By Kerry Picket The Washington Times - August 20, 2010, 04:17PM

Operation Rescue, a national pro-life organization, will ask the Iowa Board of Medicine to mandate that Planned Parenthood’s dispensing of abortion pills to rural Iowa clinics, via a remote controlled system be halted, reports the Des Moines Register:

Officials with Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group headquartered in Kansas, also said Thursday they have filed complaints with county attorneys in 10 Iowa counties, including Polk County, seeking criminal prosecution of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which has its headquarters in Des Moines.

Operation Rescue contends the system violates an Iowa law requiring that all abortions be performed by a physician.

Operation Rescue had asked Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller in June to open a criminal investigation of Planned Parenthood.

But Eric Tabor, Miller’s chief of staff, responded in a letter last week that the jurisdiction to prosecute criminal cases of this type lies with the appropriate county attorney.

But Eric Tabor, Miller’s chief of staff, responded in a letter last week that the jurisdiction to prosecute criminal cases of this type lies with the appropriate county attorney.

Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s senior policy adviser, said Thursday that activists plan to speak today during the medical board’s public comment period to reinforce their view that the use of telemedicine to provide abortions is unsafe and inappropriate.

SEE RELATED:

These robo-abortions allow individuals in Iowa, a state that requires a doctor to dispense abortion pills, to go to a clinic and communicate online with a physician who can later, from a separate location, give abortion pills to women by remote control:

Planned Parenthood’s system, the first of its kind in the nation, allows a physician in Des Moines to interact via computer with patients who are seeking abortions in small-town clinics.

Once the doctor is satisfied that the patient meets the criteria, he or she enters a computer command that opens a drawer in front of the patient.

The patient then reaches into the drawer, retrieves the abortion pills and takes the first dose as the doctor watches.

More than 1,500 Iowa patients have used Planned Parenthood of the Heartland’s videoconferencing system to obtain abortion drugs in the past two years.

The medication is available only to women in their first nine weeks of pregnancy.

Fifteen Iowa clinics are on Planned Parenthood’s telemedicine network.

However, some of the ten counties in Iowa using the system are near metropolitan areas. For example, clinics that provide this service include those in: Polk County, the state capital and most populous county in Iowa, and Marion County, which borders on Polk County. Woodberry County, home of Sioux City — one of the state’s largest cities — also has a clinic providing robo-abortions. Finally another clinic is in Pottawattamie County, right across the river from Omaha, Nebraska.
Apparently, these rural areas are not exactly far away from Iowan metropolitan sites, where plenty of real live flesh and blood doctors are available. This is just another way for the abortion industry to boost the number of abortions along with its bankroll.