Anti-abortion groups, GOP candidates plan town hall to discuss telemedicine

Operation Rescue, a Kansas-based anti-abortion organization, is partnering with three Iowa groups to host a Des Moines town hall that will feature several prominent Republicans.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, 3rd District Congressional hopeful Brad Zaun, attorney general candidate Brenna Findley and lieutenant governor nominee Kim Reynolds are all invited to appear. The event is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 22, at The Downtown Church in Des Moines. Local hosting organizations include Iowans for L.I.F.E., Iowa Right to Life and Dubuque County Right to Life.

The town hall meeting, according to literature distributed by the groups, will focus on a relatively new application of telemedicine by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland that has infuriated the anti-abortion community. The telemedicine program allows women in rural areas to visit local clinics and meet with an abortion provider through video conferencing. If the woman chooses to have a chemical abortion procedure, which is only available during the first 9 weeks of pregnancy, and the provider approves, a signal is sent by the provider to the rural clinic where a small drawer containing the medication is opened.

The program has been underway in Iowa for roughly two years, although it only came under scrutiny by anti-abortion groups this year. Iowa is the first state in the nation to utilize the convenience of telemedicine to provide this type of service to women in more rural settings. Anti-abortion activists, however, fear that if left unchecked, use of telemedicine for chemical abortions will spread throughout the nation and likely undermine their own successes of closing clinics and encouraging abortion providers (often through violence) to stop practicing.

“So called ‘telemed abortion’ could be the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade if allowed to go nationwide,” reads the top of a flyer announcing the event.

The groups, which have requested investigations of the practice and filed legal complaints in at least 10 Iowa counties, say offering chemical abortions via telemedicine violates a state law that requires a physician to be present during an abortion. They also argue that the practice places women at additional risk for complications after they have left the rural clinic, when help might be several miles away.

Planned Parenthood officials have stated that roughly 2,000 women have undergone a chemical abortion through the telemedicine system, and that it was not implemented until all legal concerns could be set to rest.

Planned Parenthood is hardly the only organization to explore and utilize the benefits of telemedicine in reaching rural populations. Throughout the nation, populations underserved by one medical field or another have found new access to information, medications and even evaluations and surgeries. If the system expands as rapidly as expected, technology could bring a new wave of “home visits” via computer screens. In fact, U.S. Rep. Tom Latham is one Iowa Republican who has worked toward and praised advances in telemedicine access for the more rural residents in his district.

The primary concern for anti-abortion groups isn’t necessarily the fact that telemedicine is being used or that chemical abortions are being offered — both have been available in Iowa for at least a decade. Historically, anti-abortion forces have made little legal headway in their goal of overturning the U.S. Supreme Court decisions that made abortion permissible. There has been some chipping at the law through pre-abortion requirements and so-forth, but the bulk of the law — the overall legality of abortion in the U.S. — has remained.

While there is no doubt the groups do intend to keep battling legally to end access to abortion services, there has also been a different route taken by the groups in an attempt to limit direct women’s access to abortion services immediately. Threats of violence, intimidation and actual acts of violence against clinics and providers have served to severely limit the options for women who seek abortions. This is especially true in rural areas, where overall access to health care is often limited.

If the use of telemedicine for chemical abortion is allowed to stand in Iowa, however, much of the headway made by the groups to limit physician and clinic access in smaller communities could quickly be eroded. One physician willing to perform abortion services could sit at a clinic in Des Moines and provide services to several rural communities in a single day, without ever having to get in his/her car and travel to remote areas.

Legislators, even those who want to end the practice of offering chemical abortions via telemedicine, are also well aware of the complications that could arise if restrictions are placed on the system overall. In other words, while abortion is legal and chemical abortion services have been approved federally, the legislators are loathe to create a system by which all telemedicine services are more limited and restricted. Such a system would likely not only impact chemical abortions offered in such a way, but psychiatric medications and elder care, just to name two.

It’s a divide that has surfaced in the state’s gubernatorial contest. Branstad has stated flatly that utilization of telemedicine for such purposes should be restricted. Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat seeking a second term, believes that “this shouldn’t be about ideology,” and that those who are pushing to unilaterally stop the practice are “over-simplifying a very complex issue.”

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, one of several affiliates in the state, provides numerous health care services to Iowans including general health exams, disease testing and family planning. It is the largest provider of reproductive health care to low-income women in Iowa, and serves more than 62,000 clients.