By Tim Rohr
In a recent news story about another defeat for Guam's 1990 abortion ban, the reporter states:
Following the 2022 SCOTUS decision on abortion, the Center for Reproductive Rights labeled Guam "hostile" due to its existing laws and the likelihood that a total ban on abortion would be passed on the island.
I'd like to take some personal credit for getting Guam to "hostile" status. I don't need nor want the credit, but nevertheless, I am proud, along with the people I worked with, to not only get Guam to such a vaunted status, but also for creating the environment which ultimately brought about the complete shut down of Guam's abortion clinics which, until 2018, were butchering hundreds of Guam's children per year, and mostly CHamoru children.
The data begins at 2008 because it was in that year that a friend and I initiated what we called "The Esperansa Project," with the intent to 1) expose the massive amount of baby murder going on right under our noses; and 2) to do something about it.
Eventually we accomplished both. Between 2008 and 2015, The Esperansa Project helped write, sponsor, and promote (actually wage war for) eight pro-life bills which were enacted into law, turning Guam from one of the easiest places in the nation to procure an abortion to a place where no abortionist now wants to practice.
One of our first actions was to FOIA the annual abortion reports, which had been required by Guam law since the 1990's. There were none. Guam Medical Records, the agency tasked with receiving the data and publishing the report, could only provide scraps of paper with incomplete data. We demanded full compliance with the law and as of 2008, the reports, and in the format required by law, began to be made available.
The data, as collected by The Esperansa Project, ends in 2018, because that was the year the last abortionist closed his doors. In those years, 2008-2018, eleven years, 2.868 abortions were reported. That's an average of 261 abortions per year or one abortion every 1.4 days. Imagine, we were killing a Guam child at a rate of nearly one child every day...for decades. I say "decades" because the partial data we received prior to 2008 evidenced as many as 600 abortions per year, and that was in only one clinic.
The 600 figure was also mentioned by the late Senator Elizabeth Arriola at the public hearing for the bill that would eventually become the troublesome Public Law 20-134, usually referred to as "Guam's old abortion ban," and the subject of the aforesaid news story.
"Let me tell you, at the rate Guam Memorial Hospital is aborting children, between 400-600 a year, and most of them are not even reported. Where are the lives that we are going to protect and preserve? Here we go talking about indigenous rights and self-determination. What good is all that if we don't have our followers to follow and enjoy the fruits of our labor, of this generation's labor, of your labor and my labor to fix this island and have autonomous rights to govern our people?"
As the same news story reports, abortions in Guam have continued "through medicine prescribed via telemedicine." Per the 2024 report, abortions in Guam in 2024 numbered 36. In short, these abortions are self-administered. While this "telemedicine" (a misuse of the word "medicine") is legal, a personal consultation with an authorized person is required by Guam's informed consent for abortion law, Public Law 31-235.
The law requires the authorized person to proceed through a "checklist certification" with the person seeking the abortion. The certification is then to be filed with Guam Medical Records:
All physicians who perform abortions shall report the total number of certifications received monthly to the Records Section. The Records Section shall make the number of certifications received available to the public on an annual basis. 10 GCA § 3218.1(b)(5)
I filed a FOIA with Medical Records on Feb. 27, 2025 requesting "the number of certifications received" and as required by law to be made "available to the public on an annual basis." The number should have been "36," the same number as the number of abortions reported for the same year (2024).
On Mar. 6, 2025, Lilian Posadas, Director of Guam Memorial Hospital Authority (which is the "Records Section") replied: "GMHA is not in possession of any records responsive to your request." In other words: ZERO.
On Mar. 7, 2025, I asked the Attorney General, whose job it is to enforce the laws of Guam, to "investigate the facts…and if said facts are found to be true, to bring appropriate legal action against the abortion providers."
There was no response. So on Mar. 18, 2025, I again sent a request to the AG. Again, there was no response, so I went to the Guam Daily Post with the story which the Post published on March 23, 2025.
Still no response from the AG, so I sent more follow ups on April 11 and April 25.
Finally, a few days later, I received a phone call from an assistant AG. He advised me that upon investigation that the abortion doctors did file the checklist certifications with the Records Section at GMH but the Director (apparently Lilian Posadas) had refused to receive them, and as there is no penalty for refusing to receive the documents, there was nothing the AG could do.
Just another episode in the long and ugly drama of Guam's quest to kill its own...and hide the bodies.
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