It was over a year ago that Planned Parenthood got approval from the Nassau County Health Department to open a health clinic but it took almost that long for the Town of Oyster Bay to grant the clinic the building permit which was needed for the Carmans Road site.

Planned Parenthood contends that the reason for the delay became apparent when Town Supervisor John Venditto requested a letter from Planned Parenthood, stating that they would never perform surgical abortions at the Massapequa location. Despite the agency's refusal to make such a definitive statement, they received the building permit last Thursday after they submitted a letter stating the services the clinic would feature. Venditto counters that the building permit would have been issued whether he received the letter or not but added that he was trying to serve in the best interests of all parties involved in requesting the letter. According to the supervisor, his hope was that by having it in writing that abortions would not be performed on the site he could prevent violence and tragedy from occurring in Massapequa that have occurred in other areas where abortion clinics have been opened.

When Planned Parenthood applied for a Certificate of Need from the County Department of Health, they requested permission to offer family planning services, pre-natal services, primary care and social work (patient education and counseling). They never requested permission to perform surgical abortions because those are done at their Hempstead site. If the agency ever decides in the future that they do want to perform those procedures at the Massapequa clinic they would have to apply to the county department of health but the Town of Oyster Bay would have no say in the matter.

It was because the town had no control over what goes on inside of the clinic that Karen Pearl, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, was so surprised when she learned that the Town of Oyster Bay was requesting a letter from Planned Parenthood stating that they would never perform surgical abortions at the site. "While I am not a lawyer, I have been advised by any number of lawyers that that's an illegal request and so in that regard I really was surprised," said Pearl.

Venditto said that the request for a letter stating the clinic's intent not to perform abortions at the site came from a meeting he and other town officials had with Pearl and other representatives from Planned Parenthood. At that point, according to Venditto, Planned Parenthood explained what services they would be offering and Pearl assured the supervisor that they had no intention of performing abortions there. "They said they were not going to perform abortions there so what's the big deal whether they verbalize it or memorialize it in writing," questioned Venditto. "If, by having that letter, it helps diffuse or make the situation better or more tolerable and acceptable among the residents I represent, then I have an obligation to try and get that letter." The supervisor stressed that the letter was not "quid pro quo," that their building permit was not contingent upon the town receiving that letter.

In response to allegations that he held up the permit process until he received a letter Venditto commented, "That's just silly." He noted that until Dec. 15, 1999 there were details that needed to be settled with the permit and on Dec. 15, Planned Parenthood submitted the final permit application with the adjustments that needed to be made on the property. Venditto said that there is no average time period that a building permit takes, but that once the final application is in it usually goes pretty quickly.

Planned Parenthood has stated that it was Councilwoman Bonnie Eisler, a Democrat elected this past November, who helped them expedite the process. Eisler said, "It was very interesting to me, since we don't normally do that on the Town of Oyster Bay Board [require a letter of intent] for any other applicants, as far as I've known, and I felt they were being treated differently than other applications and I had an issue with that." She said that she feels all applications should be treated equally. When asked about her role in speeding up the process, Eisler responded, "I hope I did. I felt that they were being treated unfairly...I was interested in the process from the fact that I was hoping to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit if things took longer than seemed reasonable and if there were expectations or requests that were out of the ordinary."

Venditto said that when Eisler became involved in the process, sometime after Dec. 15, he warned her to be careful with this issue because as elected officials it was their responsibility to protect the interests of all the residents, not just those of the agency involved. Venditto felt the letter would help protect the interests of all residents because he knew Planned Parenthood would receive the building permit and this would allow him to assure the many residents who expressed concerns to him about Planned Parenthood opening in the town, that abortions would not be performed there.

In the end Planned Parenthood was issued the building permit with no restrictions. According to Pearl, because the process took so long their contractor took other jobs so they have to wait for him to be available again before they can begin the renovations and open. She expressed the hope that this would begin next month and then they would be able to open in approximately four months.

When asked why Planned Parenthood chose Massapequa to open a clinic, Pearl noted that the agency did some research and found that there were no family planning providers from the middle of the county, (Nassau County Medical Center) to the Suffolk County border. From that information they began focusing their search to that part of the county and discovered through the demographics they gathered from the Nassau County Health Department, that Massapequa had the eighth highest incidence of teenage pregnancy in the county. They also found that of the 10 communities with the highest incidence of teenage pregnancy, only two did not have a family planning clinic and Massapequa was one of those two. Pearl said that she feels this clinic will be a real benefit to the community and added, "I think the people of Massapequa will find that we're wonderful neighbors."

Pearl said that she is not surprised that the prospect of a Planned Parenthood in Massapequa has sparked protests, because she said there are always those who protest the agency, but she hopes that eventually they will stop. "What we're trying to do is get in there and offer family planning and responsible sexuality education and these are two things that research has shown that contribute to lowering the abortion rate and if people want to lower the abortion rate, they would welcome us in to be providing family planning services and all of this delay is really counter-productive to what they're hoping to achieve," concluded Pearl.