Not that I support Planned Parenthood to begin with, but this is even more reason for me to not do so…
I can understand the rational behind the whole “slippery slope” argument on this one, but wasn’t the point of making abortion legal so that women could have access to offices that would be sterile and relatively safe in regards to the woman’s health, and not some back alleyway? I’m sorry, but an abortion is a medical procedure, and as such, should be viewed and the premises, upon which it is performed, should be maintained under the same standards as any outpatient surgical clinic. How is this a hard concept to grasp? Anyone?
Freakchylde's 
I believe that the motivation behind the law (not the visible intent) is to maximize the amount of expense and legislation involved in running the clinics so that those doing the running will be find it burdonesome to keep them open. The telling quote from the story is “Of all the establishments that dispense medication (e.g. doctor’s offices, pharmacies), why is it only those that dispense medication for the purpose of inducing an abortion that must be prepared to perform surgery?” Smith asked. While pharmacies might not reasonably fit into the category, but dentists offices certainly might.
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Unless it’s referring to the RU-285 (I think I got the number right), there is no medication induced abortion. The only chemical one in use utilizes uterine flushing, not oral medication. The fall-back, is that if something does go wrong, and immediate surgery is necessary, there needs to be a plan in place for such a situation. The way Planned Parenthood is screaming on this one makes me want to cringe, as I know good and well that their centers are not up to par, staff or sterile room-wise.
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RU-486. That’s a couple-day process anyway, and unless they’re going to require a three-night stay in their surgery-certified facility, they’re not going to change much. The majority of complications aren’t during swallowing a pill/getting injections visits, but failing to follow after-care procedure and contracting infection. No facility certification is going to fix that; only the ability of people to say “Wait, something’s wrong. Maybe I should go see a doctor,” before it becomes systemicaly septic and dangerous. It does sound from the article that Missouri does have PP offices that perform only chemical abortions as well as ones that also do surgical abortions (vaccuum or D&C).
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A little tidbit I found on the website of one of the local Fox News stations.
Among the new requirements noted in the lawsuit: outpatient surgery centers must have halls at least 6 feet wide and doors at least 44 inches wide; there must be separate male and female changing rooms for personnel; and a recovery room with space for at least four beds with 3 feet of clearance around each.
Another interesting fact to consider is that one of the clinics at issue in this case does not perform surgical abortions at all, only medically induced (I RU-486 and its ilk) ones.
Finally, one of the stated goals (as in written into the legislative intent section of the actual statutes) of abortion regulation in Missouri is to protect the lives of “unborn children.” They are not just talking about viable fetuses either. Under Missouri statutes, an unborn child is anything from conception (which is defined as union of ova and spermatozoa) to birth.
Now, given all of that (to say nothing of the General Assembly’s long history of attempting everything it can throw at the wall to restrict abortion access), I have a hard time buying into the “Planned Parenthood as bad guy” meme on this one. I also have a hard time believing that the point of the law really was to safeguard women’s health. The point, based on the facts noted above and the aforementioned history of anti-choice efforts in the state, clearly appears to be to whittle away at reproductive choice until abortion services are essentially unavailable in the state of Missouri.
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I can understand that, but given my aversion to Planned Parenthood, in regards to their abortion stance….I want to see safe environments for the procedure, as well as better documentation (which includes how many are attributed to rape, and use of health records with real names attached to them). I think there should be fairly unfettered access to abortion, but Planned Parenthood’s policies regarding it are too sketchy for me to not have that doubt in my head.
For me, it just comes down to what is a happy medium where both viewpoints are protected.
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Okay, that’s going to require a little more explanation.
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