Responding to the letter by Mary Carruth, director of the Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Mississippi, and a feminist author, and to the letter of Michelle Erenberg, who, according to its website, is the executive director of Lift Louisiana and a community organizer for Planned Parenthood, I find their statements to be misleading.
Having practiced obstetrics and gynecology in New Orleans for the last 40 years, I have an insight into the elective abortion industry that they lack.
Over the course of my career, it has been my experience that abortion industry providers are not universally the altruistic individuals Carruth would have us believe. Early abortions are relatively easy to perform and are lucrative.
I personally have been involved with repairing the complications of doctors performing abortions who subsequently, post procedure, were not available to their patients to properly handle their own patients' complications. And that is unacceptable, improper and unprofessional. It should not be tolerated.
A colonoscopy is not a surgical procedure. If a physician is going to perform a surgical procedure in his office or clinic, a procedure which has the potential for serious complications, it is reasonable that the physician should have admitting privileges at a local hospital, so that the physician can treat his or her own complications and not force the patient to be rescued by the professionalism and expertise of others.
Some doctors having a predominantly abortion-centered practice seemed to be averse to obtaining hospital privileges, sometimes secondary to an abundant malpractice claims history, which might cause hospitals to have second thoughts about allowing them on staff.
It is possible that The American College of OB/GYN and the AMA oppose this sensible attempt to hold these abortion providers accountable, but that is regrettable. These organizations are largely influenced by medical school affiliations, which may cause these organizations to have different concerns than the concerns local physicians might have.
THOMAS RYAN, MD
OB/GYN
New Orleans
