Why Aren't Pro-Choice Groups Doing "Stings" on Abortion Clinics?

I find it very telling that pro-choice groups so often find time to do "sting" operations on pregnancy resource centers to make sure they aren't annoying abortion-minded women. If they care so much, why are't they putting some of their efforts into "stings" on abortion clinics like Virginia Health Group in Fairfax, VA. Here are a couple of excerpts from a report on an state inspection on May 5, 2016.

This one is wider than the others because I wanted to include the name and address of the facility:


A state inspector asked a staff member to demonstrate that the AED (Automated External Defibrillator) was working properly. This is a vital piece of emergency equipment, absolutely necessary to save the life of a patient whose heart might stop due to anesthesia mishaps or excessive bleeding.

When the staff member turned on the AED, it said, "Place electrodes, replace battery."

Maybe I'm just being an anti-choice fanatic insisting that abortion clinics adhere to nit-picky standards, but keeping fresh batteries in the emergency defibrillator seems like a no-brainer.

 In this section, an inspector overhears two staff members discussing the toilet being stopped up in the patient bathroom. One of them comments, "That happens all the time in that bathroom."

One staff member put on gloves, carried a plunger from the staff bathroom to the patient bathroom, and plunged the toilet. The staff person then carried the plunger down the hall to put it back in the staff bathroom. The staff member took off the gloves but did not wash hands. He or she only used hand sanitizer.

That staff person, who had still not washed hands or put on clean scrubs after plunging a toilet went into a procedure room to hold a patient's hand during an abortion.

During this patient's care, a staff member was wearing gloves "visibly soiled with gloves." Another staff member put pills for the patient into that staff member's gloved hand.

I administer medications at a home for a person with developmental disabilities. We do not touch the person's medications. Most medications are in blister packs, and we pop the pills directly into a medication cup. If this person gets an OTC drug such as aspirin, the pills are tipped into a medication cup. We don't touch them. Maybe I have unrealistically high standards for an abortion clinic, but I don't think touching the medications is appropriate at all, much less handling them with obviously soiled gloves. Surely the standards adhered to by residential service workers aren't too high a bar for medical care workers.

Moving right along.

The inspector went into the patient bathroom and saw boxes of patients' medical records. "One of the boxes had the top off, was lying on its side, and records were spilling out of the side of the box. The record storage area was accessible to anyone who entered the patient bathroom."

Again, I might have unrealistically high expectations, but this seems inappropriate to me. Not only could any random patient just sit on the toilet and browse through other patients' records, anybody with access to the patient restroom could put a patient's record into a large purse and remove it from the clinic entirely. Elsewhere in the inspection report a staff person tells inspectors that patient files are just stored in those boxes in the bathroom, in alphabetical order by patient name. How hard would it be for a patient to browse through to see if anybody she knows had had an abortion there?

This is actually from earlier in the report. It describes what the team of inspectors found when they first walked into the clinic.

The patient waiting area was dirty. "The carpet was dirty and had large dark stains in multiple areas. There was debris on the floor and black smudges on multiple areas on the walls. There were fifteen (15) chairs which were made of a black strap type cloth/elastic type material that could not be adequately cleaned or disinfected."

The procedure room is actually worse.

"[T]he cabinet doors were taped together with a micropore tape which was adhered to the cabinet doors. When the surveyor attempted to open the cabinet to view the contents, the door fell off. In the bottom of this cabinet was a blue chux (pad) which had debris and dried brown material (betadine) that had leaked all over the pad.

Next time you read a story about a "sting" operation on "phony clinics," ask yourself why there's so much concern about whether or not prolifers are annoying women, and no apparent concern about whether abortion clinics are actively endangering them.