By Susan Brinkmann
Staff Writer
Healthcare workers at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics (UWHC) have alerted attorneys to secret plans by the organization to open a late-term abortion facility in which they would be forced to participate.
According to a report by the Catholic News Agency (CNA), the plans were made public on Jan. 6 by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a public interest law firm whose attorneys were alerted to the plans by employees of the new facility. They said the UWHC was planning to create a full-service second-trimester abortion practice at the Madison Surgery Center, a joint venture of UWHC, UW Medical Foundation, and Meriter Hospital.
The clinic was planned after second-trimester abortionist Dr. Dennis Christensen retired in December from the Madison Abortion Clinic, leaving no local provider of late-term abortions in the area.
UW Health spokeswoman Lisa Brunette told the Associated Press that, pending approval from the center’s board later this month, UW Health plans to begin performing abortions at the Madison Surgery Center for patients who are between 13 and 22 weeks pregnant.
Although these plans were meant to unfold quietly, Matthew Bowman, an ADF attorney, told CNA that an employee of the Madison Surgery Center who was concerned about being forced to help perform these abortions contacted him and revealed the plans.
According to Bowman, “many of the employees of Madison Surgery Center strongly object to this proposed practice, but officials from UWHC are using strong-arm tactics to install (the) . . . late-abortion practice there regardless of the employees’ own views on the matter.”
When asked to explain how UWHC attempted to keep its plan to convert the outpatient surgery center into a late-term abortion facility secret, Bowman said, “Up to now, they’ve never publicized it, and they were not ever planning on publicizing it. They were planning on keeping it quiet and intimidating the employees into not talking about it,” he asserted.
As a result, the ADF has sent a letter to the UWHC asking the institution to refrain from implementing its secret and potentially illegal plans that would likely compel unwilling employees to aid or participate in dismembering preborn babies in violation of their religious conscience rights. The plans may also constitute an unlawful state funding of abortion.
The ADF also confronted the organization about another dark secret that may be lurking in its plans.
The second-term abortions “will likely be used to train medical residents to dismember second-trimester babies, and they may well serve as a fresh source of baby body parts for various UW research projects as has occurred in the past,” the ADF alleged in its letter.
University of Wisconsin researchers Ian Duncan, Su-Chen Zhang, Hans Sollinger and Debra Hullett have reportedly published studies that, according to the ADF, indicate “they experiment on fresh fetal brains and pancreases from second-trimester abortions, apparently obtained from the victims of Madison abortionist Dennis Christensen.”
“UWHC may well be pushing abortions into the Madison Surgery Center, via their own in-house abortionist . . . so that they will have fresh and inexpensive baby body parts for various researchers to dissect,” the ADF alleged.
“Well over 100 abortions will be performed yearly under this plan, mostly on healthy babies and healthy mothers, as well as on multiple babies with disabilities who are currently killed at Meriter,” the ADF letter said.
The ADF also advised that the plan may violate various federal and state laws either by compelling employees to aid in or refer for the abortions, or by improperly using government funds and agencies to assist in abortion.
“Many Madison Surgery Center employees believe that turning their workplace into an abortion facility will severely upset regular patients, disrupt the respected surgical practice that currently occurs there, decimate employee morale (as it has already threatened to do), require burdensome policy changes, and compel direct or indirect staff participation in the dismemberment of these viable and near-viable preborn infants.
“We ask you to rethink this plan of tainting the UWHC with late abortions, and of imposing the abortion industry on the undesiring staff of the Madison Surgical Center,” the ADF letter urged.
The letter was also sent to the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces conscience protection rules instituted by the outgoing Bush administration on behalf of pro-life medical professionals, among others.
“Christians and other pro-life medical students and staff should be allowed to abide by their beliefs,” Bowman said in a Tuesday press release. “Pro-life employees shouldn’t be forced to violate their conscience by participating in the killing of preborn, developed babies. The university’s plan is morally and legally flawed and should be abandoned.”
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