florida Women’s Health & Counseling Services, plans to open a new abortion center “sometime in April.”
The abortion mill posted that they will close by March 31, 2014 in a legal notice in the Tallahassee Democrat.
North Florida Women’s Health & Counseling Services, Inc. will stop providing services on March 31, 2014. Current and former clients may obtain a copy of their medical records at 1345 Cross Creek Circle, Tallahassee, Florida 32301 before March 31, 2014. Please call 850-877-3183 and speak with Stephanie, Erin or Debra to arrange to obtain your records. PUBLICATION: March 5, 12, 19 & 26, 2014
Further announcements stated that the abortion center’s last day would be Monday, March 17th. The announcements spurred a flurry of celebration on the pro-life blogosphere with some posting that the abortion center would be closing “permanently.”
Todd Rasner, a Jacksonville OB/GYN who also kills babies at the Tallahassee clinic, stated, “I wouldn’t consider it closing, more relocating.” Rasner stated that Duncan has plans to open up his own abortion center under a different license.
Erin Guthrie, an abortion center worker, posted on her Facebook page that she wasn’t at liberty to tell the reason for the closure. She expressed hope that she would make the transition to the new abortion center.
“There will be another one opening soon, I will probably work there.”
When asked the reason for the closure, she wrote, “No, no, it’s just legally I shouldn’t talk about it because I don’t even know what I’m talking about. I don’t even know the whole story. So I wanna refrain from slander.”
Randall Whitney, an 80-year-old abortionist based out of the Daytona Beach area, outlined several of the abortion clinics he had been involved with in a 2011 lawsuit deposition. The case was against the Orlando Woman’s Center abortion mill. The plaintiff in the case was eventually awarded $36.7 million. Whitney explained why he stopped working for North Florida Women’s Health in the 1980s.
Well, they were also largely lesbian and man-haters. And, you know, I tried to work with them and after a while, it became impossible. They would train women to fight physicians. Actually, do everything they could to subordinate physicians. So it was not a pleasant environment. It was a radical feminist center. That’s what it was, the Tallahassee Feminist Health Center.
Randall Whitney in July 2011
Matt Ferro, president of Florida State University’s Noles For Life, explained the need for pro-life evangelists to stay vigilant. “I think it’s vitally important to tell that one is closing for good, but Stephen Duncan and folks from the clinic plan on opening another. We need to nip it in the bud now. I don’t want pro-lifers to celebrate ignorantly.”
Speculations over the North Florida Women’s Health’s closing ranged from conjecture regarding possible infighting between Duncan and the clinic’s administrator, Debra Sparks, to a malpractice lawsuit on record that is still pending that names both the abortion center and Stephen Duncan.
According to the Florida Association for Health Care Administration (AHCA) website, the application for an abortion clinic license takes 60 days to process. Pro-life ministries throughout Florida meanwhile expressed hope that the AHCA application would be denied based on Stephen Duncan’s past record.
“Dr. Duncan’s continued, unrestricted practice as a physician constitutes an immediate serious danger to the health, safety or welfare of the public.”
– Florida Department of Health, 2009
As seen in the mugshot photo below, Stephen Wiley Duncan was arrested in 2009 on nine felony counts of prescription fraud.
Name: DUNCAN, STEPHEN W
SPN: 208456
Race: WHITE
Gender: Male
Eye Color: BRO
Hair Color: BRO
Height: 6′ 4″ (1.93 m)
Weight: 200 lb (91 kg)
Birth date: 12/01/1962
The conviction on the felony counts resulted in Stephen Duncan’s license being placed on “active/probation” status by the Florida Department of Health (DOH). The Florida DOH also imposed a permanent restriction on Duncan’s license:
Respondent license shall be permanently restricted as follows: Respondent is permanently restricted from practicing weight loss outside of his customary OB/GYN practice.
The order from the Department of Health says Duncan violated the law while working at both First Impressions Weight Loss Clinic and his own Resolution Weight Loss Centers in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Panama City.
A WCTV local news program in Tallahassee reported in 2009:
The order says employees at those clinics would routinely fax prescriptions to Alphameds Pharmacy on Tennessee Street … which would then fill them and mail them back before the patient ever even arrived for his or her first visit. It also cites patients who say they were given prescriptions during their first visit and four of them said they never met nor talked to Duncan while they were clients of the weight loss clinic. The order says, “Dr. Duncan’s continued, unrestricted practice as a physician constitutes an immediate serious danger to the health, safety or welfare of the public.”
Matt Ferro in Tallahassee contributed to this article.
Commentary: An Open Letter to the Pro-life Community in Tallahassee
By Jay Rogers
What is needed to open an abortion clinic in the state of Florida is a license through AHCA. See also a listing of licensed Florida abortion clinics.
Depending on the locale, there will also be zoning issues and business licenses to obtain. However, if a city tries to block an abortion clinic from opening by denying a license, they will go to court and likely win. Orlando tried that in the 1990s with James Pendergraft. The abortion mill went to district court in JAX and won. Then Pendergraft turned around and sued the city for “lost income” during the time he could not open. The city eventually settled for $350,000. (This was tax money at work to open an abortion mill!)
One strategy might be to contact the AHCA office in Tallahassee and implore them not grant Stephen Duncan a license to open an abortion mill. He’s a convicted felon on multiple counts of prescription fraud. He is permanently restricted from prescribing diet pills to patients. He also has his license on active/probation status. While under probation, he has to practice medicine under the supervision of another doctor. This is likely why Dr. Todd Rasner of Jacksonville is working with him.
Agency for Health Care Administration
2727 Mahan Drive
Tallahassee, FL 32308
(888) 419-3456
Bear in mind, this will not keep an abortion mill from opening under a license with the name of another administrator and owner. The business or corporation that “owns” the abortion mill in reality can be a related second entity. Then Duncan could be an executive board member of that corporation (according to their bylaws) not named on the official state corporation papers. That is how most of the abortion mills in Florida operate.
We have to do a better job at policing the quack doctors who kill unborn babies for a living. Prayer is of utmost importance, but God always uses a physical instrument in His hands as a secondary cause to effect justice. Until recently, we did not even know the identities of the two principle abortionists in Tallahassee. This is not a good use of the talents God has given us. We will each be held accountable to God for that. Unfortunately, that is par for the course for both the church and most pro-life ministries in many places. A deep measure of repentance is needed here.
“Know ye not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life?” (1 Cor. 6:3).
Case in point: Last month, we did an awareness campaign at an abortionist’s neighborhood in North Tampa named José Quintana. He lives (literally) right across the street from a Catholic church, is presumably a member of the Parrish, and sent his son to a Catholic school. People in the church were providentially letting out for a funeral. We handed out over 100 flyers to people letting out from the funeral. The many Catholics who value the sanctity of life were shocked by this revelation and a few came to express their grief over that fact that an abortionist lived right across the street from the church without the knowledge of anyone there.
You will see a similar pattern with Stephen Duncan. He has been “hiding in plain sight.” Know your enemy. Conduct awareness campaigns. Evangelize with the message of the Gospel of Life. Support those who are called to this ministry of pro-life education and awareness. Matt Ferro and Noles for Life are doing a great job in taking the lead on this. They need volunteers for awareness campaign and financial support for flyers, displays for the FSU campus, etc.
Matt Ferro is at: mattferro95@hotmail.com
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