LA Health Dept. blocks abortions at new $4 mil NOLA Planned Parenthood, and Cecile Richards is really mad about it
I’ve written several times about Planned Parenthood’s attempt to build an abortion clinic in New Orleans.
Pro-lifers, including Archbishop Gregory Aymond, have been valiantly trying to block the completion of this $4 million baby butcher shop.
Well, word came yesterday that the Louisiana Health Department is doing the blocking for us. From chron.com:
Louisiana’s health department is refusing to let Planned Parenthood perform abortion services at its new clinic under construction in New Orleans, the latest flashpoint in a long-running dispute over abortion access in the state.
The organization received a rejection letter last week from the Department of Health and Hospitals, which said Planned Parenthood didn’t demonstrate the need for another abortion facility in Louisiana.
“Your application failed to establish the probability of serious, adverse consequences to recipients’ ability to access outpatient abortion services if you are not allowed to apply for licensure,” Health and Hospitals Secretary Kathy Kliebert wrote in the rejection letter….
Under a set of 2012 regulations, the Jindal administration required abortion clinics to undergo the same “facility need review” required of residential care facilities, like nursing homes and hospice facilities.
The regulations require any outpatient abortion facility to demonstrate its services are needed to preserve access before it can apply for a license to perform abortions in the state. The state health department used those regulations to refuse Planned Parenthood’s application.
Planned Parenthood has 30 days from the application rejection to decide whether to appeal the health department’s decision to an administrative law judge, or it can skip that review and file a lawsuit challenging the rejection.
Louisiana has five abortion clinics around the state.
Planned Parenthood’s $4 million health center, expected to open later this year, would be the third clinic offering abortions in the New Orleans area.
That is just wonderful news! But Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards promptly blasted a pile of fuming tweets. (She may have blocked me from Twitter, but I have my ways.) A sampling…
No matter how many obstacles politicians put in place, @PPLouisiana's #1 priority = ensuring access to #reprohealth care—including abortion.
— Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) January 16, 2015
"Make no mistake: The #NOLA health center will open & when it does, it will double the # of women receiving care from us." – @PPLouisiana
— Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) January 16, 2015
Looks like Planned Parenthood was looking forward to doubling its business by offering abortions, particularly since it is conveniently located between Mississippi, which only has one abortion clinic, and southeast Texas, which has none.
Can’t see how NOLA PP can survive without killing – oh, the irony.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I love it. This is what a Culture of Life looks like.
After a full year of being unable to find contractors to work on their building — because the whole blessed city doesn’t want to have a PP abortion center — the regulators finally admit that there is no public need for another abortion clinic and deny the application.
Cece whines that politicians are opposing her business.
Reality is that public servants are serving their public.
Thanks, Louisiana Health Department!
I don’t think I will ever understand how it can be considered safe for abortion to be an outpatient procedure. Given the obvious risks, it should require overnight observation. Although it would be better if it never happened at all.
If abortion is only 3% of their services as they claim, why fume? The other “97%” does not appear to be impacted. You are fooling no one PP.
Wonderful, hoist by their own petard, suddenly progressives become skeptical of regulations when their own pet industry has to deal with them.
FYI – this is a specific example of a healthcare topic called “certificate of need.” It is controversial because it seems like a fine policy to have in place to make sure the population has what it needs, but it functions to favor those with political power who already have facilities open. A basic entry at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need
[…] that ever happens. As I reported on January 17, the Louisiana Health Department has blocked this new clinic from committing abortions, if it ever […]