Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit Tuesday to stop two new Idaho laws that protect women from dangerous, long-distance webcam abortions.
The abortion business’s Great Northwest and Hawaiian Islands affiliate sued the state in federal court, alleging that the laws “restrict access to abortion,” according to Reuters.
Idaho passed the protective laws in April, LifeNews previously reported. The laws ban dangerous webcam abortions and the practice of abortion clinics selling the abortion pill RU-486 to women without an in-person consultation with a physician. Doctors who violate the law could be charged with crimes or lose their medical licenses, Reuters reports.
The abortion chain is asking a federal judge to find the laws unconstitutional and to permanently bar the state from enforcing them, according to Reuters.
Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education for the National Right to Life Committee, described how the remote abortions work:
In webcam abortions, an abortionist at a hub clinic teleconferences with a woman at one of the smaller satellite offices, reviews her case, and asks a couple of questions. If satisfied, he clicks a mouse, remotely unlocking a drawer at her location.
In that drawer are the abortion pills which make up the two-drug abortion technique (RU-486 and a prostaglandin). She takes the RU-486 there and takes the rest of the pills home to administer to herself later.
The chemical abortion drug RU-486 can be dangerous to the woman as well as kill her unborn child. According to a report on RU-486 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, more than 2,200 women reported “adverse events” or complications, more than 600 were hospitalized and 14 died.
By doing webcam abortions, Planned Parenthood was putting women in danger by circumventing FDA regulations surrounding the use of RU-486, David Ripley of Idaho Chooses Life told LifeNews previously.
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“Throughout public debate, Planned Parenthood has denied that our legislation involved any legitimate concern over a woman’s health. Instead, they tried to argue that they could be trusted to self-regulate,” Ripley said. “Planned Parenthood is certainly motivated by convenience and profits in its drive to create a ‘remote control’ abortion access system across the nation. But they are also driven by ideology.”
Because Planned Parenthood did not stop the Idaho law from being passed, it now is fighting the protective legislation in court. In its lawsuit, Planned Parenthood claims that banning use of webcam/telemedicine to prescribe abortion pills “will deny some women the method of abortion of their choice – or force them to forego an abortion entirely,” Reuters reports.
Currently, 18 states have laws on the books that say abortionists cannot avoid the duty of being in the same room as the pregnant woman, with 16 enforced and two facing lawsuits from the abortion industry.
