By Cynthia Hubert Bee Staff Writer (Published Feb. 18, 1999)

She was a young mother, single and carrying a second child, struggling to survive on minimum wages and welfare. He was a prominent doctor who had built a career out of performing abortions on women, many of them poor and desperate, in the late stages of pregnancy.

In the operating room of a medical clinic in Moreno Valley east of Riverside one December afternoon, their fates collided. Within hours Sharon Hamptlon was dead. Now Bruce Steir is fighting to stay out of prison.

The case marks the first time an abortion doctor has been charged with murder in California in more than 25 years, and it has galvanized forces on both sides of the national abortion debate.

Steir's supporters, led by the Feminist Women's Health Center in Chico, with whom he once was affiliated, have set up a "defense committee" and are raising funds for his legal expenses. His detractors, including the National Right to Life Committee, are pointing to the case as a shocking example of "the deaths and maimings" caused by abortion doctors.

At the center of the case is Steir, a slightly built, balding obstetrician and gynecologist who performed about 1,000 abortions each year, mostly at clinics in Sacramento, Chico, Santa Rosa, Redding and Oakland. Because few doctors are willing to perform late-term abortions, he also traveled to more remote places such as Moreno Valley and Victorville. By the time he met Sharon Hamptlon, he was 65 years old, had performed 40,000 abortions and was nearing retirement from a lucrative if stressful career.

"Now," said Steir in a recent interview in San Francisco, where Riverside County has placed a $300,000 lien on his Victorian home to cover bail, "every day is a full day of just trying to keep my head above water. I have nightmares about my loss of freedom."

On Oct. 22, 1997, police arrived at Steir's door, handcuffed him and booked him into jail on a charge of murdering Hamptlon, who had quietly bled to death 10 months earlier from complications after an abortion.

"I was shocked," said Steir. "Six officers came to my house to arrest me. I spent 12 hours in a police van with other prisoners and three days in jail. It was absolutely horrible."

Prosecutors took the extraordinary step of charging Steir with second-degree murder, they said, because he demonstrated a "conscious disregard" for Hamptlon's life on that Friday the 13th of December 1996.
The Barstow woman, a Medi-Cal patient who worked at Burger King and was raising a young son by herself, bled to death of a perforated uterus in the back of her mother's car on the drive home from the clinic where Steir ended her pregnancy. She was 27.

Assistant District Attorney Kennis Clark contends Steir knew he had made a potentially lethal mistake in the operating room, but failed to call emergency crews because his medical license was already on probation for previous allegations of negligence.

"He's a concealer," Clark said.

A couple of hours after Hamptlon's abortion, as the clinic was closing, workers wheeled her to her mother's car. Doris Hamptlon said her daughter appeared groggy. When her son Curtis, then 3, asked her if she was OK, she responded in barely a whisper.

"She just told him she loved him, and then she got very quiet," Doris Hamptlon recalled in an interview in her Barstow home. "It was dark by then. I thought she was sleeping. But when I got her home, I couldn't wake her up."

Paramedics arrived within minutes, but they were unable to revive her. Now Doris and Benny Hamptlon, who have two other children, are raising their rambunctious grandson.

Though he never intended to kill Sharon Hamptlon, Clark asserts in court papers, Steir's disregard for her welfare was "tantamount to a death sentence."

Steir insists he never knew Hamptlon had suffered a serious complication, and said she was stable when he left the clinic that evening. At worst, his lawyer said, Steir is guilty of medical negligence, and he has already surrendered his license to practice.

A favorite target of protesters in Northern California, Steir claims the emotional politics of abortion are driving the case against him.

"If this had been a gallbladder operation or liposuction or a heart bypass or any other medical procedure, we would not be involved in a murder case," said attorney Doron Weinberg, who is representing Steir, 67. Weinberg has charged that Steir is the victim of a medical board that discriminates against abortion doctors and pressure from abortion opponents who for years have picketed his clinics and harassed his patients, sent him nasty mailings and even threatened his life.

He has asked that the case be dismissed, arguing that Steir was unconstitutionally singled out by the board and government lawyers "solely because he is an advocate and provider" of abortions.

The case represents the first time the state Medical Board has referred a licensed physician to face murder charges based on medical error, and the first time the Riverside County Attorney's Office has taken on such a case, Weinberg said.

He argues that the board and prosecutors were influenced by abortion opponents, particularly one activist who tracked information on Steir, in deciding to pursue the murder case. Steir's prosecution is based on "invidious discrimination against him as an abortion provider," he said in a motion for dismissal.

Weinberg sees Steir's prosecution as part of a dangerous trend in criminal prosecution of abortion doctors. Earlier this year an Arizona doctor, John Biskind, 72, was arrested and charged with manslaughter in the death of a woman whose uterus was punctured during an abortion.

The cases, Weinberg said, will undoubtedly help contribute to a national shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions. "People are being persecuted out of the business," he said. "Abortion doctors and their patients should be very concerned."

Among those who have stated their opposition to Steir's prosecution are the National Abortion Federation and the California Medical Association.

Prosecutor Clark said neither she nor anyone in her office has a "political agenda" in the Steir case.

"We made the decision to file based on the same criteria we use for everyone else," she said.

Candis Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Medical Board of California, also denied discrimination against abortion doctors.

"If there was some plot, some nefarious agenda, against doctors who perform abortions, it would have to be a conspiracy of three independent state agencies," said Cohen. The medical board, the attorney general's office and the Office of Administrative Hearings, which employs administrative law judges who hear such cases, all would have to be involved, she said.

Cohen acknowledged Steir "has a long history of problems" with the regulatory agency. "The board has no position on abortion," she said. "But the board does oppose gross negligence and incompetence."

According to records, Steir's problems with the board go back to 1988, after his commanding officer at Camp Pendleton naval hospital revoked his privileges to treat patients at the installation for alleged unprofessional conduct. Steir claims he was punished for "moonlighting" as an abortion doctor.

In later years, the board accused Steir of, among other things, mishandling five abortions in Oakland and Sacramento that resulted in serious complications. Most of the allegations were pending at the time of Hamptlon's death, and in March 1997 Steir surrendered his license to avoid the expense of fighting the cases brought against him by the board.

Then came the criminal charges.

The prosecution's case against Steir centers on a brief exchange of words between the doctor and a medical technician during Hamptlon's abortion.
Hamptlon was 20 weeks pregnant when she arrived at A Lady's Choice medical center in Moreno Valley. She was several hours late for her appointment, and one of 15 patients Steir would see that day.

Doris Hamptlon said she never knew her daughter, who weighed little more than 100 pounds, was pregnant until they arrived at the clinic.

"She told me I needed to take her to this place," said Doris Hamptlon, a soft- spoken, religious woman who said she morally objects to abortion. "She was 27, and I didn't want to pry." They listened to gospel music during the drive, which took nearly two hours, she said.

Doris Hamptlon stayed outside with Curtis during Sharon's procedure. Inside the operating room, complications developed.

Steir was having problems locating the fetal skull, he said, and asked his assistant, Nancy Myles, for a sonogram machine to help locate it. He said he told her, "I don't want to get bowel," which would signal that the uterus had been punctured, a common complication in late-term abortions that requires immediate emergency treatment.

Myles remembered the event slightly differently. In a preliminary hearing, she said Steir looked at her strangely at one point and said, "I think I pulled bowel."

"If Steir made that statement, he's guilty of murder," said Clark.

The prosecution contends that Steir did pull bowel and then pushed it back through the uterus to cover up his mistake. But Weinberg pointed out that Hamptlon's autopsy revealed no severe damage to the bowel, which would have been likely if the organ had been stuffed through a small hole in the uterus.

Accounts differ as to Hamptlon's condition immediately after the abortion.

Steir said that though she was drowsy from anesthesia and experiencing some cramps, Hamptlon's vital signs were stable and she "showed no signs of distress" when he left the clinic that day. Others said she was pale and vomiting, and had to be taken by wheelchair to her mother's car.
"I noticed that a lot of other patients were walking out," said Doris Hamptlon. "But Sharon couldn't walk on her own."

When they finally arrived home, "she was white as a sheet," Doris Hamptlon said. "My husband said to dial 911, and the paramedics came and they put her on the ground and tried to resuscitate her."

Doris Hamptlon said she deeply misses her daughter, who had a distinctive laugh and a high pitched voice. At the time of her death, she was working part time and taking classes at a community college, her mother said. "Her main objective was to get off welfare and go into nursing."

Curtis, an active boy who plays soccer and loves books and videos, no longer has nightmares about what happened, his grandmother said. Recently the Hamptlons reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit that will pay the family $2 million over their lifetime.

"I try not to have hate or animosity about this doctor," Hamptlon said of Steir. "I don't want to see this man get the electric chair or anything. But I do want to see justice." That, she said, means a lengthy prison sentence.

Weinberg and Clark said informal discussions of a plea agreement have taken place, but the two sides are far apart on the terms. Weinberg said Steir is unlikely to agree to any plea deal that would give him prison time.

"We definitely want to avoid trial, which is fraught with peril and cost," said Weinberg. "But we have a moral problem in pleading guilty to something Bruce did not do, and we don't want to discredit abortion providers in general."

Doris Hamptlon said she dreads the trial, scheduled for June 1, and the prospect of testifying about what happened to her daughter, but she will do what she has to do.

"We had a good relationship, but Sharon didn't tell me everything," she said wistfully. "If we had talked, maybe we could have saved the child and she could have had a chance to live some of her dreams. That will be with me the rest of my life."