Criminal complaint against telemed abortions filed with IA AG

From Pro Life Blogs

DES MOINES, IA/June 24, 2010/Christian Newswire --Operation Rescue has filed a formal complaint with the IA Attorney General's office asking for a criminal investigation of a remote-controlled push-button Internet abortion pill scheme operated by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland known as "telemed abortion."

"We believe that telemed abortions are illegal for several reasons and may rise to the threshold of criminal negligence," said OR President Troy Newman. "PP's scheme to deny women personal access to licensed physicians is a prescription for disaster."

In addition to PP of the Heartland, the complaint names abortionists Thomas William Ross and Susan Haskell, both osteopaths who are employed with PPH and are known to participate in the telemed abortion scheme.

The complaint centers on 5 major areas of concern regarding telemed abortions:

1. Violation of the IA law requiring that only licensed physicians perform abortions.


2. PPH's remote dispensing practice for abortion drugs RU-486 and misoprostol so ignores FDA protocols that they are intentionally endangering the lives of women.


3. Criminal negligence and consumer protection laws may have been violated since evidence shows that PP intentionally exceeds manufacturer warnings and safety limits, and misrepresents to patients the actual failure rate of the medical abortion process.


4. Consumer protection violations regarding insurance company over-billing.


5. Patient abandonment since the licensed physician only speaks with the patient for a brief time over an Internet teleconferencing hookup, and never interacts with the patient again even in the case of emergency.

OR has also filed a supplemental information packet with the IA Board of Medicine as an amendment to their complaint, along with a request to expand their investigation to include abortionist Thomas Ross.

OR uncovered the IA telemed abortion scheme during an undercover investigation of abortion clinics throughout the U.S. It published a special report describing the remote controlled abortion process then followed up with a formal complaint to the IA Medical Board. The IMB notified OR in April that the complaint was placed with an investigator.

In interviews, PP officials indicated that the group had plans to expand telemed abortions to every PP clinic by 2015 beginning with two clinics associated with PP of East Central Iowa. Public outcry against the dangerous push-button abortion process caused PPECI to backtrack from their original statements.