Posted on 07/14/2010 4:47:06 PM PDT by Coleus
LINCOLN — A study in Nigeria that concluded Protestant women ran a higher risk of heavy bleeding after abortion. A 1970s study of cervical lacerations and other complications from abortions done before current methods were adopted. Studies linking psychological problems and abortion that rely on faulty and unreliable reporting of past behavior.
These are among the types of research a federal lawsuit alleges that women seeking abortions would have to be informed about under a new Nebraska law. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed the lawsuit Monday to keep Legislative Bill 594 from taking effect as scheduled July 15. The law, passed this spring, requires doctors to perform extensive screenings of women seeking abortions in Nebraska.
Planned Parenthood claims the law is unconstitutional because it imposes requirements on doctors that are impossible to meet. “It is a very onerous act that in fact obstructs access to abortion at all states of pregnancy,” said Jill June, the president and CEO of the Des Moines-based organization. Under the law, doctors would have to assess women for any indication that they feel pressured to have an abortion, as well as for risk factors that could predispose them to mental or physical complications.
Risk factors could include any identified in any research report published at least a year earlier in any peer-reviewed journal indexed by one of two major scientific indexing services. Doctors would have to document that they had evaluated and informed patients of each potential risk before proceeding with an abortion. The law holds doctors liable if a screening falls short.
The lawsuit names as defendants Gov. Dave Heineman, Attorney General Jon Bruning, Health and Human Services Department CEO Kerry Winterer and state officials in charge of licensing clinics and nurses. Heineman’s spokesman referred calls to the Attorney General’s Office. Allen Forkner, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said Bruning was “prepared to vigorously defend the State of Nebraska” against the suit. He said attorneys have not had enough time to review the suit and comment further.
Greg Schleppenbach, a lobbyist for the Nebraska Catholic Conference, disputed the claim about the difficulty of complying with the law. He said the law requires simply that abortion doctors meet the same standard as all other physicians regarding informed consent. Abortion doctors can use their own judgment about providing information to patients as long as they can justify their decisions in court, he said.
“They’re worried about the fact they’re going to have to live up to a reasonable standard that’s going to take a little more time and cost a little bit more money,” Schleppenbach said. Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who performs abortions at his Bellevue clinic, applauded the lawsuit.
“Hopefully the courts will see through this latest attempt by anti-choice politicians to suppress women’s rights by legislating their reproductive choices,” he said. Mimi Liu, staff attorney for Planned Parenthood, said the law would require doctors to look through an unending series of articles, including those more than a century old, those in dozens of languages and those that have been debunked.
For example, she said, doctors would have to talk about flawed studies that find a link between abortion and breast cancer, even though leading medical groups reject any association. Among groups rejecting such a link are the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland now operates a clinic in Lincoln that provides surgical and medical abortions. The organization recently announced plans to start offering surgical and medical abortions at a new consolidated Omaha clinic.
it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah in that day, etc. etc.
Never mind that, by taking that position, they're basically just shills for the abortion industry. Their argument practically guarantees that not a SINGLE abortion will ever be stopped, until someday (in my lifetime? maybe?) the country finally wakes up and outlaws ALL abortions.
Such faux pro-lifers should be repudiated for the Abortion Shills that they really are. The fact is that, for the immediately foreseeable future, State-Level Laws against Abortion are all that we're likely to ever get.
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