Over the weekend Operation Rescue released a story about Little Rock Family Planning Services, a surgical abortion facility in Little Rock that apparently botched an abortion on an underage girl in March.
Operation Rescue reports 60 incidents like this one have occurred at Little Rock Family Planning Services since 1999, according to records the group obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
There’s another side to this story: Little Rock Family Planning Services currently is working with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU to overturn a state law requiring abortion clinics to be properly inspected.
Last year the Arkansas Legislature passed Act 383, which clarifies that abortion clinics will be inspected at least annually; that the inspections will be unannounced; and that any clinic that fails inspection will have its license to perform abortions suspended immediately.
In June Little Rock Family Planning Services — along with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU — filed a lawsuit in federal court trying to have Act 383 struck down.
The lawsuit argues Act 383 is too broad and makes it possible for an abortion clinic to be closed for any infraction — including an infraction that is not related to healthcare.
I have to ask: Is it simply a coincidence that an abortion facility with a history of sending women to the hospital doesn’t want the Health Department inspecting — and closing — abortion clinics?
Photo Credit: By jordanuhl7 [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
