The fight against Planned Parenthood just keeps getting ugly. The president of a St. Louis area Planned Parenthood affiliate could be held in contempt, and face possible jail time and a fine, for refusing to turn her back on HIPAA.
Mary Kogut, who is the president and CEO of the affiliate is refusing to honor a subpoena:
“to turn over any and all consent forms signed by patients in the process of receiving abortion care at the St Louis affiliate.”
The subpoena also wants any documents that mention Dr. Mary Gatter or Dr. Deborah Nucatola. Those were the doctors featured in the fake sting videos. Those videos, if you recall, were deceptively edited. So, the Sanctity of Life Committee wants personal, private documents that are protected by federal law.
This should be easy. It should just be thrown out due to the violation of federal law. Unfortunately, Missouri has decided to take a different course of action. Missouri is working on a bill to try and find Kogut in contempt.
Kogut stated:
“It is deeply, deeply concerning that in 2016 we are talking about jailing women’s healthcare providers for protecting their patients’ privacy. These baseless threats to our healthcare professionals and providers are disturbing.”
This is a big problem. You see, that affiliate is the last abortion clinic in Missouri. And even though everything has already been thrown out in regard to the fake videos, it’s being under investigation by Kurt Schaefer. Schaefer is hoping to be elected as the Attorney General for Missouri in November. Apparently part of his campaign is trampling women’s and patients rights.
The current Attorney General, Chris Koster, has already sided with Planned Parenthood in this. In September, Koster said:
“The evidence reviewed by my investigators supports Planned Parenthood’s representation that fetal tissue is handled in accordance with Missouri law. We have discovered no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Planned Parenthood’s St Louis facility is selling fetal tissue.”
So Schaefer is running his own investigation because he doesn’t agree with what the current Attorney General found.
Great. To make it better, Schaefer is also the chair for the Sanctity of Life Committee. So this a-hole wants to violate federal law, investigate a matter that has already been covered by the current Attorney General, and basically destroy any chance a woman has to get an abortion in Missouri, while running for Attorney General.
I think, in regard to this constant attack on women, Cecile Richards said it best:
“We can’t continue to pretend like these attacks are theoretical or merely rhetorical. Politicians in Missouri and across the country are threatening to take us back to the days where reproductive health providers were jailed for providing abortion – and it’s women who pay the price. As a result of these very same attacks, women are already being punished – having been left with one health center providing safe, legal abortion in Missouri, being forced to wait 72 hours before receiving care, and some forced to travel out of state.”
Featured image: Getty/Mario Tama.
