I ran across a quote by a practicing abortionist that demonstrates that abortion clinics are primarily businesses, and that they compete for patients. With abortion rates dropping, abortion clinics are struggling to keep their doors open. Dr. Peter Bours, who has been performing abortions since at least as far back as 1985, when the New York Times profiled him in an article (Dudley Clendinen “The Abortion Conflict: What it Does to One Doctor”) was quoted in the pro-choice book Safe, Legal and Unavailable? Abortion Politics in the United States (2007) calling Planned Parenthood “the Walmart of abortion clinics.”
Dr. Bours complains about how Planned Parenthood tends to move into communities and drives the private abortion clinics out of business. According to the pro-choice author, Melody Rose, who interviewed him:
For example, Peter Bours, a physician in Oregon, reports that new Planned Parenthood franchises in his area are making one of his offices financially untenable; whereas he has once provided 100 or more abortions per month in his Portland office, he now performs around 20. Referring to Planned Parenthood as “the Walmart of abortion clinics,” Bours contends that the larger providers offer inferior services, and that as a result women are being poorly served by the expansion of the organization in abortion provision. Although very competitive in terms of price, Bours maintains that their level of care is lower, and that patients often see clinicians with less training than physicians at smaller facilities might have.
So here we have one abortionist, who owns a chain of clinics, trash talking another abortion provider and accusing them of offering inferior services. Planned Parenthood clinics certainly garner their share of malpractice lawsuits, and they have killed more than one woman (see the stories of Tonya Reeves and Edrika Goode.)
Dr. Bours’ accusation that Planned Parenthood physicians have less experience may well be true. Another pro-choice author, Wendy Simonds, wrote about a Planned Parenthood abortionist who was hired by the abortion giant with no experience performing abortions. According to Simonds:
Sarina’s first job as an abortionist was with Planned Parenthood. She had not learned how to perform abortions in medical school, so she learned how to do first-trimester abortions on the job. The environment at the Planned Parenthood clinic was not much better than her prior experiences [working at other abortion clinics that were poorly run and/or provided poor patient care]. “It was a rude awakening for me to go into a job where I was the only female physician…and to basically be discriminated against….I got disillusioned very quickly with the place.”
(Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic by Wendy Simonds, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ., 1996 p 58)
In passing, it is interesting to note that Planned Parenthood, alleged champion of women everywhere, discriminated against their female abortionist.
Regardless of whether or not abortions at Planned Parenthood are more dangerous than abortions elsewhere, Dr. Bours’ comments show that abortion clinics are moneymaking organizations and not the selfless servants of women that pro-choice activists usually portray them as being.
