Abortion Foe's Planned Parenthood YouTube Trap Is Dishonest and Pointless

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.

The Los Angeles Times has a story about a 20-something abortion foe who videotapes counseling sessions at Planned Parenthood clinics in which she poses as a 13-year-old impregnated by an older man:

The aide explains that the girl will need a parent's consent because she is only 13.

The girl balks; she does not want to name the father.

"Cause, I mean, he would be in really big trouble," says the girl. Her boyfriend, she explains, is 31.

The aide drops her head into her hands.

"In the state of Indiana," says the aide, "when anyone has had intercourse and they are age 13 or younger...it has to be reported to Child Protective Services."

There is a 60-second gap in the tape, according to the running timer on the video. What happens next is meant to be explosive.

"OK," says the aide, "I didn't hear the age. I don't want to know the age. It could be reported as rape. And that's child abuse."

"So if I just say I don't know who the father was, but he's one of the guys at school or something?" asks the girl.

"Right," says the aide, who has just stepped into a carefully laid trap.

After posting these videos on YouTube and campaigning with them throughout the netherworld of the antiabortion movement, Lila Rose has succeeded in getting state and local governments to cut of hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding to Planned Parenthood clinics. She has also created a public relations nightmare for the group. NB: The aides who violated rules by telling the "girl" to lie about the father have been fired as they were violating Planned Parenthood rules. She's made herself a heroine in the antiabortion movement.

I have three questions for prosecutors who are now considering investigations into the Planned Parenthood operations in some of the six states where Rose posed as something she was not:

1. Why don't they investigate Rose for trespassing, fraud, and whatever other law she violated by posing as something she was not to make the videos?

2. Why don't state authorities prosecute her for violating state privacy laws by videotaping private counseling sessions? According to the L.A. Times:

In May 2007, Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles accused Rose of breaking state privacy laws when she secretly taped her interactions. It demanded she remove the videos from her website, which she did, though they are still easily found on YouTube. (Arizona, Indiana, and Tennessee, where she went next, have less restrictive privacy laws.)

3. Since antiabortion foes will never succeed in banning abortion (they got as close as they will ever get with eight years of George Bush in the White House, and he left office as the worst president in American history) why don't they just go away?

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