Planned Parenthood’s latest walk down scandalous lane was brought to light when Live Action’s pro-life student team released an undercover video exposing a Birmingham Planned Parenthood’s violation of Alabama state laws.
Parental-consent abortion requirements and mandatory reporting of sexual conduct between an adult and a minor clearly weren’t on the Birmingham clinic’s to-do list. In the video, a Planned Parenthood worker responds to an alleged 14-year-old’s request for an abortion (of a baby supposedly conceived with her 31-year-old boyfriend) by stating “Whatever you tell us stays within these walls,” and “As long as you consented to having sex with him, there’s nothing we can truly do about that.” The worker also suggests consent may be provided by someone who “has to have the same last name” (but may not necessarily be a parent or legal guardian) and adds that the health center manager sometimes “does bend rules a little bit.” No regard is paid to either the fact that sex between an adult and a 14-year-old is a felony in Alabama and must be immediately reported or the notion that only a parent or legal guardian may provide written consent for a minor’s abortion.
The clinic has since been placed on probation, and a report by the Alabama Department of Public Health reveals that multiple underage girls have received abortions at the Birmingham clinic without appropriate certification of parental consent. My question to is: Where is the commentary from the National Organization for Women, America’s self-proclaimed “largest, most comprehensive feminist advocacy group in the United States?”
The answer is simple: NOW is in temporary ignore-what-doesn’t-suit-us hibernation. Don’t worry, they’ll be sure to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next time a pro-family commercial hits the air, a content stay-at-home mom calls herself a feminist, or Sarah Palin has the audacity to utter that dreaded, ghastly four-letter word known as life. But let’s cut the NOW activists a little slack. They may be busy working on part two of Fighting the Right Wing. Your teenage daughter’s well-being will just have to wait.
Planned Parenthood’s abortion agenda couldn’t fit more comfortably into NOW’s single-issue movement. The cold facts with respect to Planned Parenthood’s persistent medical misinformation and aversion to the law are about as welcome in NOW’s hierarchy as the fact that the mother of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, was staunchly pro-life. NOW will never prioritize the health and welfare of women over its unwavering allegiance to the pro-abortion dogma they’ve designated as feminist. The winner in this equation is the pro-abortion movement. In fact, Planned Parenthood bagged $349.6 million in government grants and contracts from 2007-2008.
Bottom line: Make sure that the supposed women’s advocacy group or family planning center you lend your support to isn’t playing corrupt, single-issue games at the expense of America’s future female leaders. Empty words, partisanship, and convenient hibernation shouldn’t have a home in any organization your daughters and granddaughters might be inclined to look up to.
Jedediah Bila is a conservative columnist and commentator living in New York City. For more information on Jedediah, please visit http://jedediahbila.com/.