Planned Parenthood's Troubles Didn't Start with Recent Videos

(NEWS & COMMENTARY) - In President Obama's February budget speech, he talked about cutting millions of dollars in various areas.

Because budget cuts didn't include any of the annual estimated $360 million to Planned Parenthood, the GOP proposed a bill to remove federal funding from the organization. The bill passed, including 10 Democratic votes. Although Planned Parenthood receives some taxpayer money through Title X, it's doubtful the bill will pass in the Senate.

Planned Parenthood recently came under fire from videotapes of undercover pro-life activists' conversations with Planned Parenthood employees. People from the group Live Action posed as pimps and underage prostitutes and entered clinics in several states.

When asked about maintaining secrecy for minor prostitutes and their pimps, the Planned Parenthood employees promised that all information was confidential...whether the girls tested positive for STD's, or were pregnant and seeking abortion, or were possibly being illegally trafficked.

Live Action denied Planned Parenthood's claim that the tapes were altered for desired results. After seeing unedited footage of the New Jersey clinic occurrence, Planned Parenthood fired that clinic's manager.

Planned Parenthood's problems didn't start with Live Action's videos:

Questions about Planned Parenthood's involvement in suspicious activity didn't begin just recently. Over more than a decade, there have been incidents such as the following:

*Carol Everett is an ex-abortion clinic owner, former Planned Parenthood employee, and author of Blood Money (an abortion industry exposé). In 1995, she revealed being trained by Planned Parenthood to discuss "family planning" in public schools. She claimed her training included making fun of students' parents, telling children that parents are stupid.

This would drive a wedge between children and parents and encourage early sexual experimentation. She claimed part of Planned Parenthood's marketing plan was to get girls thirteen and up into their clinics when in need of abortions.

*In 2007 (actual event, not staged), a teenager sued Ohio Planned Planned Parenthood for not reporting that she came for an abortion after being raped by her father in 2004. According to a report at LifeSite News, the girl told the clinic she'd been abused by her father since 2000, and assumed the clinic would report him to authorities, but it appears they didn't.

*In 2008, numerous African American pastors charged that Planned Parenthood was targeting black women for abortions. UCLA's student newspaper, The Advocate, conducted an investigation. They sent an actor into Planned Parenthood clinics, or had him phone various locations, posing as a financial donor.

The actor asked if he could earmark donations for black women, and would make outward racist comments against more black babies being born. Planned Parenthood employees at multiple clinics still accepted the money and promised to earmark it, regardless of the "donor's" racist overtones (see Albuquerque KOAT-TV news report video).

Planned Parenthood's response was, again, that the tapes had been edited for desired results (The Advocate denied this).

*In 2008, Indiana's attorney general investigated Planned Parenthood of Indiana for an employee who allegedly told an underage girl it was okay to conceal the age of the 31-year-old man who had impregnated her. The employee then advised her to go to Illinois where parental consent is not needed for an abortion.

*In 2009, ex-Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson resigned began revealing her experiences working at the clinic. Some pro-choice advocates say that Johnson's claims of seeing ultrasounds in which babies were struggling for life, and the business being about money more than really caring about women's health, are untrue and she began making the claims because she was about to be fired.

Can Planned Parenthood prove that all these people are liars while they themselves claim to be totally honest? Where there's this much smoke, there may be at least a little fire.

Sources:

-WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama, Feb. 14, 2011 budget speech.

-"House Votes to Strip Planned Parenthood of Federal Funding," Matthew Jaffe And John R. Parkinson, ABC-TV News, 2/18/11.

-"Anti-Abortion Groups Step Up Campaign Against Planned Parenthood," Erik Eckholm and Jennifer Medina, New York Times, 2/2/11.

-Unedited footage of Live Action New Jersey video. NOTE: Important conversation begins about two minutes after apparent lobby noise.

-"Sex Education and Our Children," Focus on the Family taped interview with Carol Everett, cassette tape# CS946/15536, © 1995, 1998.

-KOAT-TV news report at YouTube (downloaded by LiveAction. Curiously, other links to these videos have been removed from the Internet).

-"Pastors Accuse Planned Parenthood for 'Genocide' on Blacks," Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, 4/24/08.

-"Black pastors protest Planned Parenthood 'racism'," WorldNetDaily, 4/24/08.

-"Attorney general investigating Planned Parenthood," WTHR.com Eyewitness News, 12/15/08.

-"Planned Parenthood Sued over Failure to Report Teen's Incest Pregnancy," Gudrun Schultz, LifeSiteNews.com, 5/16/07.

-"Planned Parenthood Employee resigns, exposes Undesirable Aspects...", Sheryl Young, Associated Content, 2/20/10.

-"Abby Johnson's Story Doesn't Hold Water," by "Serena," Feminists for Choice, 1/11/10.

Carol Everett with Jack Shaw, Blood Money, (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Press Books, Questar Publishing) 1992.