THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022
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Hello!
⏰ The fundraising clock is ticking. There are seven days left in 2022. Can you help us reach our $125,000 end-of-year goal? Through your generosity, we have the support to create journalism that perseveres, serves communities and defends democracy. Donate today to help us continue this important work in 2023.
Also, in this issue:
- We look back to a holiday season when it wasn’t safe to gather in groups.
- One Florida case shows just how little authorities are doing to regulate crisis pregnancy centers, even when the risks to women are significant.
- A “brazen” Philadelphia homicide detective is sentenced to up to 49 years in prison.
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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
A Young Doctor Reflects on COVID-19
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The pandemic isn’t past tense. While COVID-19 vaccines have made it possible to gather with friends and hug loved ones again, the world is still living with the virus – and too many people are still dying because of it.
- More than 1 million people in the United States have died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began, including about 250,000 people in 2022, according to the CDC.
- Healthcare workers have been especially vulnerable, with more than 3,600 of them dying from COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic alone. And nearly two-thirds of the healthcare workers who died were people of color.
This week on Reveal, as loved ones come together to celebrate the holidays, we revisit an episode that looks back two years to a time when it wasn’t safe to gather in groups because COVID-19 deaths were surging. On the show, we follow a young doctor, Paloma Marin-Nevarez, through her first year of medical residency during the height of the pandemic. She was one of more than 30,000 new doctors who started residencies in 2020.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
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FEATURED STORY
How Anti-Abortion Pregnancy Centers Can Claim to Be Medical Clinics and Get Away With It
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Credit: Google Street View screenshots
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The above logos are for the recently shuttered Florida Women’s Center, an abortion clinic in Jacksonville, and the Women’s Help Center, an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center located directly across the street. They are remarkably similar.
For decades, misleading consumers has often been a key part of pregnancy centers’ business model. One well-known tactic is to open shop near abortion clinics – sometimes even mimicking their names and logos – in an attempt to intercept their patients.
We obtained a never-before-published report from the Florida Department of Health that details several instances when Florida Women’s Center patients were intercepted.
- In 2018, a pregnant woman booked an appointment at the Florida Women’s Center. When she parked in the clinic’s lot, a woman named Patricia Henderson, wearing a white lab coat, greeted her, confirmed her appointment and directed her to the Women’s Help Center.
- Henderson, who is not a licensed medical professional, performed an ultrasound on her, told her she was not pregnant and that she just had a stomach virus. “She discovered later that Henderson was attempting to deceive her into thinking that she was not pregnant, until it was too late to abort the baby,” the report states.
This was not the only complaint made against Henderson.
- The same report says Henderson told another woman that abortion causes breast cancer – a claim widely disputed by medical research.
- She allegedly told a third woman not to bother getting an abortion because her 9-week-old embryo wasn’t “forming properly” and she would probably lose the baby anyway.
- In the most serious accusation against her, Henderson told yet another woman that “the baby was stuck” in her fallopian tube, a potentially catastrophic complication known as an ectopic pregnancy. If not treated immediately, the condition can lead to massive hemorrhaging and, sometimes, the mother’s death. But Henderson allegedly advised the woman to “relax at the beach” and come back in a few days. Fortunately for the woman, Henderson was wrong.
Only a few states require pregnancy centers that provide medical services to be formally licensed as clinics, a Reveal investigation has found. And the Women’s Help Center case is an egregious, and unusually well-documented, example of just how little authorities are doing to hold pregnancy centers accountable, even when the evidence – and the risks to women – are significant.
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HELP US CONTINUE OUR REPORTING
Have you received services at a pregnancy center? Have you volunteered or worked at one? We’d like to hear your stories. Email reporter Laura C. Morel: [email protected].
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MAKE YOUR DONATION COUNT FOR 2022
At Reveal, we investigate stories you won’t see elsewhere and we invest the time and resources necessary to do the job right. But we can’t do it without you.
Donate today to help us reach our end-of-year fundraising goal.
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“He was so arrogant ... Brazen, absolutely brazen. He was so comfortable doing it that he didn’t even try to hide it.”
— Criminal defense attorney Robert Gamburg describing Philip Nordo. The former Philadelphia homicide detective deposited money into a witness’ jail commissary account using his own name and the Police Department’s headquarters as an address.
Nordo was sentenced with up to 49 years in prison this month for coercing and assaulting witnesses and suspects for more than a decade. We partnered with The Philadelphia Inquirer to look at how Nordo abused his position of authority – by sexually assaulting the people he was allegedly investigating – and why he was able to get away with it for so long.
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🎧 Listen to the investigation: The Suspect Detective
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