Planned Parenthood’s national office has been carefully reviewing the summary of a report that charges the organization with concealing the sexual abuse of minors, a spokeswoman said after receiving a copy of the allegations from WorldNetDaily.
After more than a week of seeking a reply, however, spokeswoman Adina Wingate Quijada said yesterday that WND would not get a response from Planned Parenthood.
“There won’t be any statement,” said Wingate Quijada in a short phone conversation that she abruptly ended. “We’ve also read what WorldNetDaily has written on this issue.”
WND reported May 21 that researchers with Denton, Texas-based Life Dynamics, Inc. found “irrefutable evidence” that abortion-rights organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation “knowingly conceal” the crimes of sexual abuse of minors “while aiding and abetting the sexual predators who commit them.”
A Life Dynamics researcher – portraying a 13-year-old girl made pregnant by a 22-year-old boyfriend – called 800 Planned Parenthood and NAF facilities nationwide. The caller told the clinics that she wanted an abortion “because she and her boyfriend did not want her parents to find out about the sexual relationship,” an eight-page summary of the report stated.
Among the findings, according to the summary, was that many clinic workers acknowledged the girl’s situation was illegal and that they were required by law to report it, but an “overwhelming majority readily agreed” to keep secret the illegal sexual contact.
Life Dynamics said in 91 percent of their calls the person they reached at the center agreed to conceal the statutory rape.
The National Abortion Federation did not respond to calls by WorldNetDaily last week seeking comment. Messages left this week also were not returned.
Prior to today’s contact, Wingate Quijada told WND the matter of responding to the charges was “out of her hands” while two of her colleagues examined the report summary.
“If this is all true, action must be taken,” Family Research Council spokeswoman Kristin Hansen told WorldNetDaily. “The funding for these clinics should be denied, an investigation should go forward, and the Department of Justice must get involved.”
A Justice Department representative who specializes in crimes against children replied to WND that she could not comment on the report and said if crimes were involved such a matter would be investigated by the FBI.
FBI spokeswoman Angela Bell said the agency has investigated online pornography and consequent exploitation of minors, but is not aware of any sexual abuse reporting problems with respect to Planned Parenthood. The allegations by Life Dynamics would be a state and local matter unless it could be established that there is a cross-state “nexus” of crime, she told WND.
Connecticut chief attorney Jack Bailey said Planned Parenthood is in violation of the law, after listening to tapes of phone calls made to centers by Life Dynamics, according to WTIC-TV in Hartford, Conn.
One call was made to a center in West Hartford, Conn., reported WTIC-TV, which said it phoned the facilities Life Dynamics claims are heard on the tapes and verified certain aspects, such as names of employees and the tones on the numbers dialed.
Planned Parenthood: “You just gave me more information than what I needed, OK.”
Girl: “Oh.”
Planned Parenthood: “Which was not a good thing, OK. The fact that your boyfriend is 22 and the fact you’re 14, that makes us mandated, we’re mandated reporters. That means we have to report that.”
Girl: “So if you didn’t know, it would be OK?”
Planned Parenthood: “It’s not that it’s OK, it’s just what we don’t know, we don’t know.”
Planned Parenthood insists its policy and practice are in line with Connecticut’s child welfare reporting obligations.
In its mission statement, however, the national organization says it believes in the “fundamental right of each individual, throughout the world, to manage his or her fertility, regardless of the individual’s income, marital status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or residence.”
The group’s mission statement further says, “No one should be denied abortion services solely because of age, or economic or social circumstances.”
After hearing tapes and examining other data gathered by Life Dynamics, there was no indication “that there was any effort to warn these kids that it’s statutory rape if these young girls are impregnated by adult men,” said Ed Szymkowiak, national director of STOPP International, an organization of parents against Planned Parenthood.
“People have speculated about this in the past, but he went out and got the evidence,” he said of Life Dynamics President Mark Crutcher. “The evidence is there.”
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