By CHRISTINE SEXTON, Politico Florida, Sept. 2, 2015 – TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott’s office scrubbed a press release written by his own regulators that found there was no “mishandling of fetal remains” at clinics run by Planned Parenthood and, at the same time, said it would refer doctors who worked at those clinics to the state Board of Medicine for possible disciplinary action.
Amid an outcry over a series of videos filmed at Planned Parenthood clinics outside Florida, Scott ordered health care regulators to inspect 16 Florida clinics run by the organization. The regulators reported that three clinics performed unlicensed abortions and that one did not follow its own guidelines for disposing of fetal remains.
But emails between Scott’s office, the Agency for Health Care Administration and Planned Parenthood show top officials working for Scott reworded an agency press release to delete information AHCA officials had proposed including.
The state released its findings of the Planned Parenthood investigations on Aug. 5. Emails between the governor’s office and AHCA, obtained by POLITICO Florida through a public records request, show the agency prepared a press release that same day noting that “there is no evidence of the mishandling of fetal remains at any of the 16 clinics we investigated across the state.”
