A Planned Parenthood in Everett, Washington sent a woman to the hospital late Friday following a botched abortion and the head of the local abortion business is coming under fire for her response to the events.
Local pro-life advocate Mary Emanuel was at the abortion facility at the time and snapped pictures of the ambulance that whisked the woman away from the Everett Planned Parenthood.
“We are still investigating as to the severity of the botched abortion and only pray that it was not fatal or caused serious injuries,” she said.
Emanuel related the events of the afternoon, saying, “Events started to unfold a little before 1:00 p.m. when I heard sirens approaching the corner of Hoyt and 32nd in Everett, Washington. As the red engine rounded the corner from the south I walked hastily to see if it would move beyond Planned Parenthood on Hoyt. Unfortunately it stopped and three paramedics unloaded their gear and went in the side entrance.”
She said a woman eventually arrived with a white poster board, which Planned Parenthood staffers later used to block the view from the street when they loaded the injured woman into the ambulance.
“The employees weren’t their usual smug and surly selves. They actually seemed sad and did not want to make eye contact. However, when I asked one employee who had brought something to a woman in her car how it was going, she replied, ‘good,'” Emanuel recalls. “After the paramedics had gone inside I waited to see if an ambulance would appear. Indeed, not long after that, maybe five minutes, the ambulance arrived and they took a gurney inside.”
About 40 minutes later, Emanuel says “Planned Parenthood employees started filtering out the side door that opens onto the parking lot to form a conga line. They held big blue and white umbrellas, those white poster boards, and a flattened cardboard box in order to try to obstruct our view of the situation. That tells you about their priorities. The woman was slowly wheeled out into the parking lot and loaded into the ambulance. There must have been 10 to 12 employees of Planned Parenthood trying to protect their reputation and hide this horrific incident from the public. They performed the same ritual for the partner or friend or parent of the injured woman. The only thing I saw was a red sock, crumpled and askew on the woman’s foot.”
The ambulance likely took the woman to the emergency room at Providence Hospital, the pro-life, who runs the web site Abortion in Washington, said.
“The attitude of the paramedics seemed to be one of sadness mixed with anger. They went inside to interview employees and take a report,” Emanuel remembers. “I was left with an incredible feeling of sorrow to have witnessed this event. We know that babies die there on a regular basis and women are hurt during every abortion but there is never any formal public recognition of that. No sirens, no ambulances, no strong and brave men ever come to Planned Parenthood to ferry away the babes and mothers in need of help and care.”
Emanuel began following up with Planned Parenthood officials after the incident.
“We called the Planned Parenthood main office to find out what we could from them. Interestingly, they hadn’t been notified of it and were quite unfazed and unconcerned when asked about an injury, possibly a fatality, at one of their clinics. Phone calls to their media representative were not returned,” she said.
Eventually, she and Jonathan B. caught up with Christine Charbonneau, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, who responded to an email.
He indicates: “In the email she admitted that the victim was a patient (and not an employee as some have speculated), but denied that the client was deceased as some eye-witnesses had feared. She claimed ‘patient is very much alive, stable and getting care appropriate to the situation.’ She attempted to downplay the seriousness of the situation, saying that they had ‘evidently … transferred [her] to a hospital for observation.'”
He said Charbonneau, “who probably doesn’t want the victim thinking about lawsuits and going after her organization’s $40 million bank account, claimed the reason her employees formed a wall was not to try to hide the state of the patient.” Instead, she told him the “client asked for privacy so the client’s face was covered when wheeled outside, to avoid being harassed and photographed by protestors (sic).”
“And while Ms. Charbonneau did not admit that the client was the victim of a botched abortion, she didn’t deny it, and she knows that’s certainly the public’s operating assumption, since Friday is an abortion day at their Everett facility,” he indicated. “We have asked Ms. Charbonneau for independent documentation of her claims beyond the self-serving assurances of an organization which is hardly at the zenith of its public credibility. Since we have some familiarity with the behavior of 40 Days for Life volunteers, who pray for and reach out to Planned Parenthood’s abortion clients with love, we asked for some evidence to substantiate her claims that they would seek to harass or photograph clients, especially those being taken away on stretchers.”
He said women have nothing to fear from pro-life advocates at Planned Parenthood centers and that he only takes photos when the abortion business injures women and paramedics are forced to take them for emergency care.
