TOLEDO, Ohio — Over twenty years after pleading guilty to sex crimes against teenage girls, an Ohio abortionist has been indicted on federal child pornography charges.

Thomas Michaelis, 69, of the Capital Care Network in Toledo has been charged with possession of child pornography in both receiving and distributing pornographic material. According to local television station NBC24, Michaelis also visited websites depicting children engaged in sexual acts between January and May of this year.

He surrendered his medical license in May while an investigation was underway in the matter, the allegations being investigated by the Secret Service and the Sylvania Police Department.

The indictment occurs 22 years after Michaelis pled guilty to sex-related crimes involving his daughter’s then-teenage friends. Reports state that the abortionist exposed himself to the girls and secretly watched one of his daughter’s friends as she undressed. In 1992 , he was charged with two counts of gross sexual imposition, one count of voyeurism and one count of public indecency, and sentenced to 15 months behind bars.

Michaelis served only 60 days of his sentence and his medical license was reinstated after undergoing counseling and obtaining psychiatric help.

Although local news reports have not identified Michaelis as an abortionist, the website for the facility, which has multiple locations, including in Toledo and Columbus, outlines that the abortions are performed on babies as old as nearly five months gestation.

“Our physicians perform first trimester abortions (4 through 12 weeks) using vacuum aspiration,” the site reads. “We perform second trimester abortions (12 through 19 weeks) using the safe and gentle dilation and evacuation (D&E) method.”

Vacuum aspiration is a procedure where a suction device is used to rip the unborn child from the uterus, the contents of which are customarily sucked into a jar. The abortionist then scrapes the walls of the uterus to ensure that none of the baby’s body parts, which are often ripped off during the procedure, remain in the mother.

Dilation and evacuation involves administering medication that will stop the baby’s heart from beating. The mother’s cervix is then dilated and the baby is then removed piece by piece. According to reports, the abortionist assembles the baby’s body parts on a tray to ensure that nothing is left behind.

Michaelis’ indictment occurs just months after a judge ordered a Cincinnati-area abortionist to close his doors after failing to comply with state health regulations. As previously reported, Martin Haskell, the owner of the Lebanon Road Surgery Center in Sharonville was ordered by Common Pleas Judge Jerry Metz to shutter his abortion business this past August, a decision that pro-life residents hoped would be permanent.

“Shutting down Haskell’s facility is a long-sought victory for the pro-life movement,” Ohio Right to Life executive director Stephanie Ranade Krider said in a statement. “As the self-proclaimed ‘poster child’ of partial birth abortion, Martin Haskell has endangered southwest Ohio children for the last 30 years. We are hopeful that this will be the final order that puts Haskell out of business in Sharonville.”

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