By Cheryl Sullenger
St. Louis, MO – In a 96-page decision, Missouri Administrative Court Commissioner Sreenivasa Rao Dandamudi granted an application for relicensure to Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, Missouri, in spite of life-threatening botched abortions cited by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, who moved to revoke the abortion facility’s operating license.
Dandamudi noted in his decision that the two women who were seriously injured – one of which underwent several bungled abortion attempts for the same pregnancy and one who hemorrhaged so severely that she required treatment in the Intensive Care Unit – was not enough to reach the standard of “substantial failure to comply,” which was necessary to justify the revocation of RHS Planned Parenthood’s facility license.
Operation Rescue calls on the Department of Health and Senior Services to appeal this dangerous decision that places the lives of women in grave jeopardy.
“We are angry that the Commissioner failed to consider the ‘substantial’ harm that RHS Planned Parenthood has inflicted on women over the years through their shoddy abortion practices,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “This dangerous facility has sent over seventy women to the hospital emergency room suffering from seriously botched or failed abortions, according to documentation we have collected. And we know that is just the tip of the iceberg since many abortion complications do not manifest until women leave the abortion facilities. It is unconscionable that the Commissioner would downplay the harm these women suffered in order to grant favor of the very people who hurt them.”
Dandamudi essentially blamed two of the women for their serious abortion complications by noting that one suffering woman was obese, and another had an uterine abnormality. He excused RHS Planned Parenthood even though its staff failed to take necessary steps to ensure these women were properly treated.
“It is unbelievable that the Commissioner put the burden for proper care on the injured by fat-shaming one woman, and placing the blame on the other for having a condition that would have been diagnosed by a competent physician,” said Newman. “The truth is that neither of these women should have had surgical abortions in an ill-equipped outpatient setting because of the increased risk factors, which Planned Parenthood abortionists ignored for the sake of profits. This decision shamefully agrees with Planned Parenthood in placing profits above the lives of women.”
In recent months, RHS Planned Parenthood halted abortions, and instead, sent women to their new surgical facility in Fairview Heights, Illinois, where there are fewer safety regulations to follow.
As predicted, the same staff that could not keep women out of the emergency room in St. Louis, has continued to harm women at their Illinois facility,” said Newman.
There has been at least one medical emergency at the Fairview Heights Planned Parenthood since it opened in October 2019. On December 31, 2019, a 23-year old woman was transported by ambulance with uncontrolled bleeding after an abortion she received there.
Newman concluded, “These abortion quacks are going to kill a mother one day, and the blame will be laid at the door of Commissioner Dandamundi, who heard of the horrific injuries women received, but chose to protect the abusers at the expense of vulnerable pregnant women.”
