A Washington, D.C.-based legal advocacy group specializing in religious and pro-life causes has offered to represent Allen County – for free! – if it is sued for trying to protect women who have had outpatient surgical procedures.

County officials, meanwhile, insist their target really isn’t abortion at all, but shoddy post-operative care – and are working on legislative clarifications to that effect.

In 1973, Norma McCorvey lied about being raped, resulting in the almost equally dishonest Roe v. Wade decision in which the Supreme Court discovered a long-overlooked right to abortion hiding in the Constitution’s penumbra – “the partly lighted area surrounding the complete shadow of a body,” Webster’s says.

Thirty-five years later, the pro-life side – which mostly views abortion in stark black-and-white terms – apparently also feels compelled to exploit the gray areas of the law.

The original proposal, drafted by Allen County Right to Life attorney James Howard, would have required hospital privileges for doctors who “perform any type of surgical tissue removal procedure.” But fear of a lawsuit has apparently eroded support for the proposal on the three-member Board of Commissioners, causing Commissioner Nelson Peters to consider changes that would explicitly include other procedures, not just abortion. “You need to be careful about not being accused of discrimination,” Peters said.

In other words, political and legal realities may result in a law that sees little difference between an abortion and a nose job.

The Alliance Defense Fund doesn’t normally defend government’s right to regulate cosmetic surgery. Founded in 1994 by the leaders of more than 35 ministries, including Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the group’s goals include the defense of religious liberty and the unborn. In a letter to the Commissioners, Senior Legal Counsel Steven Aden said the ADF “has litigated numerous high-profile cases to defend reasonable government restrictions on abortion such as the one contemplated by Allen County.” Earlier this month, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the legality of Arizona’s “Choose Life” license plates.

Would the changes contemplated by Peters lessen the ADF’s enthusiasm?

“We would have to review it and would need to be persuaded it is a defensible case. We don’t care about politics,” Aden said.

Politics being the art of the possible, elected officials cannot afford to ignore pragmatism, no matter how honorable the principle. But the unfolding legal strategy should not obscure the very real issue that sparked this story in the first place: the dubious quality of care at Fort Wayne’s abortion clinic.

When obstetrician-gynecologist Geoffrey Cly first proposed the legislation to the Commissioners in August, he told of how he had treated at least three women suffering serious post-abortion complications that could have been avoided through proper follow-up care. At least two of whom had been patients at Dr. George Klopfer’s clinic at 2210 Inwood Drive, according to Cly.

Klopfer’s old abortion clinic at 827 Webster St. in downtown Fort Wayne still offers hints of what once happened there. Although most of the building has been beautifully restored by its new tenants, the pro-life Archangel Institute, a small section in one room has been left untouched as a sort of shrine: a corroded furnace grate hangs on a dingy, unpainted patch of wall above a small sink.

“When my dad first saw this place, he said he wouldn’t have brought a cat here to be neutered,” Director Bryan Brown said. “We’ve tried to keep some things as it was.” I toured the former clinic before Brown’s group bought it last year, and I can attest to the building’s unsightly conditions.

“Right now, there’s no tracking mechanism (for office surgeries). This is an unregulated industry. There may be a right to an abortion, but there’s no right to malpractice,” said Howard, who agrees with County Health Commissioner Deborah McMahan that the best solution would be for a statewide law promoting peer review for doctors who perform outpatient surgeries. At least until the Supreme Court rules otherwise. In the meantime, counties will be the battlegrounds.

And success could have ironic consequences for right-to-life advocates, Howard said. If Klopfer’s clinic could not meet the new standards, Howard wondered, would a larger, better-funded organization like Planned Parenthood step in, perhaps performing even more abortions than before?

It’s a risk worth taking, said Brown, who knows the secret to ending abortions is the changing of hearts, not just laws.

“If we’re going to have abortions in Fort Wayne, I’d rather do it in a way that at least helps women.”

In a way that protects taxpayers, too, one hopes.