The Tangled Legal History of James Pendergraft

By Jay Rogers - Posted at The Forerunner:

Image Source: The Forerunner

Abortionist James Pendergraft arrives at Orlando Women’s Center in the summer of 2011. Pendergraft owns a chain of five abortion centers in Florida that specialize in late-term abortions. (Click to enlarge.)

The legal history of James Pendergraft is complicated enough to make anyone’s head spin. Due to the confusing aspect of this tangled web of iniquity, I’ve compiled a brief biographical sketch and a time-line of the highlights to make sense of it all. After the time-line is a list of over 100 articles detailing James Pendergraft’s legal troubles in chronological order.

In future articles, I will summarize the circumstances of Pendergraft’s medical license suspensions from more than 1000 pages of legal documents. I’ll follow that with another article giving a brief legal history of several other convicted felons who have worked as abortionists in the state of Florida. Finally, I will show evidence that demonstrates that not only have illegal third-trimester abortions taken place routinely at Pendergraft’s five abortion mills, but that many of these children were born alive and left to die in violation of the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

A Brief Biography of James Pendergraft

From “About Extortion or Abortion?” Business Week, 10/9/2000

Born – July 4, 1957, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Early years – Grew up in Chapel Hill. Eldest son of a mortician and a nurse.

Education – BA, University of North Carolina, 1978; MD, Meharry Medical College, 1982.

Medical training – U.S. Army, residency at a hospital affiliated with University of Maryland; fellowship in high-risk obstetrics, University of South Florida, an elite credential.

On abortion as a career – “A lot of doctors with my training diagnose fetal abnormalities, but won’t perform abortions. I felt it was much more satisfying to work with women through termination.”

On money as a motive – Pendergraft likes to boast that he is “a $2000-an-hour man.”

Administrative philosophy – “It’s easy to keep the doctors who work in my clinics in line because they know I can come in and do the procedures myself.”

Known to friends as – “Scott.”

Family – Father of four children. Denise Williams is the mother of his two middle children. She holds approximately two-thirds of Pendergraft’s assets through Wilson Medical Management, LLC according to 2011 court records.

The Tangled Legal History of Abortionist James Scott Pendergraft IV

James Pendergraft worked at Aware Woman abortion clinic in the early 1990s when he lived in the Tampa area. In 1995, residents of Orlando awoke to the news that a new “doctor” was coming to town. This abortionist proudly proclaimed that he was going to fill a niche left open by other facilities in the area. His specialty would be late-term abortions.

Read more here.