Iowa Planned Parenthood Subject of Criminal Complaint Over Telemed Abortions
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 25, 2010
Des Moines, IA (LifeNews.com) — Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, an Iowa-based abortion business, is the subject of a criminal complain from a pro-life group that says it is engaging in illegal telemed abortions. That’s the process where women are not given the ability to meet with a physician in person before receiving the dangerous abortion drug.
Operation Rescue has filed a formal complaint with the Iowa Attorney General’s office asking for a criminal investigation of a remote-controlled push-button Internet abortion pill scheme.
"We believe that telemed abortions are illegal for several reasons and may rise to the threshold of criminal negligence," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "Planned Parenthood’s scheme to deny women personal access to licensed physicians is a prescription for disaster."
This is not the first time the pro-life organization has asked Iowa officials to investigate the controversial abortion process.
In April, Operation Rescue filed formal complaints with the Medical Board of Iowa asking for an investigation into the process and asking officials to stop allowing abortions without a licensed physician on site and discipline those involved. https://www.lifenews.com/state4977.html
The new complaint with the state attorney general names abortion practitioners Thomas William Ross and Susan Haskell, both osteopaths who are employed with PPH and are known to participate in the telemed abortion scheme.
The complaint lists five major areas of concern regarding telemed abortions, including a potential violation of Iowa law requiring that only licensed physicians perform abortions and that its remote dispensing practice for abortion drugs RU 486 and misoprostol ignores FDA protocals and are intentionally endangering womens’ lives.
The complaints also include allegations of criminal negligence and consumer protections law violations as OR says "evidence shows that Planned Parenthood intentionally exceeds manufacturer warnings and safety limits, and misrepresents to patients the actual failure rate of the medical abortion process."
They include allegations of consumer protection violations regarding insurance company overbilling and of patient abandonment "since the licensed physician only speaks with the patient for a brief time over an Internet teleconferencing hookup, and never interacts with the patient again even in the case of emergency."
Operation Rescue has also filed a supplemental information packet with the Iowa Board of Medicine as an amendment to their complaint, along with a request to expand their investigation to include abortion practitioner Thomas Ross.
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