MONTGOMERY, AL, May 20, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Alabama state officials argue that there is a “legitimate need” to regulate abortion facilities to keep women safe from the industry's history of malpractice, shady ethics, and uniquely low standards as compared to the rest of the medical field. Those explosive allegations are contained in a pre-trial brief filed on May 13 that has been obtained exclusively by LifeSiteNews.
Solicitor General Andrew Brasher singled out Planned Parenthood Southeast as being particularly in need of additional oversight, due to its poor overall safety record as well as specific allegations against its five abortionists. According to Brasher, one abortionist, “Dr. A.” is currently mired in a malpractice suit for performing an abortion on a non-pregnant patient at a Birmingham abortion facility, which left her infertile. Another, “Dr. P2,” is facing federal Medicaid fraud charges. And Planned Parenthood’s Birmingham location was recently shut down after an employee was caught illegally selling prescription drugs out of the facility’s parking lot.
“[Planned Parenthood Southeast]’s practices are substandard in the abortion industry and as compared to other medical providers,” Brash argued. “[Their] doctors remain in the city of a clinic for as few as six hours, perform scores of elective procedures, and then leave.”
Brasher wrote that Planned Parenthood Southeast’s abortion clients wind up in area hospitals with severe complications several times a year, often with no follow-up by the doctor who performed the procedure in the first place.
Those too-frequent health complications are the reason the state needs to assure abortionists maintain admitting privileges in a nearby hospital, the brief states.
“[A]bortion, like any other medical procedure, can be risky to the patients who request it,” Brasher explained in the brief. “Potentially life-threatening, post-abortion complications include infection and profuse bleeding.”
“There are reasons to be concerned about the quality of care provided by abortion clinics that are not present with other kinds of healthcare facilities,” he wrote.
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Brasher argued that requiring abortionists to maintain admitting privileges at local hospitals ensures continuity of care for abortion clients. He added that other outpatient surgical facilities treat this as standard protocol, but the abortion industry – which often flies practitioners from out of state on a weekly or bi-weekly basis – has steadfastly resisted.
“[A]llowing a physician to perform an elective procedure and then not expecting the physician to manage complications encourages patient abandonment and is not the standard of care that is in the patient’s best interest,” Brash wrote. “[T]he staff privileges requirement is a reasonable and prudent provision to address patient safety issues, and conforms to national accreditation standards.”
Brasher pointed out that as recently as 2000, the National Abortion Federation recommended that abortion clients “[m]ake sure the person performing the abortion has [admitting privileges]…In case of emergency, the doctor should be able to admit patients to a nearby hospital (no more than 20 minutes away).”
Basher wrote that while Planned Parenthood Southeast claims the state has “singled out” abortionists, he encourages any “attempt to compare the practices of abortion clinics with the practices of other medical providers.”
“The plaintiffs will produce no evidence that any, much less a plurality, of other health care providers employ itinerant physicians to perform elective procedures,” he wrote. They “will produce no evidence that ambulatory surgery centers are staffed by physicians without staff privileges or that other physicians in Alabama who perform elective procedures do so without having staff privileges at local hospitals.”
“There are reasons to be concerned about the quality of care provided by abortion clinics that are not present with other kinds of healthcare facilities,” he said.
He also said the abortion giant’s expert witnesses are “biased” and “not credible,” he said. “They are all related to, and financially supported by, the abortion-clinic industry, which is the industry fighting the health-and-safety regulation at issue in this case.”
Arguments in the case began yesterday before U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson.