Just last Wednesday, the news broke that a Birmingham PlannedParenthood clinic was put on a year-long probation. The Alabama State Health Department had opened an investigation into the clinic after Live Action released an undercover video, showing clinic staffers covering up sexual abuse and skirting the parental consent law.
When our team of student journalists investigated the Birmingham clinic a year and a half ago, I was posing as a 14-year-old girl impregnated by my 31-year-old “boyfriend.” When I told the clinic workers I was 14 and didn’t want my parents to find out about my abortion, the staffer responded that someone with “the same last name” could give permission for my abortion–directly contrary to Alabama’s parental consent law.
After they heard my “boyfriend” was 31, they told me to speak to Dr. Desiree Bates, the clinic manager. Bates, they said, “does bend the rules a little bit” and “whatever you tell us stays within these walls.” Our investigators have seen firsthand that Planned Parenthood routinely breaks laws meant to protect underage girls.
Live Action has released six undercover videos revealing the cover up of sexual abuse at Planned Parenthood clinics in 5 different states. (See videos here. Here’s the Birmingham video here (initially banned by YouTube –another story for another day.
[youtube NNTCZdSyHTo&feature nolink]
In response to our Birmingham video, the Attorney General Troy King opened an investigation, which King eventually handed over to the State Health Department. Here’s a sample of what the Health Department found at the Birmingham Planned Parenthood clinic: nine out of 9 underage girls, aged 13 to 15, received abortions without proper verification of parental consent. A 13 year old girl came to the clinic for 2 different abortions with four months. Planned Parenthood made no report of suspected abuse or neglect. The report states:
A reasonable person faced with that situation would have to suspect abuse…Neither the Registered Nurse, the Medical Doctor, nor any other Center staff reported the suspected abuse or neglect to the authorities as required by law.
This is a shocking but sadly typical response from Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood looked the other way when a 15-year-old girl provided “parental consent” by a woman with a different name and address. Birth records indicate the woman was not the girl’s mother.
- Mislabeled expired suction abortion machine.
- Air conditioning system broken. An operating room was 90 degrees during an inspection.
- Expired medicine with needle attached.
The full report is available here.
Planned Parenthood’s license should be revoked now, and the Health Department should begin an immediate investigation of Planned Parenthood’s second Alabama clinic in Mobile. Meanwhile, the Alabama legislature should make sure that not a single tax dollar is being funneled into these abortion clinics. It should shock and outrage Americans that the government rewards corruption at Planned Parenthood with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. In fact, a whopping third of Planned Parenthood’s billion-dollar budget is subsidized by tax dollars. It should also outrage us that out of five states our team of student journalists investigated, only the Alabama Health Department followed up with an audit and disciplinary action. What kind of sexual abuse cover up and other legal violations are commonplace in all the other clinics, and the hundreds of clinics we have yet to investigate?
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