By Dave Andrusko

Former Planned Parenthood nurses Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich (left) and Joyce Vasikonis were sharply critical of Planned Parenthood of Delaware in testified given Wednesday. Photo credit: GARY EMEIGH/THE NEWS JOURNAL
The day after two former Planned Parenthood nurses testified of scandalous conditions at a Wilmington, Delaware PPFA clinic, the state Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline on Thursday filed a formal complaint against Dr. Timothy F. Liveright saying he represents a “clear and immediate danger to the public.”
Liveright name was mentioned repeatedly Wednesday by Joyce Vasikonis and Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich at an ad hoc hearing called by Delaware State Senators Robert Venables (D) and Greg Lavelle (R)
The Board cited multiple examples of incompetence and negligence in performing abortions on women in February and March which included (according to the News Journal’s Beth Miller)
“oversedating patients, performing unnecessary suction procedures, causing at least one perforation during surgery, and failing to act with proper competence and diligence to avoid unnecessary complications that resulted in patients requiring emergency hospital treatment.”
Liveright was “reprimanded by Planned Parenthood in March of last year for unprofessional conduct that included sexually harassing female employees and ‘yelling, screaming, and cursing’ in front of patients and employees,” Miller reports. Among the 22 categories of problems Vasikonis testified about was sexual (and racial) harassment.
But she also said Thursday that Liveright “was a very small part of it,” adding, “The biggest issue for me was sterility. The staff didn’t know how to maintain sterility from beginning to end.”
Indeed just hours before the two women testified Wednesday, the Delaware Division of Public Health released results of its survey of Planned Parenthood’s Wilmington clinic. “The state cites more than a dozen ‘unsafe and unsanitary’ practices and conditions there,” according to Miller. Those included “adequate documentation of narcotics, supplies that had exceeded expiration dates, lax practices to ensure sterility, unlabeled bottles of fluid, overdue or uncertain maintenance records.”
At this point the plot thickens.
Liveright, who is 68, sent a letter to state officials last month saying he had retired from practicing medicine in Delaware, according to the medical licensing board’s complaint, adding he “[had] no intentions of ever seeking practice there in the future.”
But he still has an active license to practice medicine in Pennsylvania.
“Based on respondent’s serious and repeated acts of misconduct, unprofessional conduct, incompetence and negligence and that respondent has active medical licenses in Delaware and Pennsylvania, respondent presents a clear and immediate danger to the public,” the complaint states.
The Associated Press story carried no comments from Liveright. But in the News Journal account, Liveright was belligerent and unrepentant. He first said the charges were “scandalous” for the state to make.
“It’s pure [expletive],” he said. “They’re jumping on whatever they can jump on. I don’t know what their agenda is, but I don’t think I’m a danger to the public.”
As NRL News Today reported on Thursday, neither Vasiskonis nor Jayne Mitchell-Werbrich are against abortion. “This is not about abortion,” Mitchell-Werbrich emphasized. “This is about patients. Their lives are at risk.”
In her prepared statement Vasikonis said, “It would take me the entire afternoon to discuss all the deficiencies I discovered at Planned parenthood of Delaware during the 10 months I worked there.” She listed 22 separate problem areas that included severe management problems and insufficient staff training; outdated (and broken) equipment; “Quality and Risk management policies were not followed or enforced”; an abortionist [Liveright] who did not wear sterile gloves; and sexual and racial harassment.
In her prepared statement, Mitchell-Werbrich explained that she had worked only 27 days at the Willingham and Dover sites. “I was forced to resign on August 8, 2012 as the conditions at Planned Parenthood continued to very unsafe and potential life threatening for the patients” despite numerous reports provided to Planned Parenthood administrators and a flock of state health regulatory agencies.
She said that “one abortion would be completed every 8-10 minutes” at the Wilmington PP site—evidence of what she called its “meat-market style assembly line abortions.” Her charges were every bit as lengthy as Vasikonis’s and even more critical of the “poor, unsafe patient care.”
State Sen. Lavelle characterized the licensing board’s complaint as “too little, too late,” according to the Associated Press.
“It smacks of reactionary, ‘we-have-to-cover-our-butts’ bureaucratic practices,” said Lavelle, who suggested that Planned Parenthood and state officials were “partners in crime.”
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