On Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order suspending all nonessential surgeries to ensure medical professionals at hospitals have all the personal protective equipment they need to treat COVID-19 patients. Guess who else uses personal protective equipment? Staff at Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities. In many states, abortion is not considered an essential medical treatment but an elective procedure (unless it is medically necessary for the mother). So when those states suspend elective procedures so that hospital staff and resources can focus on the coronavirus, abortion effectively gets banned.
Texas and Ohio are two states that have effectively banned abortion this way — not as a political statement, but as a way to ensure everyone stays healthy and safe. But when the Ohio Department of Health ordered the suspension of “nonessential and elective surgeries,” abortion advocates didn’t just accept the order and do their part to slow the outbreak, they decided to defy the order.
Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio claimed they “can still continue providing essential procedures, including surgical abortion.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the mothership, stood in solidarity:
We remain committed to working w/ other health providers, hospitals, and orgs to serve all communities. Surgical abortion is a time-sensitive procedure. We’re looking for innovative solutions to ensure patients can access sexual and reproductive health care we know can’t wait. https://t.co/ucvjtGpztY
— Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) March 21, 2020
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood employee whose story inspired the film Unplanned, said:
It’s unfortunate and telling that in the middle of a global pandemic when nearly every functioning business, school, church, restaurant, activity, conference, parade, or gathering has been shut down for the collective safety of the country’s most vulnerable, abortion providers think this mandate doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to them. Worse, abortion advocates always hold abortion so dear that even though these closures are an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19, this is advertised as an attack on abortion rights. This is yet another blow to the idea that Planned Parenthood care’s primarily about women’s health and safety. If they did, they wouldn’t be pitching a fit that clinics are being temporarily closed just like millions of other businesses around the country and world.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
