Women File Suit Against Local Planned Parenthood
Representatives of the Healthcare Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties recently met with local Assembly members in Sacramento to lobby for two bills that would ease the financial burden on hospitals in meeting stringent earthquake retrofitting requirements.
Senate Bill 928 and Senate Bill 842 are scheduled to be debated by the Assembly’s Committee on Health on Aug. 28.
SB-928, authored by Sen. Joe Dunn, D-Garden Grove, would provide bond money to hospitals to pick up one-third of the cost of retrofitting; SB-842, introduced by Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, would extend the 2008 retrofitting deadline to 2013.
Under the retrofitting law, SB-1953, which was approved in 1994, California hospitals are required to withstand a 6.0 magnitude earthquake without jeopardizing lives by 2008 and adhere to the highest safety levels by 2030.
Local hospital officials anticipate nearly $1 billion in total spending to improve and replace existing buildings by 2008.
Officials from major hospital groups, including Sharp Healthcare, UCSD Medical Center and Children’s Hospital, Palomar Pomerado Health, and Scripps have repeatedly said they don’t have the funds to pay for the upgrades and fear more closures.
Judith Yates, vice president for the Healthcare Association, which represents more than 40 hospitals and health providers in San Diego and Imperial counties, met with three local state Assembly members , Patricia Bates, R-Oceanside, Charlene Zettel, R-Poway, and Howard Wayne, D-San Diego , on Aug. 21 to “stress the importance of the bills.”
Zettel, Bates and Wayne are members of the Assembly Committee on Health.
Steven Escoboza, president and CEO of the Healthcare Association, fears a medical crisis.
“No government funding accompanies SB-1953 to help hospitals with the enormous price tag,” Escoboza said. “Smaller facilities may have no choice but to close or be absorbed by larger systems as was the case with the 2000 closure of Mission Bay Hospital, which cited SB-1953 as the key contributor to the closure.”
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Local Planned Parenthood Sued:
Three California women filed suit in San Diego Superior Court against the local chapter of Planned Parenthood alleging the group failed to inform women of possible links between abortions and breast cancer.
The plaintiffs’ attorney said Planned Parenthood has repeatedly “dismissed the research that shows women who have abortions are more likely to develop breast cancer,” according to published reports.
The attorney cited “28 out of 37 studies” that showed a link between abortion and a higher risk of developing breast cancer.
None of the women actually have had abortions and then developed breast cancer, according to published reports. The suit does not seek monetary damages, but asks the judge to order Planned Parenthood to inform clients that abortion raises the risk of breast cancer.
A Planned Parenthood lawyer labeled the lawsuit as “frivolous” and as a “scare tactic by anti-abortion groups.”
Georgia Sadler, associate director at the UCSD Cancer Center, said she has seen no evidence suggesting a link between either spontaneous or induced abortions and breast cancer.
Sadler cited a large-scale study published in the New England Journal of Medicine Jan. 9, 1997 that comprised 1.5 million women of whom 370,715 had an induced abortion and more than 10,246 had breast cancer.
The American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institutes came to the same conclusion, she said.
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