‘About F.A.C.E.’ Turns Attention to Coercive Abortion in America
For Immediate Release
August 7, 2001
Contact Scott Weinberg
(540) 622-5240
WASHINGTON, DC — “You don’t have to go to China to discover forced abortion,” said Steven Mosher, president of Population Research Institute. “It exists right here in America, and has for many years. But now there’s a way to stop it.”
Mosher, the Stanford social scientist who discovered China’s one-child policy, today introduced ABOUT F.A.C.E. — a national campaign to protect American women from violations committed in private and state-funded abortion clinics and family planning centers throughout the U.S.
ABOUT F.A.C.E. draws on the Roe II v. Aware Woman Center for Choice decision of June 8, 2001. In that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta verified testimony from a victim of forced abortion in the State of Florida.
Court documents reveal that abortionist Dr. William P. Egherman, on March 29, 1997, ignored a woman’s demands for him to stop her abortion and call an ambulance, because of acute abdominal pains. The abortionist ignored the victim’s pleas and instead instructed four assistants to hold the victim down. Egherman completed the abortion by force. After the incident, physicians discovered that Egherman had lacerated the plaintiff’s colon and ruptured her uterus during the forced abortion.
The court ruled that — under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances
(F.A.C.E.) Act — Egherman violated the woman’s right to access services to treat her severe abdominal pain.
Mosher, who is working closely with the plaintiff’s legal team and the U.S. Department of Justice, believes the precedent can help protect women against the full range of abortion-related abuses, including: threats, lack of informed consent and lack of information about the harmful side-effects of abortion.
Mosher describes ABOUT F.A.C.E as the domestic counterpart to PRI’s work to end coercive practices in U.S.-funded family planning programs abroad.
