Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Planned Parenthood Encouraging Sex-Selection Abortion

by Steven Ertelt - 5/29/12

The investigative pro-life group Live Action, which has released videos exposing the abuses at the Planned Parenthood abortion business across the country, has released a new video today showing a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Austin, Texas encouraging a woman to get a sex-selection abortion.

The video shows a Planned Parenthood staffer encouraging the woman to obtain a late-term abortion because she was purportedly carrying a girl and wanted to have a boy. The video is the first in a new series titled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America,” that Live Action tells LifeNews will be exposing the practice of sex-selective abortion in the United States and how Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry facilitate the selective elimination of baby girls in the womb.

“I see that you’re saying that you want to terminate if it’s a girl, so are you just wanting to continue the pregnancy in the meantime?” a Planned Parenthood counselor named “Rebecca” offers the woman, who is purportedly still in her first trimester and cannot be certain about the gender.

“The abortion covers you up until 23 weeks,” explains Rebecca, “and usually at 5 months is usually (sic) when they detect, you know, whether or not it’s a boy or a girl.”


The woman asks, “Do you think I should go and just ask for an ultrasound and just not tell [the doctor] that I’m gonna terminate if it’s a girl, or…I just feel like there’s been some judgment for my…”

“To be honest with you, um, I would probably think so,” the Planned Parenthood staffer responds.

“But do you think I still just shouldn’t worry about telling them that I would be terminating if it’s a girl?” the pregnant patient repeats later.

“Right,” Planned Parenthood says. “I would.”

Live Action says the late-term abortion is offered for gender selection even though doctors agree that the later in term a doctor performs an abortion, the greater the risk of complications.

In the video (seen below), the Planned Parenthood staffer suggests that the woman get on Medicaid in order to pay for an ultrasound to determine the gender of her baby, even though she plans to use the knowledge for an elective abortion. The abortion facility staffer also tells the woman to “just continue and try again” for the desired gender after aborting a girl, and adds, “Good luck, and I hope that you do get your boy.”

Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, condemned Planned Parenthood for its willingness to facilitate sex-selection abortions.

“The search-and-destroy targeting of baby girls through prenatal testing and abortion is a pandemic that is spreading across the globe,” she said. “Research proves that sex-selective abortion has now come to America. The abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is a willing participant.”

UPDATE: Planned Parenthood has responded to the video by essentially saying it will do abortions for any reason and adding that the staffer int eh video violated unnamed policies and has since been fired from her position.



A few years ago, a national study showed the possibility that the practice of sex-selection abortions has made its way from Asia to the United States. Researchers Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund of the National Academy of Sciences say their analysis of the 2000 Census shows the odds prematurely increasing for Asian-American families from China, Korea and India to have a boy if they already have a girl child.

 On Wednesday, Congress will debate the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act (PRENDA), which would ban sex-selective abortions nationally.

“Planned Parenthood and their ruthless abortion-first mentality is the real ‘war on women’,” says Rose. “Sex-selective abortion is gender discrimination with lethal consequences for little girls.”

The complete, unedited video and transcript can be viewed at www.ProtectOurGirls.com, a hub of research and information on sex-selective abortions that Live Action has started.

Planned Parenthood has already attempted to run damage control regarding the video expose’. The abortion business worked its contacts in the media in recent weeks to try to head the potential probe and its results off at the pass. Weeks ago, Planned Parenthood went to the liberal Huffington Post to try to do damage control before the results of any possible Live Action investigation are made public.  Planned Parenthood told the Huffington Post it may be facing another campaign from Live Action to expose its practices on how it would handle someone seeking a sex-selection abortion.
According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Chloe Cooney, clinics in at least 11 states have reported two dozen or more “hoax visits” over the past several weeks, in which a woman walks into a clinic, claims to be pregnant and asks a particular pattern of provocative questions about sex-selective abortions, such as how soon she can find out the gender of the fetus, by what means and whether she can schedule an abortion if she’s having a girl.

While patient privacy laws prohibit Planned Parenthood from offering specific details about the visits and where they occurred, Cooney told The Huffington Post that the incidents are so unusual and so similar to each other that they have raised concerns among the organization’s executives that the visits are being recorded as part of a concerted anti-Planned Parenthood campaign.

“For years opponents of reproductive health and Planned Parenthood have engaged in secret videotaping tactics with fictitious patient scenarios and selective editing in an attempt to promote misinformation about Planned Parenthood and our services,” Cooney said. “As with the prior instances, we anticipate that once again this group, likely in coordination with a broad range of anti-abortion leaders, will soon launch a propaganda campaign with the goal of discrediting Planned Parenthood, and, ultimately, restricting women’s health.”

While Planned Parenthood has no proof that Live Action is behind the current series of encounters, Cooney said the group is the most coordinated in their operations and that the recent string of incidents “follows their pattern exactly.”
Planned Parenthood’s attempt here to head off the results before the Live Action releases them was not the first occasion on which it attempted to do so. Planned Parenthood representatives spoke with the Washington Post just a short time before Live Action released the sex trafficking videos showing Planned Parenthood staffers arranging abortions for victims. The abortion business also spoke with the Washington Post to put its spin on the breaking of the story of Komen for the Cure cutting its funding — causing a massive backlash and an eventual reversal in its decision.

A handful of states specifically prohibit sex-selection abortions — Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Illinois — but Planned Parenthood’s representative made it appear the abortion business would have no problem with doing abortions for those reasons. In fact, comments from Planned Parenthood’s representative make some wonder whether the abortion business would ever ask if a woman or couple wanted an abortion for that reason.

“Decisions about whether to choose adoption, end the pregnancy or to raise a child have to be left up to a woman, her family and her faith, with the counsel of her doctor,” Cooney said.

The Post also quoted one Asian-American activist who appeared to oppose legislation to ban sex-selection abortions.

“Abortion restrictions are a non-solution, and Planned Parenthood and others who have been providing necessary women’s health care for gazillions of years are not the perpetuators of the war on women.”

Later, Americans United for Life attorney Anna Franzonello, in a new column at the Washington Times, provided more evidence showing Planned Parenthood may be willing to tolerate such gender-based abortions.

For example, in opposition to a Missouri bill that would ban sex-selection abortions, a Planned Parenthood lobbyist recently testified that the organization “condemns” sex-selection abortions. However, when a legislator asked her to answer whether Planned Parenthood would refuse to perform such abortions if asked by a patient, she dodged the question with political rhetoric. Three times she refused to answer the question, even when asked directly to give a “yes or no” response. Americans United for Life was there, testifying against the discrimination against women inherent in sex-selection abortions.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Leslie Kantor and Dr. Carolyn Westhoff penned an article in which they, too, claimed the abortion chain “condemns” sex selection. However, their article also tellingly admits, “That doesn’t mean we always agree with the decisions made by people who seek our help.” Thus, it appears that in Planned Parenthood-speak, “condemnation” of sex selection does not include “will not participate” in the abortion.

As reported by the Huffington Post, “None of [Planned Parenthood‘s] clinics will deny a woman an abortion based on her reasons for wanting one, except in those states that explicitly prohibit sex-selection abortion.”

It seems fairly clear, despite Planned Parenthood’s claimed “condemnation” of sex selection, it is a willing participant in sex-selection abortions unless it becomes illegal.
Franzonello suggests Planned Parenthood, if it turns out to have been a subject of another undercover expose’, will likely dismiss the probe as biased and misleading rather than answer the charge that it tacitly supports sex-selection abortions.
Predicting the outcome of rumored current investigations, Planned Parenthood has said, “We expect that the materials eventually released will focus on Planned Parenthood’s nonjudgmental discussions with the various women who posed as possible patients [seeking sex-selection abortions].”

Employing the term “nonjudgmental,” Planned Parenthood hopes that readers will think “innocuous” and move on. But step back a second. Think about what “nonjudgmental” is being applied to: “discussions” about killing a baby girl because she is female. Not “judging” gender-based killing is taking a side.

Moreover, engaging in “nonjudgmental” discussions about sex selection undermines Planned Parenthood’s assertion that “Gender bias is contrary to everything our organization works for daily in communities across the country.” The veracity of Planned Parenthood’s statement that it “finds the concept of sex selection deeply unsettling” should be found in any of its “discussions” about sex selection.

The mere fact that Planned Parenthood is mounting a public relations campaign before new allegations of bad behaviors casts doubt on those claims. If Planned Parenthood’s “discussions” were in accord with mainstream American values that reject gender-based killing, it would have nothing to fear from their public release. There would be no story to get in front of, no need for damage control.

What is important, though, is that Planned Parenthood’s participation in this war on women does not end with its “nonjudgmental” discussions. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, appears willing to carry out sex-selection abortions.
If Planned Parenthood is indeed arranging sex-selection abortions for women and couples who want boy babies over girls, the further public damage to its tenuous reputation may be hard to calculate.

Live Action has been instrumental in exposing how the nation’s biggest abortion business covered up cases of statutory rape and sex trafficking by arranging abortions on girls who were victimized. Live Action also exposed how Planned Parenthood would provide erroneous information about fetal development and abortion’s risks and alternatives to women.

Live Action also released videotaped footage of calls to 30 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide in 27 different states where abortion facility staff were asked whether or not mammograms could be performed on site. Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, told the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admitted that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/29/video-planned-parenthood-encourages-woman-to-get-sex-selection-abortion/ 

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