Planned Parenthood’s child abuse scandals continue

Numerous undercover projects have shown the willingness of Planned Parenthood employees to ignore cases of child abuse that they are legally required to report. The most recent of these was Live Action’s Traffick investigation. A few weeks after those videos were recorded, but before they were released, Planned Parenthood realized what was going on and quickly reported the sting to the Justice Department.

It has since become clear that the Justice Department letter was a last-minute attempt by Planned Parenthood to cover its own behind. The individual clinics had plenty of time to contact the police, but almost all failed to do so.

“Out of seven clinic videos released, in only two cases (Roanoke and Charlottesville) has Planned Parenthood publicly said what local law enforcement they contacted,” he added. “When faced with a situation of suspected child sexual abuse, Planned Parenthood doesn’t have the luxury of deciding what cases to report and which ones not to. The law doesn’t give them that decision making power.”

In the case of Charlottesville, Planned Parenthood claimed it contacted the local Albemarle police but a police official reported to the media that he have no record of a child sex abuse report coming from Planned Parenthood.

Incredibly, Planned Parenthood has decided in the midst of this scandal to speak out against proposed child protective legislation in Illinois. The new law would expand mandatory reporting to include counselors at reproductive health clinics. Currently, only medical staff are mandatory reporters, but it makes sense that counselors would be in a position to learn about abuse. Although Planned Parenthood has repeatedly shown that it doesn’t mind breaking such laws, they’d prefer that the law not be passed in the first place.

This position is so extreme that even NARAL— which backs partial-birth abortions, taxpayer funding of abortions, and other extraordinary pro-abortion measures– disagrees. NARAL initially opposed the measure, but backed off, apparently after moderate pro-choicers flooded their email inbox.