Iowa Baby’s Death Pits Privacy Against Piety

In her dozen years as manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic in small-town Iowa, Sue Thayer thought that she had seen it all -- pickets, threats and, locked away in a file cabinet, the records of women with problems she had never imagined.

But nothing comes close to the furor that has erupted in the months since the sheriff demanded to see some of those files in hopes of solving the gruesome death of a newborn.

Planned Parenthood’s refusal to turn over the records has stirred debate around the country and divided this farm town of about 10,000.

It began in May with the discovery of a baby boy who had been dismembered by machines at the county garbage-sorting center. Unable to identify the baby or establish the cause of death, sheriff’s deputies turned to the town’s doctors and nurses to find out who the mother was.

Two Storm Lake doctors’ offices and the hospital provided investigators with the names of expectant mothers who could not be accounted for. But when deputies showed up with a subpoena for the names and addresses of women who had undergone pregnancy tests, Planned Parenthood said no.

The organization contends that doing so would violate the women’s privacy. It appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

“For many women, it’s the most personal test they’ve ever had done,” Thayer said. “They come in expecting the information will stay here. Some women even use the back door. Some don’t use their real names.”

Buena Vista County Atty. Phil Havens said patients at the clinic cannot expect total privacy because, in most cases, they do not see a doctor or even a nurse.

As for any inconvenience caused by opening the records, he said, “I’m sorry for that. I apologize. But a human being was thrown into the garbage and shredded, and I think that crime was important enough to society to at least attempt to find out who did it.”

The case has been the talk of Storm Lake’s cafes and the editorial pages of the local newspapers.

“I am not ashamed, nor am I embarrassed to admit that I have gone to Planned Parenthood,” one teen wrote in a signed letter to the editor. Another -- the daughter of a sheriff’s deputy -- argued that such issues shouldn’t be discussed “with a law enforcement officer knocking at your door.”

“Let’s face it. It’s a small town we live in. People talk,” she wrote.

That is exactly why the records should be protected, Karen Hixon said as she ate lunch at the coffee shop across from the courthouse.

“It isn’t fair to those people who went in confidence,” she said. “Just the idea that you can have someone come up and say, ‘I heard you were pregnant,’ is awful.”

For Sandra Morris, who works at the grocery store, the crime took precedence over privacy. “If it were my granddaughter, I’d want to know about it and I’d want her punished,” she said as she arranged the flower display.

The issue is clouded by anger over Planned Parenthood’s very presence here, said Dana Larsen, editor of the Storm Lake Pilot Tribune.

The clinic, which serves six counties, does not perform abortions. But that distinction is difficult for many to make in this conservative, mostly Christian community where hand-painted signs reading “You Know Abortion Is Wrong” rise out of cornfields.

“I think people have forgotten what they were arguing about in the first place,” Larsen said. “There’s really nobody around talking about the baby or how to keep this from happening again.”

The uproar has surprised Sheriff Chuck Eddy, who said he half expected Storm Lake’s new mothers to hold their infants up to the window outside his office to prove that they were not to blame.

Sheriff’s deputies trying to find the mother have inquired at schools and churches, and they ran DNA tests on a few women who were thought to have been pregnant. They have also looked for households using the same garbage bags that the baby was found in, with no luck. The sheriff said he has run out of leads.

The high court is not scheduled to hear arguments until December. Even then, the records may not help. The baby’s mother could have been from out of state. She could have used a false name. Or she might never have gotten a pregnancy test or any other care; she might not even have known she was pregnant.

At Planned Parenthood, Thayer said the risk of finding a neighbor or daughter on the list is too great in a town this size. After all, her brother-in-law was the one who discovered the baby in the first place. And she said she has already seen a significant drop-off in the number of women coming in for pregnancy tests, usually about 75 to 100 a month.

In her cramped office at Planned Parenthood, Thayer pulled out a foot-thick stack of newspaper clippings and letters about the uproar. A few letters included threats. Thayer said she has also gotten sidelong glances at the grocery store.

She said she prays that the town understands her position.

“It would be devastating for the clinic to have to turn these records over,” she said. “We go way back. I think people realize I’m just trying to do the right thing.”