EmpowerShop Pro-life

2011 has been a bad year for Planned Par­ent­hood.  What was once a fairly rep­utable orga­ni­za­tion has now come under close scrutiny. The orga­ni­za­tion once shared a last­ing and ami­ca­ble part­ner­ship with the United States’ gov­ern­ment, but it is now threat­ened to be cut off.  In the most recent turn of events, the leg­isla­tive body which has been grant­ing Planned Par­ent­hood fed­eral money for years has now ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion into the orga­ni­za­tion.  The tides are begin­ning to turn, but Planned Par­ent­hood is not going to go down easily.

Planned Par­ent­hood and their many friends, whether they are in the media or pol­i­tics, have expressed their con­cern and out­rage over the inves­ti­ga­tion call­ing it an abuse of gov­ern­men­tal power used to push an agenda.  What is amaz­ing, how­ever, is how quickly these peo­ple seem to have for­got­ten what Planned Par­ent­hood has done to prompt this action by Con­gress.  The inves­ti­ga­tion is not focused on the issue of abor­tion, but on whether Planned Par­ent­hood is being respon­si­ble with the money given to them and if they are observ­ing the stip­u­la­tions under which they received the money.  Some may ques­tion the intent of the Repub­li­can law­mak­ers but, whether there is intent or not, Con­gress is per­fectly jus­ti­fied in its investigations.

Far from pur­su­ing a polit­i­cal agenda, the Repub­li­can law­mak­ers are con­fronting prob­lems that have become sys­tem­atic within the orga­ni­za­tion of Planned Par­ent­hood.  In doing so, they made three sim­ple requests of the orga­ni­za­tion.  One of the three requests was merely ask­ing Planned Par­ent­hood to pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion on how they adhere to laws con­cern­ing fed­eral fund­ing and abor­tion.  Con­gress has every right to exam­ine those they fund to deter­mine that the rules for fund­ing are being fol­lowed and this request is exactly that.  The other two requests are very spe­cific towards Planned Parenthood’s actions, how­ever.  The first of these two requests was that Planned Par­ent­hood pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion con­cern­ing past audits, their fail­ures in said audits, and their response to those fail­ures. This request is not being made as a stan­dard pro­ce­dure, but was inspired by Planned Parenthood’s mul­ti­ple mis­deeds with their funding.

It is not uncom­mon for an orga­ni­za­tion to per­haps miss a few details here and there, but Planned Par­ent­hood has had more than just a cou­ple of finan­cial mis­steps.  Planned Par­ent­hood has been audited for mul­ti­ple instances of over­charg­ing the gov­ern­ment by the mil­lions.  In many cases they over­charged the gov­ern­ment for what they defined as fam­ily plan­ning ser­vices when, in fact, the ser­vices were not fam­ily plan­ning.  Instances of this led to the gov­ern­ment being over­charged by over 17 mil­lion in New York and nearly 3 mil­lion in New Jer­sey.  Planned Par­ent­hood has also over­charged the gov­ern­ment for the price of con­tra­cep­tives.  Instances of this amounted to the gov­ern­ment being over­charged by over 600, 000 dol­lars in Wash­ing­ton and 5 mil­lion in Cal­i­for­nia.  Cur­rently, how­ever, a for­mer Planned Par­ent­hood employee now claims that Planned Par­ent­hood was over­charg­ing the gov­ern­ment for reim­burse­ments by 180 mil­lion in Cal­i­for­nia, although this case is still in progress.  Also in the recent news, the New York Times reported in 2010 that Planned Par­ent­hood Golden Gate in Cal­i­for­nia was fac­ing an audit by the crim­i­nal divi­sion of the I.R.S. after an unnamed employee reported finan­cial mis­deeds by the orga­ni­za­tion.  This has hap­pened to many times for it to go over­looked.  Planned Par­ent­hood has scammed or attempted to scam mil­lions out of the Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers and Con­gress has a duty to inves­ti­gate this.

Not only does Planned Par­ent­hood have a his­tory of mis­man­ag­ing the government’s money, but they also have had issues fol­low­ing numer­ous laws.  Con­gress’ third request to exam­ine Planned Parenthood’s poli­cies and pro­ce­dures regard­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and report­ing of crim­i­nal acts should not come as any sur­prise to Planned Par­ent­hood.  Even if their offi­cial pol­icy is to report crim­i­nal behav­ior, there have been numer­ous instances of them not doing so.  Due to the pro-life orga­ni­za­tion Live Action’s work, mul­ti­ple instances of dis­re­gard of the law were found.

Start­ing in 2008, Live Action began its inves­ti­ga­tions into the more than ques­tion­able prac­tices of Planned Par­ent­hood. This inves­ti­ga­tion, which used under­cover videos of actors pos­ing as young girls, revealed that Planned Par­ent­hood was sys­tem­at­i­cally cov­er­ing up sex­ual abuse.  It was not one iso­lated inci­dent, nor two, but 10 cases in 6 dif­fer­ent states of Planned Par­ent­hood explic­itly cov­er­ing up the sex­ual abuse of girls.  The videos clearly show Planned Par­ent­hood work­ers choos­ing not to report statu­tory rape but, instead, pro­ceed­ing with busi­ness as usual.

Three years later, sadly, not much had changed.  In Jan­u­ary 2011, Live Action exe­cuted and released a sec­ond inves­ti­ga­tion into Planned Parenthood’s bla­tant dis­re­gard for the sex­u­ally abused.  In this inves­ti­ga­tion, which again used under­cover videos, actors posed as pimps and pros­ti­tutes seek­ing abor­tions, con­tra­cep­tives or test­ing for whom, they made quite clear, were under­age pros­ti­tutes.  In this inves­ti­ga­tion, Planned Par­ent­hood was caught once again not only cov­er­ing up the sex­ual abuse of minors, but aid­ing the “pimps” in their abuse by giv­ing them ille­gal advice.  Again, this was not an iso­lated inci­dent, but 6 clin­ics in 4 states where these abuses took place.

Live Action’s work was not alone, how­ever, in uncov­er­ing Planned Parenthood’s bla­tant dis­re­gard of the law. In 2005, Planned Par­ent­hood Golden Gate admit­ted to cov­er­ing up the statu­tory rape of an 11-year-old girl in 1999 by her 17-year-old boyfriend.  In 2002, a north­ern Cal­i­forn­ian Planned Par­ent­hood referred a 13-year-old girl for an abor­tion, but failed to report that she was impreg­nated by her father.  Planned Par­ent­hood South­west Ohio was involved in two law­suits for cov­er­ing up sex­ual abuse.  In the first case Planned Par­ent­hood once again failed to report the statu­tory rape of a young girl by her father and in the sec­ond case they failed to notify the par­ents of a 13-year-old girl whose abor­tion was paid for by her 22-year-old soc­cer coach.  In 2008, West Hart­ford Planned Par­ent­hood in Con­necti­cut admin­is­tered an abor­tion to a 14-year-old girl who was brought into the clinic by her abduc­tor who had impreg­nated her while she was kid­napped, but Planned Par­ent­hood failed to report her con­di­tion.  The instances of dis­re­gard for the law are too large in num­ber to over­look.  If any­thing, this inves­ti­ga­tion is com­ing much later than it should have.

Just because cer­tain mem­bers of Con­gress and the media either ignore the evi­dence or are igno­rant of it does not mean it does not exist. Evi­dence of both the finan­cial over-billings, as well as the sex­ual abuse cover up are cer­ti­fi­able and open to the pub­lic, and the fact that we have a Con­gress that will act upon this is not a case of polit­i­cal abuse, but polit­i­cal respon­si­bil­ity.  With such glar­ing proof that money is being mis­man­aged and laws are being dis­re­garded, the gov­ern­ment has more than the right and respon­si­bil­ity to inves­ti­gate the orga­ni­za­tions funded by our tax­payer money.  And if Planned Par­ent­hood were truly inno­cent, one would think this inves­ti­ga­tion would not be an issue for them.  But for some rea­son it is an issue as they have attacked those behind the inves­ti­ga­tion sharply. Per­haps some­one has a guilty conscience.

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