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Louisiana abortion businesses at center of Supreme Court case close during coronavirus pandemic
UPDATE, 3/27/20: A Live Action investigation has confirmed that Hope Medical Group is still continuing to schedule abortions in Louisiana.
3/24/2020: All Louisiana abortion businesses have closed their doors for at least 30 days after the Louisiana Department of Health issued an order that all non-essential and elective surgeries be postponed in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Louisiana Department of Health issued new healthcare facility guidelines on Saturday ordering all surgical and medical procedures in the state to be postponed unless they are an “emergency.” The order is effective immediately to preserve Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that is desperately needed by healthcare workers on the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19 (coronavirus). Additional goals of the order are to better utilize hospital staff, equipment, and bed capacity to save lives as the number of cases of COVID-19 continues to rise.
Abortion businesses are included in that order since abortion is not medically necessary. Surgeries for emergency medical conditions that present a risk to a pregnant woman or her preborn child are exempt from the order. However, in any such real emergency, a woman and her child would be given proper medical treatment at a hospital — not an abortion center.
On March 4, 2020, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of June Medical Services v. Russo (formerly June Medical Services v. Gee) regarding a 2014 Louisiana law know as Act 620 or “The Unsafe Abortion Act.” The law would ensure that a woman who is injured during an abortion is able to receive proper continuity of medical care by requiring that all abortionists in the state have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. The Center for Reproductive Rights, the Hope Medical Group for Women, and two abortionists sued Louisiana over the law and won their case when the District Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional. The case has been appealed and oral arguments from both sides were heard by the Supreme Court. The Court’s decision has not yet been made public.
Abortion businesses in Louisiana have admitted that they don’t run background checks on their abortionists or look into their previous training. Because of this lack of concern for the safety of their patients, an ophthalmologist (eye doctor) and a radiologist were found to be committing abortions in the state.
Now, because of the order to cease all non-essential surgery, each of these dangerous facilities is closed for at least 30 days.
“Gov. Edwards and the Department of Health have put measures in place to aggressively stem the spread of COVID-19 and slow the unnecessary use of personal protection equipment that should be donated to hospitals,” Benjamin Clapper, Executive Director of Louisiana Right to Life, told LifeNews. “This new rule that applies across the board to all medical and surgical procedures is consistent with that life-saving goal.”
Clapper said phone calls to the abortion facilities confirmed that they had shut down in compliance with the law.
“On Monday, all three Louisiana abortion facilities appear to be closed,” said Clapper. “In response to a telephone inquiry from a Shreveport-based woman, an official at Hope Medical Group for Women, the abortion facility in Shreveport, informed her they were closed but intended to ‘fight the law.'”
Fighting what is a temporary law put in place to save lives from COVID-19 would show how focused Louisiana abortion businesses are on making money rather than caring for human lives.
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