It’s been announced that after this Friday, Planned Parenthood will likely be unable to perform any more abortions in the state of Missouri because it was unable to comply with state regulations. As expected, the abortion business is beginning to panic. The newish president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen, is doing the media rounds trying her best to explain what a disaster that will be for the women of Missouri. Don’t buy it.
Despite what Wen says almost ad nauseum, abortion is not health care. In a statement to NPR, Wen said, “(The closing of the St. Louis clinic) means that that more than 1.1 million women of reproductive age in Missouri will live in a state where they cannot receive the health care they need. This is a world we haven’t seen in nearly a half a century.”
That’s a little dramatic. While there are likely 1.1 million women in the state of reproductive age, the vast majority of those women do not need or want an abortion. According to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abortion report, the percentage of women in Missouri who had abortions that year was a little less than 5,000 or 0.4%. It seems a bit of an exaggeration to say that these million plus women will miss out of the healthcare that they need since 99.6% of the population didn’t seek out abortion services to begin with, unless Planned Parenthood plans on closing its St. Louis clinic completely.
That’s doesn’t seem like the case, but it does raise the question. Are abortions so important that Planned Parenthood is willing to deprive women of the other health care needs?
The reason that Planned Parenthood no longer has a permit is because it refuses to fulfill all of Missouri’s health requirements for abortion clinics, specifically the request to question the abortionists who are working or have worked at the clinic. While the staff physicians are willing to talk, the others are not. Dr. Jodi Magee, President and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, describes the need for such questioning as “harassment,” but there is good reasoning for it.
Abortionists don’t usually have the best reputation as physicians.
While there are some in good standing, that is generally not the case for most since the quick cash that abortion businesses can make often attracts some rather unsavory practitioners (e.g. Dr. Kermit Gosnell). According to a study completed by pro-life research organization Charlotte Lozier, about half the abortionists in Florida had a malpractice claim against them, and only half had admitting privileges to local hospitals. It’s not hard to believe the same might be the case in Missouri.
It’s not just the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis. Authorities in the state also revoked the abortion license of the office in Columbia because the physician didn’t have admitting privileges at a local hospital. That particular clinic was also closed for a period of time because of health violations. Clearly, Planned Parenthood isn’t very concerned about the quality of care their patients receive.
Of course, Dr. Wen and others don’t see it that way. To Planned Parenthood and its supporters, any abortion restriction is a hinderance to women’s rights and an attempt at “intimidation,” instead of a sincere effort to protect women from unscrupulous physicians and dangerous clinic conditions.
According to Planned Parenthood, state officials said that the reasoning for the questioning is that, “investigations have identified a large number of potential deficient practices requiring explanation by the physicians directly involved in patient care, as well as attending physicians.”
It is possible that these interviews are needed to ascertain whether laws were followed when it comes to abortionists reporting suspected abuse of minor girls, which Planned Parenthood has a history of failing to do. For example, in Alabama the local abortion business failed to “properly report the suspected abuse of a 14-year-old girl. The girl was a mother of two and received two abortions from the clinic within a 6-month time frame.” There are other cases as well. Any time Planned Parenthood does not report abuse, the abuser goes free and can continue to victimize young women.
The authorities need to know if this type of criminal conduct occurred in Missouri. It says something that Planned Parenthood and the physicians who work there are more willing, to a certain extent, to protect themselves than the young women who come into their clinic.
If Missouri doesn’t have a clinic capable of providing abortions past Friday, there will not be a “public health crisis” as Wen argued. Instead, maybe there will be more women and couples who decide to parent or place their baby up for adoption with a couple who can’t have one of their own. Speaking as the daughter of a man adopted in Missouri before Roe v. Wade, I would love to see that come to pass.
