An independent abortion business is suing Planned Parenthood as the struggle to find doctors willing to commit abortions continues since the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
According to The Guardian, ParkMed NYC is an independently owned abortion business on Manhattan’s east side, located in the same building as the Ecuadorian consulate. ParkMed has been in operation since 1971, two years prior to the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, since New York had already legalized abortion. Two miles away is Planned Parenthood of Greater New York — and the two abortion businesses are now entangled in a civil lawsuit.
The suit, filed by ParkMed in the New York Supreme Court in October, alleges that PPGNY violated a non-compete clause that said its workers could not accept jobs at the clinic’s competition. Staff members of ParkMed could not take a job at PPGNY until a certain amount of time had passed. However, an abortionist working for ParkMed accepted a job with PPGNY, leaving ParkMed without a second-trimester abortionist. As a result, ParkMed claims it may need to shut down.
According to Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report, it has excess revenue over expenses of an astounding $204.7 million. America’s mega-abortion business now takes in over $1.8 million in taxpayer dollars every day. It also commits over 40% of all abortions in the United States. According to The Guardian, this has caused some contention between the abortion giant and smaller, independent abortion businesses.
“They essentially trampled us,” an office administrator from Parkmed told The Guardian. “We’re in a very precarious situation.”
ParkMed hired the abortionist in 2021 and said it “expended significant time, efforts and resources … training her in the subspecialty of pregnancy termination services” — including abortions in the second trimester. The most commonly used second-trimester abortion procedure is the D&E abortion procedure, in which the abortionist uses a Sopher clamp to rip the arms and legs off of the baby and then crushes her skull. It’s as brutal and inhumane as it sounds, and abortionists who have committed the act have reported nightmares. Some abortionists have refused to commit abortions beyond the first trimester because of this. At Parkmed, this abortionist was the only one committing second-trimester abortions.
The abortionist had a one-year contract with ParkMed that included the non-compete clause specifically prohibiting her from accepting a job at any nearby abortion business for a full year after no longer working at ParkMed.
According to the lawsuit, the abortionist extended her contract with ParkMed for three years in March of 2022, but just two months into that contract, she resigned. By August she was working at PPGNY — less than two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. ParkMed is accusing PPGNY of “inducing her to breach her non-compete agreement despite knowing the terms of her contract and the disastrous effect poaching her would have on Plaintiffs’ in-demand, high-volume medical practice, and Plaintiffs’ continued ability to provide women’s health care services to an exploding population of needy patients.”
When the abortionist left, ParkMed had just one doctor left, an abortionist who had stopped committing abortions 15 years ago. In the meantime, abortionist Katharine Morrison has been traveling from Buffalo to Manhattan to commit the abortions at ParkMed.
ParkMed’s office administrator said, “[PPGNY] brought us to the point of implosion, with zero regard to possible consequences — to the public and to abortion access.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 2,200 OB/Gyns in the greater metropolitan area including parts of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Yet PPGNY and ParkMed are in a legal battle over one doctor’s decision to violate her non-compete agreement.
“… [T]he vast, vast majority of OB/GYNs do not participate in [abortion],” explained Dr. Alicia Thompson in 2021. “One study came out and said it was 85% of OB/GYNs do not perform abortions, and then one came out even later, more recently… [that] said… that of private practice OB/GYNs… 93% of us do not offer abortions in our private practices. And of those 93%, a majority of them don’t even refer [for abortions].”
She told the Coming Home Network, “I think one of the common misconceptions that people have about OB/GYNs in training, or about OB/GYNs even in practice is that we spend lots of time or money and resources around abortion when, in fact, we really don’t.”
For those that do commit abortions, many determine that they don’t want anything to do with the second-trimester procedure. Dr. Rebecca Holmes was taught how to carry out D&E abortions but later declined to commit them, saying, “I just did not enjoy pulling the fetus out… I just did not want to do them anymore.”
Dr. Julius Butler, an OB/GYN professor, expressed concern fo r abortionists committing D&E abortions, telling the Philadephia Inquirer (PI), “Remember there is a human being at the other end of the table taking that kid apart.”
Likewise, Dr. William Behow Thompson told PI, “You are doing a destructive process. Arms, legs, chests come out in the forceps. It’s not a sight for everybody.”
Planned Parenthood abortionist Lisa Harris said that a study authored by Colorado late-term abortionist Warren Hern and Billie Corrigan, found that the D&E abortion procedure is a “‘qualitatively a different procedure – both medically and emotionally –than early abortion.’” She added, “Many of his staff members reported: ‘…serious emotional reactions that produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances (including disturbing dreams), effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish.’”
Harris admitted the “pro-choice movement has not owned or owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts.”
Abortionists reported “dreams of vomiting fetuses” and of “needing to protect others from viewing fetal parts” along with feelings of “shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear and sadness.”
Hern and Corrigan concluded, “We have produced an unusual dilemma… [The D&E] procedure is rapidly becoming recognized as the procedure of choice in late abortion, but those capable of performing or assisting with the procedure are having strong personal reservations about participating in an operation which they view as destructive and violent.”
