Hospital pact might save abortion clinic

HEALTH CARE

A hospital system has authorized a patient-transfer agreement to keep the last abortion clinic in Toledo operating.

Capital Care of Toledo’s step on Monday “formally puts in writing an existing practice to provide emergency medical care to all who need it to our community,” ProMedica spokesman Tedra White said in a statement to The Blade.

“Thank you to ProMedica for stepping up and taking care of the women of northwest Ohio,” said Jennifer Branch, a Cincinnati lawyer who represents Capital Care. “This is great news.”

Branch said that as soon as she receives a copy of the agreement, she will file documents with the Ohio Department of Health to halt license-revocation proceedings.

Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld a state order from 2014 shuttering Capital Care. Justices ruled that the state Health Department acted within its authority because the clinic lacked the required transfer agreement with a local hospital.

Abortion-related restrictions tucked into the state budget law in 2013 required the partnering hospital to be “local,” which nixed an agreement that Capital Care had struck with a public hospital in Detroit.

The clinic’s earlier transfer agreement was with the University of Toledo Medical Center, which is public. The university ended that agreement during debate at the Statehouse of legislation to bar public hospitals from participating in transfer agreements with abortion clinics. The legislature later passed the ban.

ProMedica previously had refused to sign an agreement. The hospital system said it decided to re-examine its past policy in light of the Ohio high court’s ruling.