In November 1998, the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville was the scene of a week-long encounter between anti- and pro-choice camps. The encounter began when Gregg Cunningham�s anti-choice Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR) brought its "Genocide Awareness Project" to the campus.
Before Elizabeth Peelle and I confronted Gregg Cunningham (Mr. Anti-Choice) on Hallerin Hill�s radio show in January 1998, Ellen Smith researched the Internet for the talking points being used by abortion phobes on the radical right. This material she found is voluminous. I review some of it here because I think TFC members should be made aware of what our ideological adversaries are disseminating.
The reproductive rights advocacy group Center for Reproductive Law
and Policy (CRLP) is suing the Louisiana State University Medical Center
over a policy that refused an abortion to a woman on a waiting list for
a heart transplant because she was judged to have less than a 50% chance
of dying from the pregnancy.
Michelle Lee, a 27-year-old mother of two children who suffers from cardiomyopathy and has a defibrillator implanted in her chest, was forced to travel to another state for a lifesaving abortion after the hospital denied her original request for an abortion, Lee contacted an outpatient abortion clinic for the procedure, but was told her condition was so dangerous that the abortion could be done only in a hospital setting. Eventually, Lee was forced to travel 250 miles in an ambulance to a Texas hospital. The cost of the procedure and transportation totaled $10,000, which was paid with donated funds.
The class action lawsuit Lee v. Trail, filed against the hospital, its doctors, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, and other state officials, asks the court to find LSUMC�s "50-plus percent" policy unconstitutional. CRLP is also initiating a medical malpractice action against the hospital and its doctors.
The lawsuit claims numerous violations of federal laws, including the federal Medicaid statute (Title XIX of the Social Security Act), which requires a state to provide abortion in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest; the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to screen and treat or transfer emergency care patients; and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit also charges that the hospital violated Lee�s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and intentionally inflicted emotional harm upon her.
Janet Benshoof, president of the CRLP, said that the hospital's action was "akin to deciding not to treat a shot and bleeding crime victim because the person does not have greater than 50% risk of dying from the wound."
Note: Tennesseans for Choice recently made a donation to the Center
for Reproductive Law and Policy.