Time and time again, whenever Planned Parenthood is faced with a safety regulation it considers burdensome, it sues the government, arguing that the regulation imposes an “undue burden” on women seeking abortions. The abortion giant’s latest lawsuit should evoke deep concern from their patients and anyone else who cares about women’s health and safety.
The new federal lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood on Monday in Missouri aims at blocking a provision of the state’s Senate Bill 5, which requires those who provide medication abortions to contract with an OB-GYN who has admitting privileges at a hospital and will be able to treat complications arising from the abortion. Rather than agreeing to meet those safety measures to ensure their patients’ safety, Planned Parenthood officials have refused to comply and resorted to claiming that the regulations are burdensome to women, even calling them “a national embarrassment.” Their reasoning is that some Planned Parenthood offices will not meet the safety standards, and therefore, women seeking abortions will have to travel far in order to reach offices that do.
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley responded with a statement defending the safety provisions:
The Missouri Complications Plan Requirement for medication abortions is a commonsense regulation that ensures women have access to adequate care in medical emergencies. My office will continue to vigorously defend these regulations.
This is actually the second lawsuit Planned Parenthood has filed against Missouri’s Senate Bill 5. Earlier in October, it tried to block a provision of the law requiring abortionists to inform their patients of medical risks three days prior to the procedure. The abortion provider lost that case after a county judge ruled that the regulation does not impose an “undue burden” on women.
On October 24, the day in which that portion of the bill went into effect, 67 pro-life women stood outside of a St. Louis Planned Parenthood office to represent the 67 ambulance calls to that facility since 2009. Pam Fichter of Missouri Right to Life told the St. Louis Review, “They lie about whether abortions are safe for women. We are here in white to represent the truth. Women deserve better. Babies deserve better. Babies deserve to live. Their mothers deserve to be treated with the utmost respect and care that our medical facilities are required to give.”
Planned Parenthood evidently doesn’t think so, however. It claims such standards would “unduly burden” women — though it seems that the organization is actually just concerned about the burden on itself. Increased safety regulations do not burden women, they protect women. The only reason women would be burdened by these new regulations is if their local Planned Parenthood refused to comply and they were forced to travel a greater distance to receive an abortion. Therefore, it is up to Planned Parenthood to comply and ensure that such regulations help rather than burden women – something it appears the abortion provider would prefer not to do.
And what about those 67 women who were rushed to the hospital from the St. Louis Planned Parenthood? Would they have been “unduly burdened” by Planned Parenthood putting a few more resources toward their health and safety? Likely not. It would be more accurate to say that Planned Parenthood “unduly burdened” them by landing them in the hospital.
Once again, the abortion giant’s new lawsuit proves that the very thing it claims to care about — women’s health — is actually its last priority. Women should be concerned about how little Planned Parenthood actually cares about them.
Photo credit: American Life League via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
