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Editorial

Now let's see an investigation of abortion clinics

Maryland NARAL charges in its "Crisis Pregnancy Center Investigation Summary" that Maryland CPCs "misinform and mislead vulnerable health care consumers so as to deprive them of timely and appropriate health care. The potential to cause real physical harm to Marylanders is great. . ." While Maryland NARAL voices concern about potential physical harm to women (obviously, they are unable to cite any actual cases), the state's abortion clinics continue largely unregulated, despite deaths and serious injuries to women, due to abortions, that have been documented in many medical malpractice cases.

Legislation requiring the licensing and regulation of freestanding ambulatory surgical facilities became effective in 1999. But an investigation by Defend Life in Aug./Sept. 2000 revealed that of 10 abortion clinics in the Baltimore area, only one was licensed (See Defend Life, Sept./Oct. 2000).

Maryland law has no definition for an abortion clinic; while abortion is admittedly a surgical procedure, an abortion clinic is not necessarily an ambulatory surgical facility under Maryland law.

The wording in the law defining what is, and is not, an ambulatory surgical facility is complex, and apparently offers abortion clinics a technical loophole involving the method in which the clinic receives payment from the "payor." , The director of Maryland's Office of Health Care Quality, the agency in charge of such licensing, told Defend Life that her office does not go out and investigate any clinic; it is up to a health care provider to come into compliance with all state health care laws. The office would investigate only if someone lodged a complaint against a facility.

This procedure contrasts sharply with the practices of the Maryland Home Improvement Commission, which scans home improvement ads for companies ~hat do not include home improvement license numbers in their ads. Such companies receive calls from MHIC demanding their licensure.

However, cases involving the death of three women after abortions illustrate the need for tighter licensing procedures.

In 1997 a young woman died after an abortion at the Potomac Family Planning Center, in Rockville.

Regulations in COMAR 10.05.01-.05 require that licensed ambulatory surgical facilities have specified emergency equipment available in their operating rooms.

Adequate emergency equipment was not available at the Potomac clinic when the woman failed to revive after the abortion, according to a consent order filed by the Maryland Board of Physician Quality Assurance.

The regulations for ambulatory surgical facilities also require detailed credentialing of physicians and anesthetists.

Such credentialing requirements, properly enforced, might have prevented the death of two women in 1989 at the Hillview Women's Medical Center in Forestville, following abortions in which anesthetics were administered by unqualified personnel.

Defend Life respectfully suggests that if Maryland's attorney general truly wants to protect the health and well-being of Maryland women, he stop wasting time and taxpayer money harassing and intimidating crisis pregnancy centers, and turn his sights to the virtually unregulated, sometimes downright deadly operations of the state's abortion mills.

We strongly recommend phone calls and letters to the attorney general's office, as well as to one's state senator and/or delegate, urging such an investigation.