The Advocate: On the eve of a massive march against abortion through downtown Baton Rouge streets, the state health chief promised Friday to enforce a legal requirement that physicians who perform pregnancy terminations properly fill out the mandatory forms.
. . . State Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein on Friday met with representatives of 20 anti-abortion advocates who had filed public records requests seeking disclosure of about three decades worth of Reports of Induced Termination of Pregnancy.
Physicians are required by law to fill out a form for each procedure they perform. The reports are supposed to document 25 specific pieces of information about the woman and her pregnancy, how the procedure went and any complications.
Mike Johnson, a Shreveport lawyer, said the advocates he is helping suspect that many physicians over many years filled out the forms in advance and did not accurately portray what happened before, during and after the abortion. The state had either not noticed or ignored the improperly filed forms that are supposed to provide statistics used to set health-care policies, he said.
The goal of the public records requests was to press the Jindal administration to enforce the state law that levies penalties on physicians who fail to properly complete the forms, Johnson said.
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