MedStar Washington Hospital Center has asked obstetrician-gynecologist Diane J. Horvath-Cosper to avoid talking about abortion rights. Horvath-Cosper filed this week a legal complaint against the institution. The petition came in December when a man shot three people to dead outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
Four percent of all abortions in the country are made in hospitals, said the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization that works in advocacy of birth control and abortion. However, not all hospitals are open about conducting pregnancy terminations, said The Washington Post.
Horvath-Cosper, M.D., said that superiors of the hospital have also requested her to stop providing interviews about abortion rights. Earlier in the week, she filed a document at the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The 37-year-old physician said she comprises the threats that may surround doctors and health providers who carry out pregnancy terminations. Last year, Horvath-Cosper wrote an article for The Washington Post, saying she searches for her name on the Internet every certain time.
One time, she found a website that described her as a member of “an abortion cartel”. It also featured her office address, her medical license numbers, and personal photographs of her and her daughter. She added that the hospital asked her to stop talking about the subject publicly instead of increasing security at the Medstar family planning clinic.
“I personally think I can’t do this job without talking about it and without bringing abortion back into mainstream medicine where it belongs. I don’t think we’re going to move forward as a community and a country on the issue of abortion unless we talk about it openly.” Horvath-Cosper said in an interview with The Washington Post.
The legal complaint was filed by The National Women’s Law Center and another firm in support of Horvath-Cosper. A law called the Church Act allows health care providers that receive federal funding to freely share their beliefs about abortion.
Abortion rates in the US: 60 percent of women obtaining abortions are mothers
According to the Guttmacher Institute, four out of 10 unintended pregnancies in the United States are terminated by abortion. Last statistics from 2011, registered 1.06 million pregnancy terminations of which 18 percent were obtained by teenagers.
Currently, there are about 851 clinics that are allowed to conduct the procedure, which costs an average $500 when using local anesthesia, said the Guttmacher Institute. The latter suggests that 30 percent of U.S. women will have an abortion by age 45, and 60 percent of women obtaining abortions are mothers.
Source: The Washington Post