Wednesday, April 03, 2013

What does Planned Parenthood mean by "appropriate care" for infants who survive abortions?


In a recent blog post, Jill Stanek notes that Planned Parenthood doesn't have "neonatal resuscitation equipment, meds, and personnel trained to provide emergency care to preemies" and couldn't possibly provide appropriate care to children who survive abortion.

Jill believes Planned Parenthood is lying about Planned Parenthood's ability to provide appropriate care.  I think Planned Parenthood using a radically different definition of "appropriate care" and is being intentionally vague.

In their statement regarding Alisa LaPolt Snow's testimony against Florida's Infants Born Alive legislation, Planned Parenthood never defines "appropriate care" or provides any details as to how they would treat infants who survive abortions.  There's a reason for this.

Planned Parenthood believes that "appropriate care" in the situation of a child surviving abortion is to leave the child to die or provide "comfort care."  They would never, if they had a choice, call an ambulance or send the child to a hospital (remember Snow's testimony on this issue of requiring the transportation of abortion survivors and Planned Parenthood's opposition to this) where the child could be treated with emergency care and as Jill notes, they don't have the actual equipment to provide emergency care to the infant. 

Read Florida Planned Parenthood's statement again:

Last week, a panel of Florida state legislators demanded speculation about a vague set of extremely unlikely and highly unusual medical circumstances.  Medical guidelines and ethics already compel physicians facing life-threatening circumstances to respond, and Planned Parenthood physicians provide high-quality medical care and adhere to the most rigorous professional standards, including providing emergency care.  In the extremely unlikely event that the scenario presented by the panel of legislators should happen, of course Planned Parenthood would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant.

Nowhere does it say Planned Parenthood would provide emergency care to the infant.  The emergency care mentioned is with regards to women having abortions.  They don't say "appropriate emergency care" to the infant.  To Planned Parenthood, providing "appropriate care" to an infant who survives abortion is to let that child die. 

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