After years of considering himself to be the target of racial discrimination, an Indian-American doctor in Charlotte is being accused of prejudice himself by local anti-abortion protestors after saying “ugly black babies” during a confrontation.
Dr. Ashutosh “Ron” Virmani is a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist who became one of the targets of Operation Save America, an anti-abortion group based in Concord that confront doctors who perform abortions.
In a video posted to the group’s website, Virmani is shown arguing with the pack of protestors that had arrived at his door.
“I, as a taxpayer, do not wish for those babies to be born and brought up and kill those people in Colorado,” he told the members of Operation Save America in the clip.
In response, one of the members said “If you tell us, we would adopt them.”
To which Virmani responded, “Let me see you adopt one of those ugly black babies. Go ahead. Adopt these babies, OK? Take them off the taxpayers’ money.”
Though the video does not appear to show the entire exchange between Virmani and the group, Operation Save America has since accused Virmani of being a racist because of his remark.
A call to A Preferred Women’s Health Center, where Virmani is employed, did not elicit a comment from the besieged doctor. Virmani spent a number of years in a legal battle with Presbyterian Hospital Matthews, where he had been suspended from practicing following an accident during a surgery.
The doctor accused the hospital’s board of trustees of discriminating against him based on his Asian-Indian heritage. In the time since, he authored a number of booklets including “Once Upon a Time, I Delivered Beautiful Babies,” “How the Hospital Destroyed My Life” and “Abuse of Medical Peer-Review.”
Operation Save America maintains that its intentions are purely positive, and not meant to cause personal harm. “They want to present us as stalkers, … as people who want to kill. … We don’t want to harm anybody,” One member of the group told the News Observer. “There’s something really, really wrong when we’re more concerned about those who are committing evil than those who are the victims.”
Last year Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham, the group’s leader, was convicted on charges of stalking a Charlotte doctor, after the group began distributing posters with the names and photos of abortion doctors, along with the message “Wanted … by Christ, to Stop Killing Babies.”