022393 Why it's like giving docs a license to kill...-Peyser

THE man, licensed in some kind of medicine, hung out a sign one day and started doing abortions in a room of his Queens apartment. Each day, women filed into this instant clinic to terminate their pregnancies, trusting their bodies to a stranger with a suction machine.

It was no coincidence that this man, whom I'll call Dr. X, set up shop within blocks of Choices, the city's biggest and safest provider of abortions. Luring clients away from Choices was a snap. What woman with the money, after all, wouldn't shun the large, busy clinic in favor of a private, quiet doctor's office? You get what you pay for, right? Wrong.

Did you know that any doctor with a degree - whether it be in plastic surgery or akin diseases - can rent a table with stirrups and a scalpel, take out an ad in the yellow pages and start performing abortions, legally? It gets worse: State officials, the ones whose job it is to inspect licensed abortion clinics, are forbidden from checking whether private dots even know the difference between a speculum and thermometer. That is, until there's a problem.

In New York City, considered a regional center for abortions, there are some 200 to 300 abortion providers - but just 11 are licensed.

In other words, until someone rips the arm off an 8th-month-old fetus and sends the mother, dazed and bleeding, into the night, there's no telling who's selling abortion services in this city.

From her office at Choices, clinic founder Merle Hoffman is furious at the medical double standard that spawns creatures like Dr. Abu Hayat. As a licensed abortion provider, she gladly does hundreds of things to please the state, from hiring licensed social workers and anesthesiologists to keeping her hallways at a prescribed width. If she fails to comply, her clinic will be shut down.

Meanwhile, Dr. X nearby administered anesthesia and performed abortions all by himself. But the state couldn't even walk into his office without an appointment for a checkup - until, says Hoffman, the man started "having problems." He moved on to parts unknown.

"In the abortion field, where women are vulnerable and in a crisis situation, it's easier to get greedy and unethical physicians," says Hoffman.