Every state requires healthcare workers to report suspected child abuse – including statutory rape – to authorities.  Planned Parenthood seems to consistently demonstrate flagrant disregard for these legal protections.  Recently in California, 18-year-old investigative journalist Lila Rose took a hidden camera to an abortion facility.  Posing as a 15-year-old, she explained she had been impregnated by her 23-year-old boyfriend, a clear case of statutory rape.  A staff member suggested a way to cover-up the rape, saying, “You could say 16....  Just figure out a birth date that works.  And I don't know anything.”  When the worker’s comments were posted on the Internet, Planned Parenthood responded swiftly to cover up their employee’s actions by threatening to sue Lila for recording the conversation.

In Ohio, a 21-year-old high school teacher and soccer coach who seduced and impregnated a 13-year-old girl transported her to Planned Parenthood, where he claimed to be the girl’s stepbrother.  Planned Parenthood aborted the girl’s child, gave her a shot of Depo-Provera, and sent her home with free condoms for potential use in her next round of sexual activity.  When the girl’s parents sued Planned Parenthood for this outrage, the organization again seemed more concerned with erecting an iron veil of self-protecting privacy than addressing the safety of children. 

In earlier years, Planned Parenthood has sued to strike other states’ efforts to protect women by limiting surgical abortion to licensed physicians, has fought other efforts to discover suspected child abuse, and has marketed what were rated as the “poorest performing” condoms, all in the name of women’s health and safety.

Abortion rare?

Oh yes, the condoms.  An independent study by Consumers Union, as reported in Consumer Reports magazine, February 2005, evaluated the performance of 23 kinds of latex condoms.  Three of Planned Parenthood’s condoms were tested, finishing 14th, 22nd, and 23rd.  The condoms ranked 22nd and 23rd were the only condoms in the entire study rated “poor.”  Planned Parenthood’s response was to promise immediate improvements to its products, saying, “…we will soon offer Honeydew condoms in a new package and color as a result of this feedback.”

The year 2006 was Planned Parenthood’s best year yet – they made a record $104 million from 244,628 abortions.  Why would the nation’s largest abortion provider, which fights every effort to teach children abstinence and obtains more than one-third of its annual clinic income from abortions, market such lousy condoms?  Why would an organization which seeks to advance the health and safety of women fight off efforts to investigate cases of rape and child abuse?  And why would they fight Missouri’s commonsense regulations to enhance the health and safety of their patients?

Are Planned Parenthood’s efforts making abortion “safe, legal, and rare?”  Or are their efforts making abortion “greener”?  Not the green of environmental safety, mind you, but the green of cold, hard cash.  And that green comes from another color – the color of red, which flows from those whose lives, health, and safety Planned Parenthood is fighting against in Missouri.