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Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Between a woman and her web-cam

Dakota Voice reports that Planned Parenthood plans to do RU-486 abortions by having the "prescribing" doctor do consults via web-cam, thus moving abortion from "first contact when he shoves the speculum in" to not having any actual physical contact at all.

Paradoxically, this might actually lead to women getting more of a consult, since the web-cam thing would require the doctor to actually speak to her, or at least to say more than scolding them not to squirm and to keep quiet lest the frighten the other patients.

This might even force abortionists to read the chart, something not all Planned Parenthood physicians do.

"Alicia", age 28, filed suit after going to Planned Parenthood February 25, 1992, for birth control pills. Aguilar, who speaks only Spanish, was led to a procedure room by a Spanish-speaking employee who had her disrobe, put her in stirrups, inserted a speculum, and left the room. Planned Parenthood's abortionist, Marc Jerome, entered the room and immediately initiated a vacuum abortion procedure. Alicia screamed for him to stop, but Jerome "ignored the obvious pain and terror" of the patient, and continued with the procedure. It turns out that Jerome had gone into wrong room and failed to correctly identify which patient he was about to operate on. Alicia, her attorney said, "suffers continuous flashbacks and crying episodes," particularly due to her strong religious opposition to abortion. Planned Parenthood successfully blocked Alicia's attempt to file suit anonymously, on the fairly self-serving grounds that her suit "does not involve an abortion, or a woman's right to privacy when choosing to obtain an abortion. The female plaintiff in this case was not pregnant...did not seek and did not obtain an abortion." (Legal Times 5-24-93)

So talking to a doctor at a Planned Parenthood before the actual abortion would be a step in the right direction.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:22 PM

    I dunno -- if they can do the "doctor-patient consultation" by a recorded voice message, why do a web-cam thing live -- why not just have the doctor record himself reading the speech, and then put it on YouTube?

    Good grief, what next? As if RU-486 and misoprostol haven't taken enough women's lives and uteri!

    -Kathy

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  2. They had to stop doing that in South Dakota (the "consult" by listening to a tape recording) when I caught them doing it and we called the Attorney General and played her the tape we'd made of the phone call.

    We'd also discovered that at the time there was a second "provider" in South Dakota who wasn't registered, as was required, and wasn't reporting, as was required. We played the tape of me making an appointment.

    Prolifers -- find out if your state is a single-party consent state for taping phone calls, and if so make a habit of periodically making abortion appointments and taping the calls so that if you find evidence of lawbreaking you can report it and get it stopped.

    And for those of you thinking, "Big deal, they're not registered!" That means they're not being monitored for health and safety regs, and other consumer protection laws, that's why it's a big deal.

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