How are we going to flesh this out?
Nobody's even joining in on the discussion about how to get a balanced article up about NAF. I believe it's futile to put anything negative about NAF in the article because it will just be summarily nuked. But nobody's even proposing an alternative. These scandals resulted in changes within NAF, from a "Standards of Care" model to a "Clinical Guidelines" model, and NAF added -- at least to their web site -- on-site inspections, something they'd not claimed to do prior to the ab/mal scandal and the Lime 5 allegations.
I'm willing to hammer this out but I seem to be a voice in the wilderness here. ChristinaDunigan 14:55, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
I think we should add information derived from an analysis of Kevin Sherlock's books. He has documentation out the yin-yang about the butchery in NAF facilities. And he isn't afraid to name names. I have both of his books: Victims of Choice, and The Scarlet Survey. It will take time, but if you have a list of NAF facilities (which shouldn't be hard to obtain), then we have all the information we need. People are forgetting that sooner or later the NAF facilities are going to be sued bigtime for all the butchery they're doing. What difference does it make if a woman dies from a coathanger or an infection or exsanguination at the hands of a butcher who is getting off scot free because abortion is legal? She's just as dead! FemCofounder 16 August 2006FemCofounder, NAF's web site has a member finder, but of course that only shows current members. I don't know that anybody has compiled a ready list of who was a member in the past. Crutcher's organization might. Library of Congress has all of NAF's Annual Reports in their stacks, but as far as I know you'd have to physically go to LOC to check them out and review them. But they do list the members every year.
I don't have Sherlocks's books at hand (I lent them out and never got them back.) so I really can't contribute anything on that score. Maybe you could do an entry on Sherlock and on each of his books, and add a sentence here summarizing Sherlock's findings with a link over to the Sherlock article. It's a shame that he never really published his Abortion Death Log but The Scarlet Survey and Victims of Choice were certainly important works. I know Priests for Life really picked them up and ran with them. I think Sherlock's contributions are more important as regards the CDC's abortion surveillance activities than regarding NAF. ChristinaDunigan 21:17, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Scandal
The original entry on this page was lifted verbatim from the National Abortion Federation's own promotional materials. Rather than delete it, I added information about scandal to provide a balanced perspective. Severa deleted my entire entry. I restored the deleted information and have saved a copy.
Readers are entitled to a complete, balanced view, which is not achieved by merely reposting an organization's own promotional writings. ChristinaDunigan 16:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
Abundant citations were provided about the NAF scandals, and they hardly involved a small number of facilities. Just off the top of my head we have Hope Clinic for Women and the death of Barbaralee Davis, Hanan Rotem with his patient death and his receptionist administering general anesthesia, Abu Hayat and his multiple scandals that got national coverage on Rush Limbaugh and Phil Donohue's shows, FPA and their twelve deaths and hundreds of malpractice suits, how Atlanta Women's Pavillion managed to fatally injure two teenage abortion patients within a one-hour period, Eastern Women's Center with its three patient deaths and misplaced medical director, Midtown Hospital and its illegal late-abortion scandal, George Tiller with the recent controversy over the death of Christin Gilbert, and the two RU-486 deaths in California. And I only brushed the surface of what Crutcher uncovered. I didn't go into Warren Hern's assertions that NAF's standards of care were ornamental, cosmetic, and meaningless. (If this is what a founding member said about them, it's not just prolifers that have a beef with NAF.) I didn't go into 60 Minutes holding Barbara Radford's feet to the fire for keeping silent about the conditions at Hillview. I didn't go into the NAF attorney scolding members to stop committing malpractice because she was tired of having to frighten and intimidate women into dropping their lawsuits. Considering the volume of information I have on NAF deaths and malpractice suits and wrongdoing in general, I think I exercised considerable restraint.
I believe that the more appropriate response would have been for those with a more positive view of NAF to provide information about NAF's more illustrious members, such as Warren Hern with his advocacy and book, Jane Hodgson with her advocacy, David Grimes with his prolific writing, Michael Burnhill's contributions both to NAF and as Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, etc.
We're not going to get a balanced, fleshed-out article if people just keep nuking stuff. We're going to get a balanced, fleshed-out article if people contribute verified information from both sides. Otherwise this is going to remain a stub forever. ChristinaDunigan 14:06, 15 August 2006 (UTC) August 15, 2006
In my opinion, we have to ask ourselves whether we are more interested in accurate information, or in a political agenda. We aren't performing a service for the safety of women if we sweep the bad stuff under the rug. I hope that's not what people are doing here. Wikipedia is supposed to be objective. Sometimes the facts are uncomfortable. If NAF doesn't like its reputation, it can clean up its affiliates. It's that simple. NAF may be able to influence the contents here, but it won't be able to do that all over the internet. The best thing to do is present as much documented evidence as possible and let the chips fall where they may. FemCofounder
Andrew, NAF is an organization which purportedly sets standards for abortion providers. If we cannot trust them to do their job, the world has a right to know about it. The actions of affiliates do reflect directly on the NAF itself. If the NAF isn't willing to police the providers, then it deserves a bad reputation based on what the providers do. If the NAF is committed to making abortion safe, it will police its providers and remove the affiliation of any that do not measure up to its standards. The AMA has a responsibility to remove the affiliation of any doctor who commits malpractice intentionally and willfully. Such a doctor should have his license suspended or revoked. If he is running a shoddy medical clinic, then he should be dealt with. If the AMA refuses to deal with such doctors, then, yes, they deserve to have this fact pointed out. FemCofounder
No, Andrew, it's not like that at all. What's happening here is more like an article on Ted Kennedy in which all attempts to relate the events of Chapaquiddik are nuked, and are finally replaced with the sentence, "Republican opponents of Kennedy sometimes make reference to a 1969 incident in which he left the scene of a motor vehicle accident."
NAF held numerous sessions at Annual Meetings about the problem of malpractice within their ranks. Warren Hern, to his great credit, kept repeating that the way to avoid getting sued was to stop committing malpractice. But the discussion hinged on legal strategies to frighten and intimidate women into dropping lawsuits, on CYA documentation, and on attacking attorneys who represent the women. One strategy that was discussed at these meetings was making a change from having "Standards of Care" to having "Clinical Guidelines."
And we're not talking about how sometimes things just go wrong despite people's best efforts.
In one session, Steve Lichtenberg went on at great length about the risky procedures he did on an outpatient basis, the spectacular complications that arose, and his great skill in treating those complicatios on-site. Michael Burnhill (then Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the moderator of many Risk Management Seminar sessions) told Lichtenberg he was "playing Russian roulette" with his patients' lives and told him he was going to kill somebody if he didn't stop. Lichtenberg is the doctor who performed the abortion in which the 13-year-old girl died of a Brevital overdose. Lichtenberg is still a member. And when Crutcher's employee asked about patient death at Lichtenberg's facility, she was repeatedly assured that had there been a patient death, NAF would have been notified and that the practitioner would no longer be a member. The caller was repeatedly assured that there had been no patient death there, that any serious problems would result in the member being expelled from NAF. To reiterate: The Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America was of the opinion that Lichtenberg was playing Russian roulette with patient's lives, but any qualms about the fact that NAF refers women to Lichtenberg, with assurances that he adheres to high standards of care, is treated as just a couple of prolifers with their panties in a twist.
It is just the prochoice point of view that the problems within NAF are merely a reflection of normal medical practice. By all means, add a defense of NAF. But don't silence the controversy. Warren Hern, a founding member, called NAF's Standards of Care "ornamental", "cosmetic", and "meaningless," and voiced his concern about what his fellows within NAF were doing. Michael Burnhill condemned not only Lichtenberg's Russian roulette, but chewed others out for their ha
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