Tonya Reaves – Does her life matter, Planned Parenthood?
Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry as a whole go to great lengths to prove to Americans that abortion is safe. But the harm they’ve done to women proves otherwise. Women have been injured – and even killed – at Planned Parenthood locations throughout the United States.
One of the most famous cases is that of Tonya Reaves. Reaves was a 24-year-old mother of a one-year-old boy when she went to a Planned Parenthood in Chicago for an abortion. After her abortion, Reaves was taken to a local hospital, where she died. Planned Parenthood staff never called 911, and according to the medical examiner’s office, Reaves’s death was caused by a hemorrhage after a D&E abortion. Reaves’s death came soon after the Chicago Tribune published an exposé regarding the failure of Illinois abortion practitioners to report abortion complications.
Most women injured by Planned Parenthood don’t make headline news.
But in just two months’ time, over the winter of 2012, Planned Parenthood of St. Louis botched four abortions. And from 2009 to 2013, an ambulance was called to the same location 19 times. Each of those instances involved the life of a woman being put at risk by Planned Parenthood.
In 2011, at a Washington State Planned Parenthood, an ambulance was called for a women who was “bleeding” and needed to be transferred “to the hospital immediately.” According to the 911 tape, the clinic “just did an abortion on her.”
In addition, Planned Parenthood in Boston has had to call for an ambulance for patients four times since 2011 – including for the situation in April of 2014 when a patient was unconscious and unresponsive following a “procedure.”
While any doctor will tell you there are risks during procedures, including abortion, what Planned Parenthood doesn’t tell women is the truth. In fact, Live Action investigated Planned Parenthood locations involved in recent injuries of women. They asked Planned Parenthood if abortion is safe and if women were ever injured during an abortion.
Despite the fact that women had recently been injured at those very clinics, not a single Planned Parenthood location acknowledged those injuries. One location, Planned Parenthood in Birmingham, Alabama, said, “No ma’am, we don’t have any type of procedure where a woman would receive an injury.” Yet that same clinic was facing a lawsuit for botching an abortion that left the woman unable to have children.
Roberta Clark had gone to the Birmingham Planned Parenthood in August of 2010. An unlicensed, untrained worker performed an ultrasound and told Clark that she was 8 weeks and 4 days pregnant. The abortionist confirmed this through a pelvic exam. Clark was given a suction abortion.
After her abortion, she complained of nausea. She was vomiting and experienced pelvic pain. There is no record of a follow-up exam with Planned Parenthood, and just twenty-five days later, Clark was rushed to an emergency room for surgery to save her life. Doctors there removed her ruptured fallopian tube containing a 13-week-old fetus and a placenta.
The pathology report showed that no fetal body parts were able to be identified in the tissue specimen from the abortion – proving that what Planned Parenthood called an abortion really wasn’t an abortion. Because Planned Parenthood staff failed to diagnose the tubal pregnancy, they placed Clark’s life at risk. A health inspection conducted a few months later showed poor record-keeping and a lack of discharge instructions on the part of Planned Parenthood.
Stained equipment in an abortion clinic right next to an examination table.
But it isn’t just untrained staff that puts lives at risk. The conditions of some Planned Parenthood locations puts the health of women on the line as soon as they enter the building. Planned Parenthood in Wilmington, Delaware was put under investigation last year after five botched abortions in three months. Since then, two former clinic workers have come forward to talk about deplorable conditions at the Wilmington Planned Parenthood.
They spoke of a “meat-market style of assembly-line abortions where the abortionist refused to wear gloves, surgical instruments were reused without being cleaned and ‘bloody drainage’ remained on abortion tables between procedures, exposing women to blood-borne diseases.”
If this is the way we know so many Planned Parenthood locations across the U.S. treat women, how many more simply haven’t been caught yet? Women can’t afford to keep Planned Parenthood around because the abortion giant will cost them so much more than they ever bargained for: their child’s life, and quite possibly their own.
Editor’s Note: To catch up on our “Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood” series, take a look at the following articles, and come back every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next few weeks.
- Above the Law: Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood
- Lies and Misinformation: Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood
- Shoddy Science: Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood
- Civil Rights Violations: Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood
- Bullying and Coercion: Why America Doesn’t Need Planned Parenthood
