Planned Parenthood’s latest lawsuit betrays the lie that it cares first and foremost about providing healthcare for women. The nation’s largest abortion provider is suing to keep information from the government and to block safety inspections at its clinics. Planned Parenthood wants government money without government accountability.
The American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, has filed a lawsuit against the state of Indiana to block a new law that requires two basic things: Each clinic would need to undergo an annual safety inspection by the Department of Health, and each clinic would need to report any “abortion complications” experienced by its patients to the Department of Health.
If Planned Parenthood wanted to demonstrate that abortion is a safe procedure for women, it would have no problem getting its clinics inspected and reporting any medical complications to the Department of Health. If the organization is run safely, it should pass inspection with flying colors and have few (if any) cases of complications to report. The law is written so that any decent healthcare organization can easily comply.
According to local paper NWI, “The report [of complications] must contain 16 specific items, including the patient’s age, race and county of residence; the type, date and location of the abortion; a list of each complication and treatment; the date of every visit to every doctor relating to the complication; and any abortion drugs used by the patient and how they were procured.”
That’s a lot of information. But it’s all information that doctors should already have about their patients. Every doctor collects age, race, residence, past surgical procedures, past pregnancies, and past treatments sought. That’s true for every condition from a toothache to an unwanted pregnancy.
Department of Health inspections are routine for any other healthcare provider in the state. For abortion clinics, only certain basic things need to be inspected. State law requires each clinic to have sanitation standards, staff qualifications, emergency equipment and procedures, monitoring of patients after anesthesia, follow-up care for complications, infection control, and informed consent. Abortion clinics must also display the phone number for a sex trafficking victims hotline. Fulfilling the requirement is as simple as hanging up a poster.
Since Planned Parenthood is so opposed to being treated like a healthcare organization, it raises the question of what standard of care they are providing. Most people would hesitate to eat at a restaurant that refuses inspection, let alone to get prescription drugs or a surgical abortion from a doctor’s office that did the same.
The ACLU insists this is an undue burden meant to crack down on a healthcare provider by treating it like a healthcare provider. In theory, Planned Parenthood would embrace this new law as a chance to prove their claim that abortion is a safe procedure. Instead, it’s going on the defensive before the first inspector arrives at the clinic.
Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) writes about politics, media, ethics, and culture. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Georgetown University.
