[After many rumors that OWC was closing, the police seized their assets on June 13, 2013 in fulfillment of a writ of garnishment from a malpractice lawsuit against James Pendergraft. Sending patients to Pendergraft’s other Orlando abortion mill, EPOC, in the meantime, Orlando Women’s Center reopened on July 19, 2013.]
The Orlando Women’s Center is an abortion clinic located at 1103 Lucerne Terrace in Orlando. They provide medical and surgical abortions 3 to 24 weeks and it’s the “premiere” abortion clinic of the five James Pendergraft owns around the state. John Barros reports that approximately 100 babies per week are killed at this clinic alone.
Orlando Women’s Center is owned by James Pendergraft, who has been involved with some type of legal trouble every year since he arrived in Florida in 1996 to open a chain of five late-term abortion mills. Frequent news stories chronicle the sordid tale of babies born alive and left to die, four suspensions of his medical license, a conviction for extortion that led to time in federal prison, and several lawsuits including a $36.7 million judgement due to a botched abortion in which a baby girl was born alive and survived with massive birth defects. Pendergraft’s staff carried on doing late-term abortions at his direction while he served his suspensions. Pendergraft’s license is currently on active/probation status and his five abortion clinics remain open.
Pendergraft also owns latetermabortion.net, where he connects late-term mothers with abortion clinics, in other states if necessary, to provide abortions at any stage of pregnancy.
Randall Whitney is the main abortionist at Orlando Women’s Center. He specializes in second-trimester abortions. His medical license is currently being reviewed by the Florida Board of Medicine because in 2010 he was charged with battery for slapping a woman on the table while he was injecting her with Valium prior to an abortion procedure. In September 2006 Randall closed his own clinic, Family Planning Center, in Daytona Beach, Florida rather than comply with state regulators. He began working at James Pendergraft’s clinics. Whitney testified to the Florida Department of Health during a civil lawsuit hearing that babies are sometimes born alive and left to die in the abortion clinics where he works.
In 2001 a patient of Whitney’s delivered a child who lived with massive birth defects after a botched abortion in Orlando. The result was James Pendergraft and Orlando Women’s Center being hit with a $36.7 million judgement. His license was suspended in the 1980s because of a malpractice incident. Whitney is also the subject of two ongoing malpractice lawsuits..