Elective surgery?

Richard A. Sokerka

Healthcare facilities across the United States, and most especially here in the hard-hit New York-New Jersey Metropolitan area, have postponed elective surgeries in order to save personal protective equipment, such as masks and gloves for treating COVID-19 patients amid the effort to stem the ongoing pandemic.

In this time of dire need in our nation, while many are reaching out to help our healthcare facilities get the supplies they so urgently need, many abortion facilities are in a “business as usual” mode because they consider themselves exempt from orders postponing elective surgeries.

In states like Texas and Ohio, government officials are pushing back against the abortion industry’s continued operations.

According to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, “No one is exempt from the governor’s executive order on medically unnecessary surgeries and procedures, including abortion providers. Those who violate the governor’s order will be met with the full force of the law.”

In Ohio, Deputy Attorney General Jonathan Fulkerson said in a letter to Planned Parent­hood of Southwest Ohio’s Cincinnati surgery center, “If you or your facility do not immediately stop performing non-essential or elective surgical abortions in compliance with the attached order, the Department of Health will take all appropriate measures.”

However, in New York and New Jersey, the situation is far different regarding abortion providers. In New York, the country’s epicenter for coronavirus cases, abortion facilities remain open. This, despite the fact that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is on national TV daily, begging for the needed protective gear for healthcare facilities that abortion providers could be supplying if they were mandated to stop performing abortions.

In New Jersey, fellow Democrat, Gov. Phil Murphy, who like Cuomo was raised Catholic, signed an executive order that suspends all elective surgeries and invasive medical and dental procedures in order to protect medical personnel and patients and to conserve critical resources and personal protective equipment critical to combatting the coronavirus at hospitals. However, unlike the governors in Ohio and Texas, his order specifically exempts abortions from being suspended.

Every day forward as abortion centers end the lives of babies in the womb, Murphy and Cuomo are putting more citizens and healthcare workers at risk in this pandemic.

They both know there is no such thing as a medically necessary or essential abortion — it is always elective, a choice made to end a life that need not be.

It is beyond shameful that the governors of New York and New Jersey allow abortion clinics to continue to stay open utilizing supplies hospitals need and putting both staff and clients at risk for exposure to the coronavirus while hospitals struggle to provide care and find supplies. The blame is clearly on them as lives will continue to be lost not only in abortion facilities but also in our overtaxed hospitals.