National

Is Planned Parenthood Hiding Something?

Pro-lifers are asking why Planned Parenthood is not complying with laws requiring them to report underage sexual encounters.

BY WAYNE LAUGESEN

REGISTER CORRESPONDENT

June 3-9, 2007 Issue | Posted 5/29/07 at 7:00 AM

LOS ANGELES — A UCLA sophomore said some may be surprised at the sexist — and criminal — attitudes she said she revealed at Planned Parenthood.

But high school girls aren’t surprised.

Lila Rose staged a personal sting operation in which she secretly recorded a Planned Parenthood abortion business employee trying to aid and abet an adult male rapist and his teenage victim.

“It’s common knowledge that if an older man is having sex with you, Planned Parenthood will help conceal it by providing abortions and not reporting the sexual abuse,” Rose said. “When an older man is manipulating a young girl — having sex with her illegally and against her own psychological, spiritual and physiological welfare — the first thing Planned Parenthood wants to do is cover it up and allow the abuse to continue. They want to continue providing the abortions that facilitate the rapist.”

That’s also the assertion of Ohio lawyer Brian Hurley, whose client was repeatedly raped as a child by her father. The rapist, of Mason, Ohio, was recently sentenced to five years in prison.

Hurley said the rapist took the girl to get an abortion, and that Planned Parenthood abortion workers concealed the rapes, gave the girl birth control pills, and sent her home to another 18 months of rape. Only when the girl revealed her story to a teacher were police contacted.

She’s suing Planned Parenthood for an undecided sum.

“This man treated his daughter as his wife since she was 12 or 13. At 16, she was pregnant, and she claims to have told a counselor at Planned Parenthood that she was being forced to have sex,” Hurley said. “Had Planned Parenthood obeyed the law — which says they must report suspicion of child abuse — my client would not have gone home to be repeatedly raped for the next year and a half.”

Susan Yolen, Planned Parenthood’s Vice President for Public Affairs said, “Because of our commitment to patient privacy we do not comment on who is or is not a Planned Parenthood patient.”

Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Yolen said the organization “complies with the law and we are committed to protecting teens from abuse. We take our duty to report this seriously and our professional staff is trained to identify and report suspected abuse. We work with state authorities to protect women and teens and to bring offenders to justice.”

Another of Hurley’s clients who’s suing Planned Parenthood was raped and impregnated at age 14 by her 21-year-old soccer coach.

“The coach took her to the Planned Parenthood and paid for the abortion and the birth control they sent the girl home with,” Hurley said.

Meanwhile, 22-year-old Kevon Walker is free on a $50,000 bond after authorities arrested him on charges he repeatedly raped a 14-year-old New London, Conn., girl and impregnated her three times.

Though an abortion business completed three abortions, police knew nothing of the rapes until contacted by the girl’s mother. The rape suspect told police he met the girl while she shopped in New York, and he moved to New London to be near her.

The Register has learned that the girl had the abortions at Planned Parenthood of Norwich, Conn.

In 2002, a Life Dynamics actor, playing a 13-year-old, called this particular business. A transcript follows:

Girl: “I’m going to be 14 later this month, and my friend told me that you guys would have to tell my parents. But my boyfriend’s 22. Is he old enough to take care of it, and you wouldn’t have to tell anybody?

Planned Parenthood worker: We won’t tell your parents.

Girl: Okay. But would you tell anybody besides my parents?

Planned Parenthood worker: Huh? Nope. It’s confidential. You can come in, and you don’t need a parent’s permission.

Girl: Oh, okay. My boyfriend said that he would pay for everything. Would that be all right? It’s just we don’t want a whole bunch of people to know about us. Would he have to sign anything?

Planned Parenthood worker: Yeah, but just don’t talk about his age.

Regarding recent Planned Parenthood scandals, Mark Crutcher, president of Life Dynamics, said, “These stories indicate that nothing has changed since our investigation. We revealed that Planned Parenthood is operating a nationwide pedophile protection racket. They were caught red-handed, and here they are five years later doing same thing.”

The emerging complaints of abortion businesses concealing rape comes several years after a two-year investigation by Life Dynamics, of Denton, Texas, which showed a widespread pattern of abortion businesses ignoring state laws that require them to report sex between adults and children.

Life Dynamics hired a young actress to call 800 abortion clinics and portray a 13-year-old girl who was impregnated by an adult. Recorded conversations showed that more than 91% of clinics agreed to conceal the rape — often coaching the girl to lie about her age — and provide the abortion.

“Abortion providers are in the business of selling abortions,” said David French, an attorney defending Rose against legal threats made by Planned Parenthood in response to her sting operation. “They have a financial incentive to provide customers with reasons and justifications to have abortions, and that’s why they help cover up the rapes of children.”

Rose said she became aware of the relationship rapists have with Planned Parenthood while she attended high school in San Jose, Calif.

“I was doing abstinence education, and I got to know a lot of girls who were having sex with older men,” Rose said. “I knew one 14-year-old girl who was consistently having sex with a 25-year-old man. He used Planned Parenthood to facilitate and perpetuate the abuse, and the girl ended up having an abortion. She was so distraught that she attempted suicide.”

That experience led Rose to establish a newspaper at UCLA called the LA Advocate — a new medium she uses to expose the pro-abortion agenda of UCLA health workers and activities of the Los Angeles abortion industry.

In early May, Rose,18, and 22-year-old James O’Keefe walked into a Santa Monica Planned Parenthood with a story that, by California law, should have required workers at the business to contact authorities. Rose claimed she was 15 and had been impregnated by a 23-year-old man — a rapist portrayed by O’Keefe.

“We went to two Planned Parenthoods in the L.A. area in March,” O’Keefe said. “They both counseled Lila to figure out a birth date that would work for her, and they both said ‘and I don’t know anything.’ In Santa Monica, we actually spoke to the manager. She sat us both down and said nobody would find out about it.”

Like most states, California requires health care workers to report suspicion of sex between adults and minors.

O’Keefe works for the Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C., an organization that helps fund startup campus publications, including the LA Advocate. He is also working with Rose to launch a company called Live Action Films.

“We will record and expose the true philosophy of a variety of organizations,” O’Keefe said. “In this case, their philosophy was very clear: We don’t care about women; we sell abortions.”

The Santa Monica Planned Parenthood, other abortion businesses throughout greater Los Angeles and regional offices in Ohio and Connecticut did not return the Register’s phone calls. Calls to the headquarters of the National Abortion Rights Action League also were not returned.

Jane Robison, press secretary for Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, said it’s unlikely Cooley would investigate Planned Parenthood as a result of a videotaped sting operation.

“It sounds like there was no crime,” Robison said. “She (Rose) only pretended to be under age. So I really don’t know what the crime is here.”

Her reaction echoes that of law enforcement authorities throughout the country, who mostly ignored the recordings and transcripts Life Dynamics presented to them.

Attorney French said arguments that Rose was only acting reflect gross inconsistency, because he said authorities use actors routinely in sting operations designed to capture pedophiles, rapists and prostitution clients.

“Using actors is an incredibly common way to discover wrongdoing,” French said. “The left will applaud a young journalist who goes undercover with a camera and exposes unseemly practices of a military recruiter. But if you do this in a context that involves abortion, then you are threatening an institution that’s so sacred that it’s almost a religion.”

Sting operations using adults who pretend to be children have become so common that an industry of actors has emerged to help police lure sex perverts on the Internet. Perverted Justice, for example, is an Los Angeles-based firm that came to fame when it employed 45 actors to portray children on the Internet and help “NBC Dateline” lure 51 men to a home where each had been promised sex with a child. Today, the firm can’t keep up with demand from police departments seeking its help in luring perverts.

“This goes on constantly, and results in arrests and convictions,” French said. “But if it involves abortion, a double-standard kicks in automatically.”

When Rose’s and O’Keefe’s undercover video showed up on YouTube, in the format of a rap video, Planned Parenthood officials responded by threatening Rose with prosecution. California is one of 16 states that prohibit the recording of conversations without two-party consent.

“Here you had a giant corporation, confronted with irrefutable evidence that an employee was trying to break the law and not report knowledge of rape. Instead of dealing with it appropriately, they decided to shoot the messenger,” said French, who works out of Nashville and heads the Alliance Defense Fund’s Center for Academic Freedom. “That reaction alone shows the length they will go to in defending their abortion sales.”

French said Rose complied with Planned Parenthood’s demand, removing the video from YouTube and turning it over to the abortion business. Rose has received no communication from Planned Parenthood since responding to its threat.

In trying to sell abortion, one abortion worker told Rose and O’Keefe that she had become pregnant at age 17 and regrets not aborting the child.

“It’s absolutely chilling,” French said. “If it’s true, your heart breaks for her child. Most likely it’s not true, and it’s just part of closing the sale. Either way, can you imagine the effect a statement like that has on a young, impressionable, frightened teenager?”

Wayne Laugesen is based in

Boulder, Colorado.

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