A new pro-life organization is filling an important gap in the fight to end abortion by ensuring authorities hold abortion facilities accountable when they break the law.
Reprotection began in 2020 to protect women and children from harm by investigating dangerous abortion facilities and urging that they be closed down when they violate the law.
“It’s so time-intensive and meticulous that the people are busy running the pregnancy centers or sidewalk counseling or doing policy,” Missy Martinez-Stone, the CEO of Reprotection, told National Review in a new interview. “This needed to be something that stood on its own because it takes so much time and effort and follow-up.”
Martinez-Stone said they look into things like building code violations and staff licensing requirements, botched abortions and other issues, and already their efforts have led to abortion facilities closing.
In one case, she said a sidewalk counselor in Florida contacted the organization after witnessing a patient running out of the abortion facility yelling, “Call 911!”
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Martinez-Stone said they later learned that the woman had had a bad reaction to the anesthesia and, when she complained, the abortionist ignored her. So the woman, fearing for her safety, climbed off the table and ran outside where the sidewalk counselor called 911, she continued.
Reprotection filed a complaint about the incident to the medical board with little success; so, Martinez-Stone said they contacted the governor’s office. A short time later, the medical board decided to investigate the matter, and the abortionist quickly decided to retire and close his abortion facility, she said.
“The hardest part is follow-up because you’re dealing with bureaucracy,” she said. “The bulk of our work comes on the back end of every couple weeks or months: ‘Hey, how’s it going? Where’s our investigation? Where’s our investigation? Why have you not moved on this?’” Martinez-Stone told National Review.
Even in pro-life states, state authorities sometimes ignore potential violations because “the abortion industry makes such a fuss when they’re pushed against,” she continued.
In another case, she said someone told them an abortion facility had put ten women together in the same room and gave them abortion drugs at the same time, a patient privacy violation.
Martinez-Stone said they strive to provide a “confidential safe place” for people to report violations, including women who have had abortions and abortion workers.
She said the Reprotection researchers are trained to help people who have experienced trauma because “the nature of the violations and the complaints we’re dealing with are very sensitive.”
Right now, Martinez-Stone said they are investigating 44 cases in 25 states, and their work is intensive.
“For some reason, the abortion industry thinks that they just get this free pass from being regulated in any way,” she said. “And they don’t; they do not want to be regulated in any way. But it’s stuff that every medical professional has to follow, like informed consent and mandatory reporting and building codes. You need to be able to get a gurney through your hallways, in case there’s an emergency. This is all stuff that everybody else has to meet.”
