The doctor who compared abortion injections to a “flu shot” received her medical training in Cuba, fully funded by the regime of Fidel Castro, and returned to the U.S. planning to advocate for universal health care, according to an interview she gave in 2007.
Last week, the pro-life organization Live Action highlighted an exchange between Carmen Landau, of the Southwest Women’s Options abortion clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and one of their 24-week pregnant undercover “investigators.”
During the edited exchange, Landau compared the abortion injection to “like any shot, you know, like a flu shot or a vaccine, really.”
“And it is not like you and I, where when we get a flu shot, we’re kind of ‘Ugh!’ not — that — that experience of anxiety and suffering is not — it’s not capable of,” she explained, based on Live Action’s recording. “And so that, I think, helps us all to feel more comfortable with this.”
Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque performs elective abortions through 28 weeks, according to the clinic’s website.
According to a 2007 report in Reuters, which features pictures of Landau, she was one of eight Americans who graduated from a Cuban medical school that year, after six years of fully funded education from the Castro government.
“Cuba offered us full scholarships to study medicine here. In exchange, we commit ourselves to go back to our communities to provide health care to underserved people,” Landau told Reuters at the time.
The Reuters report noted that the graduation ceremony took place at the Karl Marx theater in Havana (the ailing Fidel Castro was not in attendance). Thanks to aid from the Castro government, students graduated debt-free.
“‘SiCKO’ was an inspiration,” Landau told Reuters, speaking of the 2007 Michael Moore documentary attacking America’s health care system and comparing it with other health care systems around the world, including Cuba’s. Landau added that she planned to return to the United States to encourage the adoption of a universal health care system.
“It is a wonderful idea that makes total sense in every country, especially in one with so many resources. If they can do it in Cuba, we can do it in the United States,” she told the news outlet.
The Cuban program — which provided free medical training to students from across the globe — received some media attention in the ensuing years. In 2010, PBS reported that around 50 American students had graduated from Cuba’s Latin American Medical School, known as “ELAM” in Spanish, and that 100 were still in attendance at the time, all on the communist regime’s dime.
PBS noted that the students must still pass the usual American licensing exams and apply for residency in America.
Southwestern Women’s Options could not be reached for comment Sunday.
