This week, the Supreme Court overturned a Texas law that regulated the abortion industry. HB 2 required abortion facilities to be held to the same standards as other surgical ambulatory centers, and required abortionists have hospital admitting privileges. Abortion activists immediately celebrated when the law was struck down, claiming that it was an undue burden, and that the regulations were unnecessary. But the truth is that abortion facilities across the country have been found to operate under shoddy conditions, including Whole Woman’s Health, the plaintiff organization in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, which has a long history of health violations.
Now, Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood whistleblower and founder of And Then There Were None, is bringing more of the abortion industry’s abuses to light. She, along with other abortion clinic workers, have distributing two new documents with the launch of the #NotOver campaign, with the promise of more to come. These documents are from August and September of 2015, showing that abortion facilities have consistently been operating under criminal and unethical conditions, and that the clinics have gone unregulated.
The first document (continued), from Houston Women’s Clinic dated September 23, 2015, shows that abortion center staff were not being properly trained in equipment sterilization. The report says, “the facility failed to ensure current documented competency and training. for 2 of 2 staff responsible for sterilization…”
The second document, from Hilltop Women’s Reproductive Clinic dated August 4, 2015, showed that the clinic failed to properly document abortion consent for minor patients. Furthermore, Texas health regulators noted that, “there was no documentation in the medical record to indicate these patients received the verbal explain of results of the sonogram images per the requirement of House Bill 15.”
According to Johnson, these are just the first few documents of twelve total that will be released over the next several weeks.
Along with releasing the previously suppressed documents, Johnson has launched a White House petition demanding that the federal government call on Congress to ensure that abortion facilities be held to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. If the petition can get 100,000 signatures by July 30, the White House will be required to respond. In the petition, Johnson says that action is needed for three reasons:
1. Making all surgery as safe as possible for women is common sense and pro-woman.
2. Every woman undergoing a highly invasive surgery should be assured by law that it is being performed safely, and that the doctor has admitting privileges at a local hospital in case something goes wrong.
3. Abortion facilities should not be allowed to subject women to subpar safety standards.
These should be common-sense regulations, regardless of whether someone identifies as pro-life or pro-abortion. But the abortion industry is more concerned with profits than they are with women’s safety. In a press release about the #NotOver campaign, Johnson stated,
Both myself and the over 240 former abortion clinic workers in my ministry have witnessed first-hand the deplorable conditions that women are subjected to inside the abortion industry. The Supreme Court has made a dangerous decision for the hundreds of thousands of women who enter these unregulated, unsanitary, unsafe abortion facilities every year. To require a facility performing invasive, medical procedures on a woman to meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center is common sense. It is dangerous to allow abortion facilities to be less safe than similar surgical centers. That’s why we’re launching a White House petition campaign where we hope to get 100,000 petition signatures in 30 days. Women have been treated as second class citizens when it comes to the basic standards of health care for far too long. It is time for ALL women to demand better treatment and better regulations.
We deserve much better than what the Supreme Court has given us. We won’t stop until that is exactly what we have received. It’s not over, friends.
To find out more, visit NotOverCampaign.com.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Hilltop Women’s Reproductive Clinic had failed to document parental consent to abortion. Records do show documentation of parental consent to abortion but that other portions of the content form were improperly completed by the facility. Furthermore, the three documents related to facility compliance were cited when it was in fact two documents with one document being referenced twice. Finally the previous version incorrectly stated that Houston Women’s Clinic failed to sterilize equipment when in fact they had failed to show competency in sterilization equipment.
