Loaded for bear, pro-lifers are preparing legislation to thwart Planned Parenthood's latest initiative to increase its bottom line and the number of abortions--so-called "web-cam abortions."
In use only in Iowa currently, it's a plan to reach "clients" in the hinterlands. The abortionist is not actually in the same room with the woman. He communicates by means of a video conferencing system, electronically opening a drawer from which the woman takes out the two drugs that make up the "RU-486" chemical abortion regime: misoprostol and mifepristone.
Nebraska is one of those states which is reacting pro-actively. According to the World-Herald newspaper, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has aborted more than 2,000 women in Iowa since the summer of 2008 using the web-cam chemical abortion technique. Based in Des Moines, Iowa, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland operates abortion clinics in Iowa and Nebraska.
"The proposal would bar Nebraska doctors from prescribing and dispensing abortion-inducing drugs via the Internet," according to Martha Stoddard of the World-Herald.
And pro-life Nebraskans are not waiting until web-cam abortions are practiced in their state. "The abortion industry keeps coming up with new ways to kill unborn children, and this is one of them," said Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska RTL. "What happens in Iowa, I kid you not, is headed for Nebraska."
As is traditional, in response PPFA tried to evade the issue by equating killing with healing. Kyle Carlson, legal director for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, told Stoddard that restrictions on the use of web-cam abortions "could hurt the growing use of Internet video hookups in medicine. 'To make an argument that telemedicine is unsafe because the physician is not present is not an attack on abortion, it's an attack on telemedicine,' he said."
Nonsense, says Dr. Randall K. O'Bannon, NRLC Director of Education.
"There is a fundamental difference between a situation in which a person is dealing with some serious illness or health risk in an emergency situation and has no immediate access to a doctor versus one [a woman seeking an abortion] in which there is no underlying health issue and the procedure is entirely elective," he said. "If one is trying to save a life and there is no doctor available, telemedicine is a risk worth taking. For elective, and certainly for dangerous, procedures, it is an entirely different issue."
Contact: Dave Andrusko
Source: National Right to Life
Publish Date: December 28, 2010
