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!
With today’s release of yet another Live Action video sting of Planned Parenthood—this one the most damning yet—one must ask: Why does Planned Parenthood keep getting caught?
For over two years now, Lila Rose and Live Action have been conducting these undercover operations. They’ve caught trained Planned Parenthood staff counseling what they believe to be underage girls in how to avoid mandated reporting of statutory rape, and how to circumvent parental involvement laws.
It’s been rumored that pictures of Lila Rose—the dynamic young woman behind this string of disturbing exposés—have been posted at Planned Parenthood offices around the country.
Planned Parenthood knows Lila Rose is after them. So why don’t they clean up their act? Why don’t they ensure that no employee, ever, says the kinds of things they keep saying on these undercover videos?
They’ve got to realize how high the stakes are. These videos have been shown in statehouses across the country by legislators introducing bills to defund Planned Parenthood. They’ve lost funding in some states.
Why Won’t PP Expose the Sexual Exploitation of Minors?
So why hasn’t Planned Parenthood started reporting every single suspected case of statutory rape? Why are trained Planned Parenthood staff—in this case the manager of a New Jersey center—still giving advice on how to keep the sexual abuse of minors hidden from view?
But it’s not even just that they keep doing what they’ve been caught doing before. This latest video goes so much farther. We’re not talking here about a young girl and her much older boyfriend. We’re talking about the organized exploitation of girls as young as 14—sex slaves who will be expected to keep performing even when recovering from abortion!
So far from getting their act together, Planned Parenthood displays here a wanton disregard for the welfare of these “clients” that is simply breathtaking.
There are only two possible explanations. Either Planned Parenthood is so disorganized, so incompetently run, that they cannot implement a policy of adhering to the law; or they dare not zealously adhere to mandated reporting laws because of what that would mean for their bottom line.
PP Must Know What They’re Doing
As someone involved directly in fighting Planned Parenthood, I find the “incompetence” explanation unconvincing. They know what they’re doing. They’re a well-run organization. They’ve been able to implement a nationwide expansion plan, including cornering more and more of the abortion business.
As Abby Johnson, the former manager of a Planned Parenthood center, describes in her book, Unplanned, directives from above to increase abortion numbers were aggressively imposed.
I have to believe that if they wanted to, the national leadership at Planned Parenthood, starting with CEO Cecile Richards, could clamp down on the problems that Live Action keeps exposing.
So I’m left believing that Planned Parenthood is simply unable to withstand the loss in revenue that would result from complying with the law and protecting girls from sexual exploitation.
A Culture of Total Disregard for Girls’ Welfare
But whatever the explanation for Planned Parenthood’s inaction, this much is clear: Planned Parenthood is infected with a culture of total disregard for the real welfare of underage girls.
There are exceptions, to be sure—like the nurse practitioner this manager complains about so crudely for “digging” too much. And like Abby Johnson, who resisted the pressure from higher up to increase abortion numbers at the Texas facility she managed.
But the cavalier attitude towards sexual exploitation—the total indifference to the plight of sexual slaves—is clearly widespread enough for Live Action to find shocking examples of it over and over again.
How can they really believe they’re helping these girls by providing “reproductive health care” when they could be helping rescue them from lives of horrific exploitation?
Only because they have become so blinded by their radical view of sexuality.
They have built up such a firewall separating sexual activity from any other considerations—moral, personal, psychological—that they cannot really consider the possibility that sex might actually be bad for someone. A 14-year-old Asian girl brought illegally to the United States as part of a sex ring, for example.
Or worse, they just don’t care. The revenue stream that would flow from providing “reproductive health care” for sex slaves matters more than the miserable lives of the exploited.
The Time Has Come to Defund Planned Parenthood
That’s what’s happening on the ground, at the actual Planned Parenthood centers around the country. Upcoming videos from Live Action will give us a better idea how widespread this really is.
Meanwhile, the national leadership at Planned Parenthood is doing damage control in response to the latest Live Action sting.
A week before today’s release, CEO Cecile Richards tried to get out ahead of the bad publicity by announcing Planned Parenthood have been in contact with the FBI over visits by alleged sex traffickers, and suspect they may have been the target of another “hoax” by pro-lifers.
As evidenced by the comments on their Facebook page, this line may be convincing to die-hard Planned Parenthood supporters, who are always ready to divert attention from the reality of Planned Parenthood’s business and onto the alleged misdeeds of pro-lifers.
But everyone else can see plainly that Planned Parenthood has a serious, widespread problem on their hands—a crisis of integrity that should convince even moderates in the pro-choice camp that Planned Parenthood cannot be trusted with our tax dollars.
It is time to defund Planned Parenthood—if not for the sake of the 324,000 unborn babies they abort every year, then for the sake of the young girls whose welfare they have turned their backs on.
UPDATE, 6/6/11: Check out other pro-life blog posts on Live Action at Life Report’s Pro-Life Link Party here.
