UPDATE 2/3/11: Join the special webcast tonight with Lila Rose and other pro-life leaders at 8:30 p.m. EST (7:30 p.m. CST, 5:30 PST). Help expose and defund Planned Parenthood here!
As you’ve no doubt heard, Lila Rose of Live Action recently released two videos, one from New Jersey and one from Virginia, showing Planned Parenthood employees offering help and advice to a man posing as the leader of a sex trafficking ring that took advantage of underage illegal immigrants.
Since the release, pro-abortion folks have been trying to figure out how to spin the behavior of the Planned Parenthood employees in the videos to be justifiable or at least not as bad as it appears.
One explanation that quickly gained prominence was the idea that Amy Woodruff, the employee depicted in the New Jersey video, was merely playing along with Live Action’s undercover operatives. This theory got another plug today from the picaresque Abortion Gang blog. Author KushielsMoon posits the question in the following way:
If you were an employee at a reproductive health care clinic and someone came in and asked you about obtaining abortions for women being sex trafficked, what would you do?
Here’s what I would do: Lie. Lie, lie, and then lie some more.
Why?
There’s one thing for certain: If you tell the person “No, we will not give these women healthcare” then you will never be able to find them. You will never be able to help them get out of being trafficked, help them get their lives back.
And if you tell this person “That’s against the law! I’m calling the cops!”—then you might just lose your life.
It’s an interesting theory. Was Ms. Woodruff just playing along with Live Action’s operatives?
Several aspects of the video itself indicate that that’s just not the case. Her demeanor along does not read like someone who is afraid for their safety. She seems to quite enjoy helping the supposed sex workers find ways around the pesky constraints of law.
She even recommends another abortion clinic across town that will have less qualms about skirting the parental notification laws than Planned Parenthood would.
Further, when asked how long the prostitutes should wait after an abortion before becoming sexually active, she says two or three weeks. When the “pimp” inquires how they will be able to work during that time, Ms. Woodruff indicates that they can still sell their bodies, just from the “waist up.”
None of this sounds like the counsel of someone itching to get someone out of their office so the proper authorities can be notified.
Planned Parenthood’s Actions Speak Volumes
But all of what can be surmised from the video becomes meaningless when we consider Planned Parenthood’s actions in the matter. Ms. Woodruff has been fired.
Planned Parenthood has loudly trumpeted the fact that they reported to the FBI that people had visited several of their clinics claiming to be part of a prostitution ring, but clearly Ms. Woodruff was not part of that reporting process.
If Ms. Woodruff had immediately told her superiors about the incident and they in turn told the authorities she wouldn’t have been fired. If she reported swiftly and correctly, she would have been given a medal, made employee of the month, not fired.
But she was fired. Planned Parenthood had this to say:
We were profoundly shocked when we viewed the videotape released this morning, which depicted an employee of one of our health centers behaving in a repugnant manner that is inconsistent with our standards of care and is completely unacceptable.
We have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of behavior, and the employee in the video was immediately suspended from her duties this morning and was terminated this evening.
Abortion Gang, you’re only making yourselves look bad. You’re wearing your bias on your sleeve and any pretense of objectivity on this issue has fallen away. Sheesh, even Planned Parenthood has realized they have to put some serious distance between themselves and what happened in this video—that’s why they fired her.
It’s hardly surprising that being involved in the abortion industry would skew one’s moral compass on the issue, but it shouldn’t be hard for anyone to admit that what Ms. Woodruff did was despicable.
