A 2013 Planned Parenthood letter claims that taking the abortion pill, which kills a preborn child in the womb, is like taking a pill for the common cold. The letter, from Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California to the California Building Standards Commission, challenges building code changes that would have affected abortion facilities under California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD).
According to the Planned Parenthood letter, OSHPD refused to include within the new mechanical and plumbing changes for medical facilities an exemption for primary care clinics that perform abortions where “the treatment room is sized as an examination room.” In their letter, Planned Parenthood claimed that it would cost $2 million to renovate each facility to a primary care center. In addition, the plumbing and mechanical changes proposed under the OSHPD would have cost Planned Parenthood $317,000 to provide abortion services. Planned Parenthood wanted to keep an exemption to the standards to remain as they were after abortion was made legal, claiming the “differentiation between primary care clinics that offer early abortion services and those that do not is anachronistic and provides no basis for requiring heightened building standards.”
The largest chain of abortion clinics in the nation wanted to be sure that they could continue to build abortion facilities across the state so they could continue to provide “much needed health care services” like abortion to “low income populations.”
Excerpt of Planned Parenthood letter to OSHPD
Their argument was that there the new standards would not have affected abortion risks, which they claimed were minimal:
When performed by trained clinicians, early abortions are safe and common, posing less risk of infection than many other procedures performed in primary care clinics eligible for the OSHPD 3SE classification. For medication abortions, there is no difference between taking a pill for a cold or taking one to induce an abortion. For aspiration abortions, the risk of infection is no different than the risk of insertion of a intrauterine device for an endometrial biopsy…
The idea that taking an abortion pill is paramount to taking a cold pill is ludicrous. As Live Action News has previously reported, there are serious ramifications to both surgical as well as medical abortion. And, when these complications occur, it is the woman, not Planned Parenthood, who is left paying the bill (see documents here). Letters from women or relatives of abortion pill users submitted to Medical News Today online testify to a host of complications that occur from the abortion pill, including death.
As Live Action News has reported before, Planned Parenthood presents their abortion services as “safe and simple,” but one look at a consent form they require women to sign reveals the real truth. Missed abortion, blood clots, infection and even death are among the risks associated with medication abortion.
Image from Planned Parenthood consent form on abortion pill risks
But the most disturbing thing is that the purpose of an abortion pill is to end the life of a living preborn child in the womb and therefore cannot honestly be compared to taking a pill for the common cold – but that does not matter to Planned Parenthood, whose physicians submitted letters to stop the new regulations.
Let’s not forget that the physicians opposing the regulations work for an organization which directly profits from abortion – and sometimes from the sale of those babies’ body parts. Physicians like Dr. Virginia Siegfried, medical director of Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara, Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties, whose center aborts 1800 preborn children per year. Physicians like Dr. Jeff Waldman, the medical director of Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific and senior director of clinic services for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Physicians like Dr. Richard L Fischer, who said he was the associate medical director and physician director of abortion services for the “largest Planned Parenthood Affiliate in the country.” Fischer also teaches “abortion services” at the San Francisco General Hospital, and he performed abortions at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte – featured in the Center for Medical Progress’ (CMP) undercover videos. It was at PP Mar Monte’s San Jose location that former fetal tissue procurement technician Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting of a brain from an aborted baby boy who still had a heartbeat.
Dr. Jennefer Russo, who earns nearly $300,000 annually as a Planned Parenthood abortionist and performs abortions up to 24 weeks as Medical Director of Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties, also wrote about to the OSHPD. In her letter, Russo stated that she was the Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, Irvine. In video obtained by CMP, Russo confirmed that her Planned Parenthood affiliate worked with the for-profit biotech company, DaVinci Biosciences, to harvest the organs of aborted babies to sell nationally and internationally.
Dr. Mary Gatter of Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, caught on a CMP video haggling over baby parts because she wanted a Lamborghini, claimed in her letter on the California Building Standards that abortion pill complications were in part the fault of the patient:
Infection rates related to abortions, which are already quite low are associated with preexisting patient conditions (such as having an STD or being immuno-compromised) or to poor surgical technique…
According to studies, about 5-8 out of 100 women (5-8%) may need a surgical procedure to complete the abortion or to stop too much bleeding after they take the abortion pill. Despite Planned Parenthood’s dubious claims about abortion pills, women are often hospitalized from complications after taking the regimen. Risks associated from the abortion pill can be found at AbortionProcedures.com, which states that:
Eight percent of women (1 in 12) bleed more than 30 days, and 1 percent require hospitalization because of heavy bleeding.
At AbortionProcedures.com, former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains what happens during a chemical abortion using abortion pills:
Cold pills? Hardly.
Editor’s Note: FDA has received reports of serious adverse events in women who took mifepristone. As of June 30, 2021, there were reports of 26 deaths of women associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, including two cases of ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy located outside the womb, such as in the fallopian tubes) resulting in death; and several cases of severe systemic infection (also called sepsis), including some that were fatal. The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient. A summary report of adverse events that reflects data through June 30, 2021 is here.
