Dear Editor:
In its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court invented a hitherto unrecognized “constitutional” right to have an abortion. With Roe’s companion decision, Doe v. Bolton, The Supreme Court also provided the legal basis for establishing the abortion industry by striking down requirements to perform abortions in hospital settings.
Thus, the stage was set for the establishment of a nation-wide network of “clinics” for the performance of abortion on demand for any reason. In these centers, women burdened with a crisis pregnancy, are given cursory information by the staff, prepped for the abortion, and typically meet the abortionist, for the first and last time, on the surgery table – so much for having an abortion “in consultation with this your doctor.”
Women, who have any complications following an abortion in these “clinics,” almost always end up in other, reputable medical facilities in the community for any additional care. “Clinics” that are unwilling or incapable of providing follow-up care to the women injured in their facilities can hardly be considered “practicing medicine” in the usual sense.
In West Virginia, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has pointed out that West Virginia’s abortion facilities are “neither licensed nor regulated by the state,” and he has called for comments on this situation. The Vice Chairman of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of West Virginia University School of Medicine’s Charleston Division, Dr. Byron Calhoun, wrote to Attorney General Morrisey describing his concerns about the care women are receiving at Charleston abortion facilities.
“We commonly (I personally probably at least weekly) see patients at Women and Children’s Hospital with complications from abortions at these centers in Charleston: so much for ‘safe and legal.’ These patients are told to come to our hospital because the abortion clinic providers do not have hospital privileges to care for their patients, so we must treat them as emergency ‘drop-ins.’
No other medical providers are allowed to care for patients, have no backup coverage, and then abandon them to the emergency rooms. We would be held ethically and legally liable. The fantasy of women’s reproductive health care seems to allow these individuals who perform the abortions some special dispensation to provide substandard care. Veterinarian clinics and tattoo parlors must comply with more regulations and inspection than an abortion clinic where lives are ended. This is substandard care for women and needs to end.” (The Charleston Gazette, 9/2/2013).
Abortion is not health care. It doesn’t cure; it kills innocent children – 55 million since 1973 in this country alone. And it certainly should not be funded by West Virginia tax dollars through Medicare or under the new Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) in the health care exchange.
Wanda Franz, Ph.D.
Morgantown