Planned Parenthood took a big hit on Tuesday after the District Court for Polk County, Iowa upheld a ban on “webcam” abortions. Judge Jeffrey Farrell’s ruling concluded that abortions – if done at all – really should be done after a complete medical exam. Better yet, Judge Ferrell ruled that the medical exam should actually be done by a physician – in person – and not via video feed. Well slap my head, imagine that.
In an effort to increase profit margins, Planned Parenthood’s management decided that their rural clinics could save money if they did abortions without having a physician present. To get around that ‘minor’ hurdle they shortcut the system and bypassed the requisite exam, altogether. Then they hired abortion doctors in neighboring cities to ‘consult’ with patients via webcam.
But the Iowa Board of Medicine didn’t take too kindly to killing babies without so much as a brief handshaking. So in August 2013, the Board ruled 8-2 that a physician had to be present when abortion drugs are administered.
As expected, Planned Parenthood challenged the Medical Board’s ruling because apparently it just cost too much to hire physicians to trek an hour out to the rural clinics to kill babies.
Before the Board’s ban, when a woman presented herself to an abortion clinic, she was given forms to fill out and queried about her pregnancy. Assuming the information the mother provided fit the gestational age requirement (and we all know how honest/accurate a teenage girl can be when she’s desperate), she was taken into an exam room where she was connected to an abortion doctor via webcam. The physician supposedly ‘consulted’ with her and then made the decision to dispense the abortion inducing drugs.
The doc pushed a button at his end and a little drawer containing two pills opened at the mother’s end. The mother took one pill at the clinic and then went home. A few days later she took the second pill and – voila – the baby died and was expelled.
Except there have been a few problems with abortifacient drugs, like deaths, strokes and sepsis caused by a total lack of concern, care and/or supervision on the part of abortion providers.
Planned Parenthood’s main argument is that forcing women to travel 60-100 miles to reach a ‘big-city’ clinic with a real doctor, constitutes cruelty and undue hardship. They feel that if a mother reaches the decision to have an elective abortion, she should be able to get it immediately, wherever she lives.
But here’s the thing. Elective abortions never constitute an emergency situation (unless it’s botched) in which case she needs to be as close to a major medical center as she can get.
Otherwise, if a mother is forced to actually plan ahead and drive an hour or two to another city to kill her baby, oh well. That’s an inconvenient sacrifice she will just have to be stuck with.
Considering that you can’t even get antibiotics for a simple ear infection without first having an exam, it’s difficult to imagine a physician risking a woman’s life in order to expedite killing an innocent human being via webcam. Except that abortion doctors and Planned Parenthood aren’t in the game to offer care and compassion, they’re in it for the money.