Planned Parenthood fears it has been stung again – this time on sex selective abortions
Planned Parenthood thinks it has been the target of another pro-life undercover sting, this one on sex selective abortions.
On April 23 Planned Parenthood’s Vice President of Education Leslie Kantor and Senior Medical Advisor Carolyn Westhoff coauthored an attempt to preempt an exposé they think may be coming in an RH Reality Check op ed:
In recent weeks people who oppose Planned Parenthood… have been conducting a secret, nationwide hoax campaign in an attempt to undermine women’s access to services.
For years opponents of reproductive health and rights have used secret videotaping tactics with fictitious patient scenarios and selective editing to promote falsehoods about Planned Parenthood’s mission, services, and policies. Recently, one group has escalated these hoax visits in many states, apparently using secret recorders while inquiring about sex selection abortions. We anticipate that this group, likely in coordination with a broad range of anti-choice leaders, will soon launch a propaganda campaign with the goal of discrediting Planned Parenthood….
As a women’s rights advocate for nearly 100 years, Planned Parenthood finds the concept of sex selection deeply unsettling. Planned Parenthood does not offer sex determination services; our ultrasound services are limited to medical purposes.
Gender bias is contrary to everything our organization works for…. Planned Parenthood condemns sex selection motivated by gender bias, and urges leaders to challenge the underlying conditions that lead to these beliefs and practices, including addressing the social, legal, economic, and political conditions that promote gender bias and lead some to value one gender over the other.
From the questions that were repeatedly asked in these recent hoax visits, we expect that the materials eventually released will focus on Planned Parenthood’s non-judgmental discussions with the various women who posed as possible patients. So, we would like to address that subject directly.
Planned Parenthood insists on the highest professional standards, which among other things means we offer nonjudgmental, confidential care in accordance with relevant laws. That doesn’t mean we always agree with the decisions made by people who seek our help, but it does mean that we realize that we can’t know all of the circumstances faced by any patient and that requiring women to justify the care they seek is a dangerous health care model for an organization….
Planned Parenthood has extensive guidelines and training requirements for all staff who may encounter difficult or unusual questions, such as those posed by the hoax patients. If a health center learns of an instance where a staff member has not fully followed policies or procedures, swift action is taken to remedy the situation. Our rigorous and ongoing training and quality assurance help identify potential issues, and all health centers respond to any training or personnel needs with professionalism and respect. Planned Parenthood cares about staff, and conducts retraining or other personnel action responsibly.
The obvious investigative organization would be Live Action, which has conducted numerous revealing stings against Planned Parenthood. I asked Lila Rose if Live Action was behind a sex selective sting and received this response:
Live Action’s policy is not to comment on or confirm ongoing investigative research until its conclusion and public release.
So we shall see. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood can’t have it both ways. Planned Parenthood cannot say abortion is amoral yet “condemn[] sex selection motivated by gender bias.”
Either abortion has the underlying moral problem of killing a human being, or no form or reason for it it can be condemned, including killing preborn females. Even acknowledging that those being aborted have a gender is problematic, because it is acknowledging that abortion kills boys and girls.
In fact, abortion only escalates gender bias against women. It decreases the female population, creating stronger patriarchal societies that express even more bias against women. It also increases sex trafficking, since women become rare commodities.
One final note. Huffington Post needs to correct a story. In an April 23 piece reporting on the feared sting Laura Bassett wrote:
HuffPost’s Ryan Grim reported in February 2011 that Live Action heavily edited the videos they gathered to alter the meaning of conversations and falsely imply that Planned Parenthood is complicit in sex trafficking….
This is false. In fact, Live Action released unedited videos from all seven locations it investigated. It went so far as to submit all unedited tapes to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, for what that was worth.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
They are against sex-selection abortion? Is PP *gasp* judging one of the reasons women choose abortion? I thought that was biggest ever no-no of the pro-choice movement.
Oh PP, here they are with the usual racist things, just like the racist founder Margaret Sanger.
What a complete mass of contradictions. Women should have “free choice”, we “respect” women’s judgment. Well folks, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Its like legalizing car theft, and then specifying you don’t support cars being stolen for certain reasons, while other reasons are perfectly acceptable.
Why is sex selection any less acceptable than any other reason?
The gods do indeed punish man by answering their prayers.
Well, here’s hoping they have been stung again. I don’t care how they try to rationalize it; sex selection will make them look even worse than they already do.
Amen to this!!
Either abortion has the underlying moral problem of killing a human being or no form or reason for it it can be condemned, including killing preborn females. Even acknowledging that those being aborted have a gender is problematic, because it is acknowledging that abortion kills boys and girls.
Looks like another one of Planned Parenthood’s preemptive strikes (as Jill discussed in a previous entry).
This sting sounds like it could be the most revealing of all. Live Action’s previous work either examined criminal activity or fact checked misleading statements by Planned Parenthood executives. In theory, Planned Parenthood’s willingness to participate in criminal activity could be considered isolated incidents or be corrected by better training of its staff. I personally don’t think that either of these explanations hold water given the number of times it has happened, how long it has been going on, the contradictory statements made by the PR team, and the blatant disregard for common sense. But the point still stands that, in theory, this isn’t necessarily how abortion clinics are supposed to work. As for the fact checking videos, sadly it seems that very few people actually care about facts.
With this new investigation, however, what Planned Parenthood is doing would be completely legal. It would fit in perfectly with the ideology that abortion should always be an available choice for the pregnant woman (regardless of her reasons for seeking one). The only problem, of course, is that this ideology directly contradicts the idea of women’s empowerment when it leads to the deliberate destruction of women in utero. Given that the abortion lobby (which is tightly tied to Obama’s campaign) has invested a lot of time and money castigating pro-lifers for engaging a “war on women”, it would really blow their credibility if they were found participating in sex selection.
Roe v. Wade gave them just enough rope to hang themselves.
I frequently focus on just the subject and verb in statements, to get a more fundamental sense of what’s going on.
Doing that with this post’s header left me with a very satisfied smile on my face just now.
The choice of photo widened that smile as well. :)
Ruh–roh, Raggy!
W#hat happened to abortion on demand, without apology?
They have long claimed that women (or women and their Doctors) always make the best decisions regarding pregnancy outcomes, or failing that at least better decisions than the state. If they admit there are some cases where that’s not true, it leads to doubts about all other cases.
Killing inchoate human life in general is just dandy, and killing “one’s own” particular instance of an inchoate human life is fine, regardless of its gender. The value of that life is entirely in the eye of the beholder. But let that beholder wear gender-colored glasses, and all of a sudden the subjective evaluation of that life — celebrated hitherto as the sine qua non of “choice” — is spoken of by these same celebrants in terms of objective wrong.
That pro-aborts clumsily dance to the tune off their own philosophical incoherence — with their big floppy clown shoes on — is pathetic testimony to the power of delusion to discourage repentance. What was it Paul said to the Romans concerning some, that God “gave them over” to the lie? ”Have it your way; if you reject the truth, enjoy your embrace of evil as much as it offers what you take for joy. Best of luck with that.”
O Pro-Life, where is thy sting? Right here. Smile for the camera.
”Live Action’s previous work either examined criminal activity”
Remind me of how many criminal prosecutions and convictions have occurred as a result of Lila’s sting videos.
And another question – In the states where women are required to view their pre-abortion ultrasound and doctors required to read from a state prepared script, is the doctor required to disclose the sex of the child? Because if so, that actually could encourage the woman to go ahead with the termination. Be careful what you wish for.
And my opinion on sex selection abortion – not a problem. A woman should be able to abort for any reason and at any time.
And Rasqual – Please try to understand that not all women march to the beat of your god.
Have a wonderful weekend CC!!
We(as in you and I)are supposed to get some white stuff in the morning. But no accumulation. :)
CC,
So apparently you have no problem with the deliberate destruction of women, only because they are women. The ultimate in sexism. Well, at least you are consistent.
I thought women were advancing. Sounds like if anything, we are on our way back to the Dark Ages.
“So apparently you have no problem with the deliberate destruction of women, only because they are women. The ultimate in sexism. Well, at least you are consistent.
I thought women were advancing. Sounds like if anything, we are on our way back to the Dark Ages.”
Right on Mary. And to think, pro-choicers try to claim that we’re the ones sending us back to the dark ages…
I honestly can’t understand why people would be okay with gender selection abortions. Pro-choicers scream “It’s a woman’s right to choose!” Well guess what. When sex selection abortion is done it is usually done on a female child. Where the heck is that female’s right to live and choose? What happens when there aren’t enough females because they are getting killed before they are even born. Who then is going to keep chanting their mantra of death? Will they recruit males to do that? Oh but wait… males can’t get pregnant so they don’t have any say in the matter. *sarcasm*
We are already seeing what happens in countries where sex selection abortion is often practiced. In China and India there is a disproportionate amount of men to women. There aren’t enough women for the men. Families want males to carry on their name but they are finding that, carrying on their name is really hard to do when they can’t find a wife because of the lack of females. In India the ratio is 914 girls to 1000 boys. While this may not seem all too staggering it is even lower in some individual districts of India and it seems the number of girls are dropping, not increasing.
Even if it wasn’t for the lack of women to carry on their countries next generation, sex selection is caused by the thinking that one gender is more important. Which is, like Mary put it, sexism. This gender discrimination is running so deeply that in India girls that managed to escape abortion are being named things like Nakusa” or “Nakushi” which is Hindi for “Unwanted” India is finally realizing this and just this past October one district in India held a ceremony that allowed hundreds of girl to change their names from “Unwanted” to something of their choice. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44998378/ns/world_news-wonderful_world/t/name-changers-indian-girls-no-longer-unwanted/
Remind me of how many criminal prosecutions and convictions have occurred as a result of Lila’s sting videos.
I already did this one on another thread. For some strange reason, I don’t think it would be very productive to repeat myself.
And another question – In the states where women are required to view their pre-abortion ultrasound and doctors required to read from a state prepared script, is the doctor required to disclose the sex of the child? Because if so, that actually could encourage the woman to go ahead with the termination. Be careful what you wish for.
Probably not, given that ultrasound alone doesn’t reach 100% accuracy until 20 weeks. Most of these states have also banned abortions after 20 weeks, rendering that a moot point.
And my opinion on sex selection abortion – not a problem. A woman should be able to abort for any reason and at any time.
Again, I appreciate your honesty. Selective destruction of baby girls still seems antithetical to women’s empowerment, but at any rate I’ll be looking forward to the video release.
> Even acknowledging that those being aborted have a gender . . .
This is just made up. Show me where the statement quoted above says anything like this. Even if did, though, if would still be faulty logic on Jill’s part: just like rasqual’s clown imagery doesn’t provide reliable information about what PP is doing, the fact of someone making a sexist choice doesn’t provide any information about the objects of that choice. Kind of like, if you do anti-Semitic things in the forest and no one witnesses them, they’re still anti-Semitic. Or how if you choose not to hire someone because you think they’re Jewish, it’s still anti-Semitism even if they turn out not to be Jewish.
> Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood can’t have it both ways. Planned Parenthood cannot say abortion is amoral yet “condemn[] sex selection motivated by gender bias.”
Yes they can, and so can you. Think of all those liquor companies that encourage us to drink responsibly, as if there might be irresponsible ways of using morally neutral beverages. Or how about this: would it be nonsensical for firearms manufacturers to express sorrow that some of their morally neutral products have been used in certain ways? Or take an example inspired by some Christian theologies: would it be self-contradictory for the God who gave humans free will—a morally neutral capacity, at least, if not a positive good—to admit that humans are able to misuse their free will? Or are there no grounds on which that God could condemn any human actions, once free will has been given?
PP is condemning gender prejudice, and Mary and Courtnay used pro-choice slogans to mock them for it, but those slogans nevertheless accurately characterize what PP is doing with regard to abortion, insofar as laws permit them to: respecting the decisions of individuals and providing them with a morally neutral procedure, without harassing them first over whether their hearts are in the right place. Because even if you happen to be sexist, you should still get to make your own medical decisions.
Lap–please don’t tell me you just wrote that abortion is a “morally neutral procedure.” Please. Because you are going to make me hurl.
Guns ARE morally neutral. By themselves, they hurt no one. They can, but not always.
Liquor IS morally neutral. By itself, in moderation, it hurts no one. It can, but not always.
ABORTION IS NEVER morally neutral. It ALWAYS kills a baby girl or baby boy, not to mention what PP will never admit it does to the abortive mother.
So this is where we are: I get to kill my weaker offspring with the law behind me. Which somehow transflorms murder into (this is PRICELESS): a “morally neutral porcedure.” Where were you, Lap, when the Mighty Sparkly Unicorn of Love handed out hearts? (though I guess that means you don’t have to really worry about whether yours is in the right place.)
LOVE when these folks show up. Just keep talking. I got a long night ahead of me in the library.
CC: “Rasqual – Please try to understand that not all women march to the beat of your god.”
Funny, Xalisae’s never complained when folks make comments that don’t seem to have her particular beliefs about God (nor not-God) in mind.
Is it all about you, CC?
I love watching the pro-aborts squirm on this issue. Thanks for showing up for this thread lap:)
Courtnay, I was pointing out that the pro-choice position on sex selective abortion isn’t self-contradictory in the ways proposed by you, Jill, Mary, and rasqual. I haven’t forgotten you don’t accept that abortion is morally neutral in and of itself.