JAYNE FLORES: "THERE IS HOPE"

In an email from Jayne Flores, the Lou Leon Guerrero Administration 's Director of Women's Affairs, to Deborah Nucatola, Medical Director of Planned Parenthood's clinic in Hawaii (and elsewhere), dated Jun 25, 2019, Flores wrote:

I would describe the atmosphere on our island, with its 165,000 population that is a majority Catholic, as initially hostile toward this issue. However, over half of the voting public cast ballots in favor of our first female governor…Lourdes Leon Guerrero, in November 2018 despite her openly pro-choice stance. So there is hope.

Hope for what? Hope for Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, to open up a clinic on Guam. In the same email, Flores writes:

If PP wanted to open a clinic here, is that we do have a medical clinic that recently closed. Would there be a possibility that PP would be interested in leasing this space to set up its own clinic?

Flores' email to Nucatola was copied to Bliss Kaneshiro, a party to the ACLU lawsuit, Deighton Kavarne, another employee of Planned Parenthood, Anita Arriola, a well-known Guam attorney who has been at the forefront of advancing abortion on Guam for many years, and Dr. Ellen Bez, a local Ob/Gyn who, pursuant to her letter to the editor a few days ago is pro-abortion advocate.  

What the documents procured by the Vigilance Committee show is a series of dots that are not hard to connect, and once connected will show that it is not the ACLU and two doctors from Hawaii that are suing the Government of Guam, but will show what we knew all along, that once the curtain is pulled back, it is the Governor of Guam who is suing the Government of Guam.

So yes, "there is hope."

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY SO WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE?

Yesterday, Mar. 9, 2021, on Tall Tales with Bob Klitzkie, there was a question about why two doctors from Hawaii - with the backing of the ACLU - are suing the Government of Guam (Leevin Camacho, et al) over two provisions in Guam law which the doctors say are prohibiting them from performing medication abortions via telemedicine, i.e. prescribing abortion pills over the internet.

While there is speculation about a profit motive, the facts don't bear that out. In the the Guam Attorney General's Opposition, Deputy Attorney General, James Canto, notes that between 2012 and 2016, medication abortions accounted for less than 1% to 3% of the abortions, which averaged about 250 per year, or 2 to 7 abortions per year. 

According to Planned Parenthood, a medication abortion can cost up to $1000. However, that figure most likely includes doctor visits both before and after the medication abortion which is usually the ingestion of two pills self-administered by a woman at home. 

And because the two Hawaii doctors cannot perform the pre and post examinations over the internet, they would have to partner with local doctors to perform those functions and thus share the profits.

But even if the Hawaii doctors did cash in on the full $1000, $2000 to $7000 per year is hardly motivation for any doctor to file a 150-plus page lawsuit. Attorney and court costs would must likely eat up at least a couple years profits before this could even get off the ground, even if their suit could prevail.

So what's really going on here? 

Esperansa Project co-founder, Tim Rohr, called into Tall Tales and explained:

The documents procured by the Vigilance Committee demonstrating the connection between Governor Lou Leon Guerrero (in the person of Jayne Flores), which are referred to in the above clip, can be found here.

VICTORY? HARDLY!

The ACLU is claiming "victory" pursuant to a "settlement" with the Government of Guam: 

VICTORY: SETTLEMENT IN ACLU CHALLENGE WILL RESTORE ABORTION ACCESS IN GUAM.

The truth is, first, there was no "victory," and second, there was no restoration of abortion access in Guam. 

1. Victory?

Hardly. The settlement states in part:

Section 31.20 does not prohibit the prescription, dispensing, delivery, and/or receipt of abortion medication outside a qualified physician’s adequately equipped medical clinic or outside a hospital operated by the United States or Guam.

The ACLU's agreeing to this is an admission by the ACLU that there never was a prohibition on medication abortions outside a medical facility, which was one half of the ACLU's 49 page lawsuit (155 pages with exhibits). 

The two Hawaii doctors who are Plaintiffs in the suit could have simply asked the AG for a clarification of 9 GCA Section 31.20 instead of filing their mega lawsuit. But they didn't. Why? We'll get to that.

Medication abortions are basically do-it-yourself abortions. A woman is given a couple of pills with instructions. Normally the woman goes home, takes the pills as instructed, and the baby is eventually expelled into the toilet or the trash. The end.

There is hardly a need for a woman to interface with a physician in a medication abortion other than to pick up the prescription. 

Essentially this was the AG's argument, i.e. that the pertinent provision in Section 31.20 applied only to surgical abortions, since the provision, enacted in 1978, was enacted before medication abortions were available.

It could be said that the AG "punted" given that the "1978 argument" - while interesting - is still not conclusive. There was nothing prohibiting the AG from sticking with the strict statutory definition of "abortion" i.e. the termination of a pregnancy, instead of parsing the "how" of how the pregnancy is terminated.

The AG's "punt" may also prove to be dangerous. While a woman might be able to get abortions pills via telemedicine, as one local doctor pointed out: who is going to be there for the woman when there are complications given that no doctor in Guam is willing to perform abortions?

2. Restore abortion access in Guam?

Not.

Pursuant to the same statement in the settlement (above) and the AG's interpretation, medication abortions outside a medical facility have never been prohibited. Thus NOTHING was "restored." 

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As mentioned, instead of a mega-page lawsuit from a big-letter group like the ACLU, this issue could have been resolved simply and quietly with a one page letter to the AG asking for clarification of the pertinent section of the law. 

And the fact that this matter was not resolved "simply and quietly" tells us that there is something else afoot.

We don't have to look too far to find "something else afoot" given our current governor's decades of very public abortion advocacy and the creation of an office within her administration that appears to have one job and that is to find off-island doctors willing to kill Guam children in the womb since none of Guam's 300-plus physicians are willing to do it.

Given the documents procured by the Vigilance Committee demonstrating communications dating back to 2019 between the Governor's abortionist-finder-in-chief, Jayne Flores, and both of the Plaintiffs in the ACLU suit, there is little doubt that our own Governor is behind the suit - which comically - if not tragically - plays out as the Governor of Guam suing the Government of Guam behind the veil of the ACLU.

Note: the second part of the ACLU suit is a challenge to Guam' informed consent law. More to come on that soon.

NEWS: "NO LINK...FOIA ROUTED TO SPAM FOLDERS"

 Women's Affairs: No link between Adelup, ACLU on abortion lawsuit

Bureau of Women's Affairs Director Jayne Flores on Wednesday said there is no connection between Adelup and the American Civil Liberties Union's filing of a lawsuit seeking to restore access to legal and safe abortions on Guam.

The nonprofit group the Vigilance Committee Inc. raised the allegation of a link between Adelup and ACLU, when the group did not receive a response to its Sunshine Reform Act request from Adelup about the abortion lawsuit.

It turns out, the request for information got stuck in the spam folders of the intended GovGuam officials. CONTINUED

For Esperansa's further reporting on this story, go here.