A mere six weeks after the 50-year-old Lovejoy Surgicenter closed its doors to abortion-seeking women and girls, a new late-term abortion business is cropping up in Portland. The Lilith Clinic, located in the 511 Building on Southwest 10th Avenue in downtown Portland, opened its doors on Friday, March 19. The facility will offer abortions through 22 weeks — an age when babies can survive outside their mothers’ wombs with proper medical care.
Governor Kate Brown cheered the news that Oregonians will now have more places to stop their children’s beating hearts. In an official clinic press release, she gushed, “Oregonians have shown time and time again that reproductive freedom is a value we hold dear…I applaud the Lilith Clinic for opening its doors to welcome patients from throughout the state who are seeking abortion care.”
Lilith is owned by Charlie Browne, a Seattle-area OB-GYN and associate of infamous late-term abortion doctor LeRoy Carhart. Browne has performed abortions at various clinics across the county, including his own All Women’s Clinic in Seattle. That clinic advertises abortions up to 26 weeks, a process that takes multiple days.
Browne is typically known to use the dilation & evacuation (D&E) method from the second trimester onward. D&E can also be used to remove the body of a miscarried child, but it is the most common procedure chosen by abortion providers for late-term abortions. It involves using a clamp to tear off the child’s limbs before crushing his or her brain and pulling each body part out of the mother. The baby girl or boy receives no anesthetic.
Ironically, the Lilith Clinic, in a virtually-identical website to Browne’s Seattle clinic, brags about its “Safe, Pain-Free Abortion Care.”
“Our goal is to provide you with a PAIN-FREE procedure,” the clinic’s website continues. “Most of our patients report that they feel no discomfort during any of the procedures.”
The Lilith Clinic is the first independent abortion clinic to open in Oregon in more than two decades, bucking the national trend of independent abortion businesses losing one-third of their numbers over the past two years. A Lilith Clinic consultant confirmed in an interview with Portland Monthly that its abortion providers will also train medical residents in abortion procedures.
“The Lilith Clinic understands that without access to abortion care, reproductive freedom is an empty promise,” Browne’s staff wrote in a press release. “The staff of Lilith will continue Oregon’s legacy of providing compassionate, quality care to all those who need it, and ensure that abortion care is a normal, accessible part of high-quality health care services.”
The Lilith Clinic’s supporters hope its location in increasingly-unpopular downtown Portland deters pro-lifers who wish to help clients with practical pregnancy assistance and support.
That hope will not be realized.“The passion we felt for helping Lovejoy’s patients has not lessened,” says Lois Anderson, Oregon Right to Life’s executive director. “Pro-lifers from across Oregon will not rest simply because of a changed name and location. The women and girls who come to the Lilith Clinic are still important to us, and so are their children.”
