Cincinnati's only remaining abortion clinic - a Planned Parenthood surgical center - has received a citation from the Ohio Department of Health warning that it is at risk of being shut down.
The Elizabeth Campbell Surgical Center in Mount Auburn was last inspected in June. The health department waited until last week to notify the clinic that it was not in compliance with a controversial state law that was passed last year and could prompt the state to move to revoke the clinic's surgical license. If the surgical center were to close down, Cincinnati would be the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. without an abortion clinic.
Under a new law passed last year, Ohio abortion clinics must have agreements with private hospitals willing to take abortion patients in an emergency. Because many private hospitals are religious, they have declined to form these agreements with abortion clinics.
Planned Parenthood was itself unable to find a private hospital willing to enter into a transfer agreement with them, and asked the health department last year to grant an exception. The request was made more than a year ago, and spokesman for Planned Parenthood says that they've yet to receive a response.
During the June inspection, a Planned Parenthood staff member informed inspectors that the clinic had lined up three doctors at a local hospital who would be willing to take patients.
In the past, the health department had granted exceptions as the transfer agreements were considered a formality and the clinic had formal arrangements with individual doctors. The department recently stopped granting such exceptions, and declined to grant a variance for a Sharonville abortion clinic - Women's Med - which was forced to stop providing abortions in September following a court battle.
The precedent that the closing of the Sharonville facility sets is worrisome to other abortion providers in the state. The Planned Parenthood facility in Mount Auburn lacks a transfer agreement with a private hospital, and a second Women's Med clinic in Dayton also lacks a hospital transfer agreement. Both are seeking exceptions.
The letter from the health clinic to the Planned Parenthood surgical center gives the clinic 10 days after receipt of the letter to submit a "acceptable plan of correction." The letter was dated October 14, so a response should be soon submitted.
The Mount Auburn abortion clinic performed 2,613 abortions in the previous 12 months, according to the June 2014 inspection report.
