Planned Parenthood is in hot water.
On Dec. 3, a nurse employed at the Bloomington Planned Parenthood was suspended without pay after a tape surfaced showing her advising an alleged 13-year-old pregnant girl to lie about her age and the age of her 31-year-old boyfriend to avoid being reported to the police. The nurse then told the girl how to go across state lines to get an abortion without the consent of her parents.
Since then, an official investigation was conducted and that nurse has been fired, because in the state of Indiana, anyone under the age of 13 who is having sex must be reported to the police and Child Protective Services, as there could be a case of child abuse and/or statutory rape.
The catch is that the 13-year-old girl in the video was actually a 21-year-old UCLA student named Lila Rose. Rose travels to different Planned Parenthoods around the country and poses as a young teenager who needs help with a serious problem. Her objective, she says, is to catch Planned Parenthood covering up the abuse of young girls, which she claims the organization has been doing for years.
Initially, I was upset with Rose’s deceit and with the outcome of the situation, seeing as how the employee, who has given me helpful consultation in the past, lost her job in trying to help a young girl avoid a painful, unwanted pregnancy.
But yesterday, yet another video was released documenting the same situation in Indianapolis, and my frustration is now split between Planned Parenthood’s lack of caution and Lila Rose’s pro-life driven attacks on an organization that has helped many women for years. Most frustrating is that Rose is using the claim that she wants to protect young girls as leverage, when really, her intention is to hurt Planned Parenthood and draw negative attention to abortion rights.
It is disheartening that Planned Parenthood employees are not obeying the law. This is a clear demonstration that they are unaware of where their loyalty to their customers ends and where moral and legal obligation begins. What they offer is affordable, easy to access, confidential consultation on issues that are already incredibly controversial, especially in Indiana. Knowing this, they should be taking every step to ensure that their much needed services continue to be provided, and that they leave no wiggle room for mistakes. They will always have people on their back, waiting for them to slip up with evidence to support anti-abortion agendas. Perhaps the organization needed something like this to put them back in the mindset of carefully and mindfully considering each and every case and treating it with caution and care.
But Rose has not suggested there be any retraining of employees. Instead, she suggests the organization lose its government funding all together.
“Our goal is to expose to the public what’s going on in these clinics,” she said. “I would like to see Planned Parenthood convicted for its many abuses and de-funded. It’s an outrage that an organization covering up the sex abuse of young girls has a third of its budget propped up by taxpayer money.”
What a horrible thing to have happen.
Planned Parenthood is not the abuser in this situation, nor are they at fault for the numerous instances of abuse that happen each year. In fact, Planned Parenthood is partially responsible for lowering the abortion rate, which, in Sept., the Alan Guttmacher Institute reported is at its lowest since 1974. What types of things prevent early pregnancy? Sex education programs, easy to access contraceptives and health care, social acceptance of sexual expression, and government support that helps teens get information and confidential services. Planned Parenthood provides each and every one of these things, and has therefore played a huge role in actually reducing the abortion rate.
If Planned Parenthood goes, I would estimate that the number of teen pregnancies would rise and so would the number of abortions.
So Planned Parenthood does so many great things for its customers. They provide sex education, contraceptives, and consultation to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and promote healthy sex lives.
Personally, I’d like to know how many clinics Rose went to that did report her, and chose not to consult her without taking the appropriate legal action first. My guess would be that Planned Parenthood does more good than bad.
But these videos do represent a problem, and no one could argue that allowing a possible account of statutory rape to go unreported is excusable. But if Rose really gave a damn about helping young people stay safe, she’d never suggest Planned Parenthood lose any funding. Instead, she would take a more progressive approach and suggest the organization retrain its employees and revamp its approach toward confidentiality, because there are young people everywhere who are in dire need of help.
And while I agree that in both situations, the nurse should have made a report, and while Planned Parenthood needs to take more caution when dealing with these kinds of sensitive situations, there have got to be better ways to prevent teen victimization that don’t involve wild claims against Planned Parenthood or getting people fired.
So how else can we focus our attention on improving the sexual safety of our young ones? How about donating money to an organization like the Child Abuse Prevention Organization? How about actively participating in spreading information about the signs of abuse and how parents can prevent it? How about becoming a mentor? How about investing in sound sex education that emphasizes the importance of using protection?
Since the Indianapolis video was released, the Indiana attorney general’s office has been asked by Jackie Walorski, a republican Indiana state representative, to look into Planned Parenthood’s activities. I can only hope that this leads to an awakening for the organization. I can only hope they will become more careful and law abiding.
But you have to wonder, what are the chances a real 13-year-old girl who got mixed up with a 31-year-old man is going to come forward to talk about her problem now? How many young girls have been scared away from doing so, knowing they could become national news? How many 8th graders are going to carry the child of a grown man because they were too afraid they would have to talk to the police if they went to Planned Parenthood?
There are so many more positive ways Rose could focus her energy. She has successfully ruined the life of one at least one employee and says there are more tapes that will be released soon. In return, Rose has gotten more news coverage than any of us will ever have. If she really wanted to help people, she’d put her focus elsewhere, toward the real offenders, and toward helping the girls who need it. Instead she is lying, deceiving and adding fuel to a fire that is already blazing across the nation, and the young people who need all the good things Planned Parenthood offers are the ones getting burned.
