In a September 5 editorial promoting the legalization of RU-486 telemed abortions, the Des Moines Register editorial board had to admit Planned Parenthood of the Heartland is currently committing them illegally. Read carefully:
… Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has used telemedicine as it was intended: to expand access to legal health services in rural Iowa. The challenge of that smart approach should prompt state leaders to update laws and policies – to give Iowans increased access to health care, including abortion, through the use of technology.
Now it's up to Iowa leaders to:
- Re-evaluate outdated abortion laws in this state.
The law requiring physicians to perform abortions made sense when all abortions were surgical procedures. But that requirement is called into question now that women are increasingly choosing to take a drug….
Iowa should take a step forward in fostering 21st century medicine – including using it to give women access to a legal medical procedure.
In touting the need for telemed abortions in rural areas, the editorial board did not present a solution for aborting mothers who encounter emergencies in rural areas.
Instead the editorial board ridiculously relied on unsubstantiated data from the fox guarding the hen house to say the hens are safe:
PP says that of the 1,500 women who have used telemedicine for abortions over the past 2 years, none has reported complications.
Yes, let's take the word of the megaabortion industry committing these abortions to say all is well.
Are you really that gullible, Des Moines Register? Not one complication of 1,500 telemed abortions committed over the course of 2 years? Not one? Planned Parenthood Federation lists 5 possible complications, which I'm copying and pasting:
- an allergic reaction to either of the pills
- incomplete abortion – part of the pregnancy is left inside the uterus
(To clarify, by "part of the pregnancy… left inside the uterus," PP means not to say "part of the baby.")
- infection
- undetected ectopic pregnancy
- very heavy bleeding
So out of 1,500 abortions there has not been one allergic reaction, not one infection, not one ectopic pregnancy found after the fact, and not one case of heavy bleeding? Wow.
I skipped the complication of an "incomplete abortion" because the PP Federation elsewhere states:
Complete abortion will occur in 96–97 percent of women who choose mifepristone. In the small percentage of cases that medication abortion fails, other abortion procedures are required to end the pregnancies.
This means PP of the Heartland, which should have encountered 45-60 incomplete abortions out of 1,500 RU-486 telemed abortions, in actuality encountered not one? Wow again. That's amazing.
Because if there were any complications or need for surgical abortions in the event of an RU-486 fail, again the question for mothers in rural areas would be, where to go?
Had the Des Moines Register editorial board written this opinion piece for a Journalism 101 class, it would have gotten an F for not checking the obviously biased source of a pretty incredible and unsubstantiated statistic.
And the board had the nerve to call pro-lifers "backward."
Contact: Jill Stanek
Date Published: September 8, 2010
