Durango clinics' new owner won't offer birth control

Durango clinics' new owner won't offer birth control

Abortions available, but funds scarce

May 1, 2001

By June Santon
Durango Herald Staff Writer

Valley-Wide Health Services Inc., which has taken control of three Durango clinics from Mercy Medical Center, will not provide abortions or birth-control services here, its chief executive says.

Valley-Wide will not deviate from Mercy’s restrictions on abortions and birth-control, CEO Marguerite Salazar said.

"No, we don’t provide those services," she said in a telephone message April 6, her only statement in response to more than 20 telephone calls seeking information on Valley-Wide’s policy. "We never have before. Why would we start now?"

Mercy, which has operated the clinics since the mid-1990s, required the clinics to adhere to the Catholic faith, said Joe Wade Plunk, a hospital spokesman.

Roman Catholicism teaches that abortion is a grave sin. Catholic leaders have strongly opposed liberalized abortion laws and have fought to overturn the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. The church also prohibits artificial birth control.

In March, Valley-Wide Health Services, Inc., assumed management of three clinics that had been owned by Mercy Health Center since the mid-1990s.

The clinics are Durango-Animas Family, Southwest Pediatric Associates and the Community Health Clinic.

Mercy placed no conditions on Valley-Wide’s care when it sold the clinics, hospital administrator Kirk Dignum said through Plunk.

"We have no control over the medical practice at the Valley-Wide clinics," Dignum said. "There is nothing in writing to that regard, and nothing to prohibit any practice or to require any practice."

Valley-Wide’s stance means the only organization offering abortions in Durango is Planned Parenthood, said Richard Grossman, an obstetrician and gynecologist who works with Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood does between 420 and 500 abortions a year for women from Shiprock to South Fork, said Charisse Tuma-Meiers, the Durango Planned Parenthood manager.

Calls to Valley-Wide clinics in Alamosa, Center, Monte Vista, and La Junta to ask what reproductive health services were available were all met with referrals to the company headquarters in Alamosa.

An employee in one of the clinics said the clinic prescribed birth-control pills, but the employee would not speak for attribution. Salazar did not return subsequent calls seeking elaboration on her comment.

"The only available option for abortion right now is through Planned Parenthood," Grossman said.

Daniel Hoff, director of Health Services at Fort Lewis College Health Clinic, said the college health clinic offers reproductive services but not abortions.

"We offer pregnancy counseling, birth control, examinations, emergency contraception, evaluations of abnormal pap smears, and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases for both for men and women," Hoff said.

Emergency contraception is a term for treatment with a single high dose of the hormones typically found in birth-control pills. Taken within a day or so after intercourse, it prevents pregnancy.

"We don’t have a hospital, and we don’t do abortions," Hoff said. "We usually refer them to Planned Parenthood. We don’t offer Mifeprex, because that is an abortion."

Asked if closer facilities might be available, such as in Cortez or Farmington, Grossman said, "You’re dreaming."

Mercy Health Center, founded as Mercy Hospital of the San Juans by the Sisters of Mercy in 1882, has passed through multiple management organizational systems but has always remained a Roman Catholic hospital.

"We offer the full range of women’s health services in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic faith," Plunk said.

Grossman was asked if physicians practicing under Mercy’s auspices may prescribe birth-control pills or do other birth-control practices.

"Just what the Catholic constraints are is open to interpretation," he said.

"There have been some liberal interpretations of the Catholic constraints, which include contraception. I don’t think that anybody’s actually breaking any rules."

Abortions available, but funds scarce

By June Santon
Durango Herald Staff Writer

Abortions are available in Durango — if you’ve got money.

Health-insurance plans typically don’t cover abortions, and Planned Parenthood of Durango, the only local source for legal abortions, has few funds to pay for abortions for poor people, Planned Parenthood officials said.

A surgical abortion costs about $400, said Richard Grossman, an obstetrician and gynecologist who works with Planned Parenthood. An abortion induced by a pill called Mifeprex, or RU-486, costs about $600.

Grossman said there are some limited "last-resort" funds available for use by Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains to help women who can’t afford Planned Parenthood services. Tuma-Meiers said "a very limited donor fund" from a few donors in the area not go far."

"At this point, we have no funding options for women for medical abortions," she said. "They would not be eligible if they can’t meet the financial criteria."

Insurance programs generally do cover sterilization procedures, he said.

Valley-Wide Health Services Inc., based in Alamosa, assumed ownership of three Mercy Medical Center clinics March 12, in a move both said would make medical services more available to the indigent and uninsured.

A news release issued by Mercy then said Valley-Wide "is a private, nonprofit corporation with a mission to provide care for patients from all economic levels, regardless of their ability to pay."

The divide between poor women and women with means became wider when Planned Parenthood began offering mifepristone, under the trade name Mifeprex, known in Europe as RU-486. Planned Parenthood may be the only source for the drug locally.

Experience in Europe has shown that the pill makes possible safe abortions without surgery within the first seven weeks of pregnancy.

Treatment with the drug requires three visits to a physician’s office as regulated by state law, according to Tuma-Meiers.

In cases where medical considerations mandate hospital care for an abortion, Durango women with adequate financial resources find themselves in no better circumstances than poor women, according to Tuma-Meiers.

"There are some women whose medical condition requires an operating-room setting," she said. "We’ve had women who are not medically indicated to have procedures done in a clinic setting, and we have to refer them to Denver or Albuquerque. For years we’ve had to deal with that."