Infamous Late-Term Abortion Doctor Funneling Money to Aftab Pureval and Sherrod Brown Campaigns

Pro-life conservatives haven’t celebrated many victories since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

But the one victory that infuriated the left perhaps more than any other was when then-President George W. Bush signed into law the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Pro-abortion forces immediately filed suit to stop the act from taking effect but it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.

A full medical description of the horrific procedure supported by Ohio politicians like Aftab Pureval and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) can be found here. Without going into detail, doctors partially deliver the baby from a late-term pregnant woman before crushing its skull.

While serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, Brown voted twice against banning the inhumane procedure, in 2000 and again in 2003. Pureval, who is running for the U.S. House seat held by pro-life Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH-1), has never said anything that would lead Ohio voters to believe he is any less extreme than Brown in his backing of abortion rights up to the ninth month of pregnancy.

But if there is any question about how Brown and Pureval would vote if the ban were ever to be brought up for reversal by Democrats, one look at their campaign-contribution list lays the question to rest.

Dr. Martin Haskell, the infamous Ohio pioneer of late-term abortions,  is backing the two candidates.

Haskell has for years been actively funding the most pro-abortion candidates he can find for Congress – candidates who would reverse the 2003 ban on partial-birth abortion if ever given the chance.

Haskell, now 72, has been aborting babies since at least the mid-1970s. He has owned two abortion facilities, one in Sharonville and one in Kettering near the University of Dayton. The Ohio Department of Health revoked Haskell’s license in Sharonville after a lengthy court battle in 2015 but the clinic continued to operate by offering chemical abortions until late last year, when it closed, according to Lifenews.com.  The clinic near Dayton, called the Women’s Medical Center, still operates and will abort babies throughout all nine months of pregnancy. At a hearing last month, the Ohio Department of Health asked a judge to uphold its closure order since the clinic failed to meet the state’s strict licensing requirements, in this case not being able to maintain an acceptable transfer agreement with a local hospital.

Ohio has always been a battleground on the issue of abortion. It’s the state where Republicans have been able to get more regulations in place to protect the unborn than perhaps any other state. This infuriates the left, as evidenced by articles in left-leaning Think Progress and Slate calling out Ohio lawmakers as “extreme” in their pro-life stance. Slate called Ohio the “conservative vanguard for opposing abortion rights.”

Yet, the solidly pro-life Ohio somehow keeps sending Brown back to Washington, where he has been ensconced for 25 years, first in the House and then the Senate. A new poll out Wednesday by left-leaning Politico suggests Brown currently has a “significant” lead over his Republican challenger, Rep. Jim Renacci.

Part of that vanguard is Republican Chabot, who has been in the House for 22 years with a top-shelf rating from right-to-life organizations. Chabot, already not liked by the abortion industry, incurred the wrath of Haskell and Planned Parenthood when he voted in favor of the ban on partial-birth abortions in 2003.

Just two weeks after Pureval announced he would challenge Chabot, Haskell donated $2,700 to Pureval’s campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics at OpenSecrets.org. It was the largest single donation Haskell made to any candidate so far in the 2018 election cycle.

Haskel has been just as supportive of Brown, donating $2,100 to Brown’s campaign in 2006 and another $1,000 for the current election cycle in 2018, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Pureval mocked Chabot in a interview Tuesday with Bloomberg TV, saying Chabot “has nothing to show” for his 22 years in Congress. Apparently standing up for the rights of an unborn child doesn’t count for anything in Pureval’s world.

Aftab Pureval, Democratic Congressional candidate for Cincinnati, Ohio, on why drug prices and wages are top issues for his campaign ▶️https://t.co/bkLpTblnYg pic.twitter.com/q6gxIsxUrR

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) September 11, 2018

According to Focus on the Family, Haskell has performed upwards of a thousand partial-birth abortions in his career.

“An otherwise unremarkable physician, Haskell achieved instant notoriety as the pioneer and principle advocate of one of history’s most heinous medical techniques — Intact Dilation and Extraction (IDX), better known as partial-birth abortion. Though he falsely claims to have invented it — the late California abortionist James McMahon actually came up with the idea — Haskell is the one who made it his calling card, performing possibly a thousand of them over a 15-year period.”

For Brown and Pureval, this is not only acceptable, but apparently it is laudable.

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Anthony Accardi is a writer and reporter for The Ohio Star.