UPDATES:  See below for the video, as well as the threats issued by Planned Parenthood to supress it.

As I have said before, one of the subjects I feel strongly about is abortion, but it is also one that I dislike blogging about.  First I feel somewhat disenfranchised being a man.  In some liberal circles, the lack of a uterus is a debate disqualifier.  I reject that of course, but like so many topics, it is a distraction from the real debate, as are debates of consent, debates over choice, and even debates over rights.  All of these factors are certainly relevant, but in the end, the real issues, whether you like it or not, are life and consequences.

I may blog on that more later, though I have already at least once…ok twice…alright, three or four times then.  But who is counting.

So in the debate around abortion, no matter where you sit, one name keeps standing higher, talking louder and is more recognizable:  Planned Parenthood.  Their website self describes them as ”America’s leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider”.

Indeed, their site is packed with all manner of information, including information about abortion.  That in and of itself is not bad, but the information is generally supportive of abortion rights, and that is just the plain truth.  I am not going to address that in any detail.

Instead I have two tales of cases where abortions were given or recommended but the circumstances were disturbing.

The first case I read about in an email from the Family Research Council (emphasis mine).

Panned Parenthood

A story out of Mason, Ohio paints a horrifying picture of just how far Planned Parenthood may be willing to go to attract young abortion clients. In what prosecutors are calling “one of the worst cases of child abuse” in Warren County, a local man has been sentenced to five years in prison–one for each year he molested and raped his own daughter.

I doubt that too many people I know will try and defend the father.  The average person sees incest with loathing and disgust.  But Planned Parenthood did defend the dad, in a way.

The abuse could have been prevented, or at the very least, cut short, the girl’s attorney says, had Planned Parenthood intervened when the young girl reported her dad at the clinic where she was forced to undergo an abortion.

So, it appears he impregnated her, forced her to get an abortion, but when she reported the abuse, they handed her the pill or a condom or something.

Rather than help the hurting child, lawyer Brian Hurley alleges, Planned Parenthood preyed on the girl’s vulnerability and refused to intervene as the law requires. Instead, clinic workers performed the procedure and sent her back with a supply of birth control where her tormentor continued sexually assaulting her for another year and a half.

She was 16.

In 2006, the girl was so terrified that her dad would also abuse her sister that she shared her story with a high school official, who, unlike Planned Parenthood, contacted police.

More about this and another case here:

In May 2006, the girl told a Mason High School official what was going on. “She finally decided she wasn’t going to take it anymore and she didn’t want her sibling to become a victim,” Hutzel said.

Now the girl says in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the abuse could have been stopped earlier. In November 2004, when she was 16, the girl was forced by her father to have an abortion. She reported the abuse at the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Cincinnati, her lawyer says.

“She tried to put an end to this abuse,” said Brian Hurley, “by informing a Planned Parenthood employee that she has been forced to have sex and to do things she did not want to do. Tragically for her, Planned Parenthood’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy was in full force.”

State law requires teachers, clinic workers and others to report suspected abuse to police. But Planned Parenthood “completely ignored her cry for help,” Hurley said, and his client was “raped on many occasions over the next one and one-half years.”

The official response:

Becki Brenner, president of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio, said: “I won’t speak on individual patients, but I am very eager to see the facts of this case come out for public review. I can’t tell you the facts because of the legal issues, but I think people may be surprised.”

She also said, “We do not have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”

Like the father, I cannot imagine a defense.  Or for this case:

Hurley also represents “Jane Roe,” a victim of sexual abuse by her soccer coach at age 14. She was taken by the abuser to Planned Parenthood in the fall of 2004 for an abortion. Although she used a junior-high school I.D. and the coach, 21, paid with a credit card and driver’s license, Planned Parenthood failed to report the abuse.

Planned Parenthood officials said they were misled and did not know the man who gave permission and paid for the abortion was the abuser.

That case is still in court. An appeals court hearing is expected Tuesday on Judge Patrick Dinkelacker’s order for Planned Parenthood to turn over records of underage abortions to Hurley. As in similar cases in Indiana and Kansas, Planned Parenthood has invoked patient privacy. Even if names and addresses are deleted, Planned Parenthood attorney Daniel Buckley argued there are “profound and significant privacy issues.”

But based on records obtained so far, Hurley said, “My guess is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that is why Planned Parenthood will do anything to prevent us from seeing its records.”

In the Roe case, a Planned Parenthood “Documentation Form for Suspected Sexual or Child Abuse Report” says:

“Patient reports pregnancy is a result of sexual assault by a stranger.”

“After consultation with (Planned Parenthood) attorney, report of a crime to the police was not made; due to physician-patient privilege, we are prohibited from reporting as no severe bodily injury was reported.”

Attention feminists:  It was not rape because their was no “severe bodily injury“.  How many raped women would fail to meet that criteria?  And this is the position of a group that touts itself as “America’s leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider”.

Is this an isolated case?  An aberration in the normal caring clinics?  I cannot say, but others say no:

Michelle Malkin noted that:

None of this will be a surprise to those who have tracked the predators of Planned Parenthood. See my column from December 2003. See this blog post from June 2005. See ChildPredators.com.

It’s very damning.

But worse is the next story where at a California clinic, a worker not only encouraged a girl to abort, he advised her to lie about her age to avoid a mandatory report of statutory rape.  FRC carried this, as did Michelle Malkin.

Lila Rose is an 18-year-old student journalist at UCLA. She’s editor-in-chief of Live Action’s The Advocate. Rose recently went undercover at a local campus Planned Parenthood clinic, posing as a 15-year-old minor seeking an abortion after being impregnated by a 23-year-old man. California’s mandatory reporting laws require abortion providers to report statutory rape involving girls under the age of 16. Rose secretly captured video of her visit.

Before we cry foul and entrapment, I will remind you that if they did nothing wrong at the clinic, it would be a moot point.

Last March, a girl accompanied by an older man, entered a Planned Parenthood in Santa Monica seeking an abortion. The girl said she was only 15; he said he was 23. The girl asked the staff if her boyfriend would get in trouble. The law in this case requires abortion providers to call the police. A 15-year-old is a minor; for a 23-year-old man to have sex with  her is statutory rape.

In the You Tube video (linked at www.LAadvocate.com/pp), the staffer is caught telling the 15-year-old, a statutory rape victim, that she can obtain an abortion from Planned Parenthood if she would change her age.

Here is an excerpt from the video:

Planned Parenthood staff “If you’re 15, we have to report it. If you’re not, if you’re older than that, then we don’t need to.”

15-year-old “Okay, but if I just say I’m not 15, then it’s different? So I could just say…”

Planned Parenthood staff “You could say 16.”

15 year old “I could say 16.”

Planned Parenthood staff “Yes.”

15 year old “Okay, yeah. So I would just write 16?”

Planned Parenthood staff “Well, just figure out a birth date that works. And I don’t know anything.”

Wink wink, nudge nudge…say no more.  The video links are set to private, but I will check them tomorrow and update.

(added below)

Now granted this is a case (in the scenario) of consensual sex, even if it was unlawful.

But is it the place of the worker to encourage fraud?  Is there an ulterior motive?

Rose reported another investigation:

UCLA Health Services should remain apolitical. What follows is proof that it does not. It receives its funding from tuition and state support, so it ought to act as the agent of those who pay tuition and taxes. But for young, pregnant women, it instead operates much like a referral program to abortion providers.

In November of 2006, I gathered the proof personally by posing as a young student, accidentally pregnant. I attended two counseling sessions, one with Christine Miller, a counselor from the Center for Women and Men; the other with Ann Brooks, a nurse and counselor from the student health center. Below is a collection of excerpts from my counseling sessions.

THE HEALTH COUNSELOR GAVE ME THREE OPTIONS

1. Pregnancy: Embarrassing and unsupported

Ann Brooks: “[Look] forward to the physical difficulties of pregnancy. The embarrassment of your classmates, both this quarter and next quarter: living in the dorm, being pregnant in the dorm, that would be a little different. Frequency of urination—you know, you’re sitting in class. You’d have to go to the bathroom. ”

Ann Brooks: “UCLA doesn’t support people who are pregnant and make things easier for them necessarily.”

2. Adoption: Difficult and no reward

Ann Brooks: “One of the beautiful things about having a baby is you go through this often difficult few months of being pregnant … and then you don’t get the present.”

Ann Brooks: “There’s not one [adoption referral] here at UCLA that I know of. I occasionally get letters from either people who want to represent people who want to adopt or people who are trying to adopt themselves. But I don’t investigate it at all.”

3. Abortion: Convenient and safe

Ann Brooks: “[RU-486] is more private, it’s more personal, you can do it when you want to and, you know, be where you want to be and so forth and so on. But the advantage of the surgical [abortion] is that when you walk out of the office it’s done … They both have very, very low risk. As far as medical concerns, neither of them affect your future fertility.”

Read the rest at your leisure.  I guess the question is should the advocates of abortion try so hard to ensure abortions?

If their mantra is “choice” why not let the woman make her choice without so much emotional baggage and manipulation?

And in the case of the earlier stories, I find it reprehensible that they would allow rape - particularly child rape - to go unreported for the sake of privacy.  The girls in the first story had no choice in ending their abuse.

Yes.  Sounds like they are indeed “America’s leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider”.

Update:  Planned parenthood has sent this letter to Lila demanding she remove and relinquish the video.  From Digital Journal

This has Mary Jane Wagle, the CEO of PP of Los Angles very upset. The letter which was sent threatening to sue her has been obtained by LifeNews.com. According to them the letter says that Wagle claims the videos were made

“through false pretenses and unlawfully” and that the conversations they contain “were surreptitiously recorded without the knowledge and consent of PPLA employees”

According to Wagle the videos violate the invasion of privacy laws by the state of California. Her demands are that Rose remove the videos from YouTube and to return the original videos to them at the PPLA and that she has no more communications with the abortion business.

“If you do not take these three steps, PPLA will seek appropriate legal remedies,” Wagle wrote and threatened that failure to respond could be met with several fines at  $55,000 each for violating the state law on privacy.

An attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, David French, has told CNS News that PP is

“engaging in a campaign…to bully an 18-year-old to distract attention from the fact that their employees were engaging in unlawful behavior.”

Mr. French who is providing Rose’s legal service also told CNS News that

“Nothing changes the truth of what’s contained in those videotapes.”

“Planned Parenthood was advocating that a patient lie, advocating a way around mandatory reporting requirements for statutory rape, and nothing that Planned Parenthood does as far as trying to bully her regarding the tapes themselves can change those facts,” he said.

According to French Rose will comply with PP’s demands because she doesn’t want to end up in court.

You know, investigative shows do hidden camera crap constantly I don’t understand why PP has so much leverage here.

Well, I don’t much care, so here is the whole video, which I have stored locally and I will upload repeated. 

Their threats violate the 1st Amendment protections for freedom of press.