19-year-old daughter describes mother’s horrific late-term abortion ordeal

by Christine Dhanagom

• MELBOURNE, October 24, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The daughter of Pheap Sem, a forty-year-old Australian woman recently hospitalized for life-threatening complications resulting from a late-term abortion, has described the horrific ordeal that took the life of her sibling, and nearly took that of her mother.

In a recent interview with the Age, 19-year-old Chantha Sem told the news service that her mother was put in intensive care due to organ failure after abortionist Mark Schulberg performed an abortion on her at 23 weeks gestation in his clinic, Marie Stopes Maroondah.

Late-term abortionist Mark Schulberg

Chantha told The Age she found her mother unresponsive on the morning of August 18th, after a three-day course of drugs in preparation for the abortion.

Join a Facebook page to end abortion here. 

She thought about calling an ambulance, but instead called the clinic, whose personnel told her to transport her mother to Schulberg’s clinic in a taxi, rather than to the hospital in an ambulance. In the end, nurses from the clinic ended up driving out to the motel where Pheap and Chantha were staying. They brought Pheap outside in a wheelchair, laid her across the back seat of their car, and brought her in for the abortion.

Without administering pain relief or oxygen to Sem, who was still unconscious, Schulberg killed her 23-week-old unborn child.

Chantha’s boyfriend, who was present for much of the ordeal, described the clinic’s attitude as: “Just get the job done and get them out.”

When the abortion was completed, clinic staff called for an ambulance and requested a “Code 2” pick-up, meaning no lights or sirens. According to the news report, by the time the ambulance arrived, Sem was suffering from dehydration, hypothermia, low blood pressure, and liver and kidney failure.

Sem, a single mother, is now back home with her four children. Her recovery is “a miracle,” according to Chantha.

Sem now says that she has no recollection of the days before the abortion, or of the abortion itself.

While Schulberg continues his practice in Melbourne, the Medical Practitioner’s Board says it is investigating the case.

Sem is only one of a long line of woman to have developed serious medical complications after treatment at the notorious Melbourne clinic.

Dr. James Latham Peters, an anesthetist who practiced at the clinic, was charged in May with causing serious injury to over 50 patients who were infected with Hepatitis C under his care.

Schulberg himself was found guilty of “unprofessional conduct” in 2009 for performing an abortion on a mentally handicapped woman without the proper legal consent.