Abortionists defend agreeing to target blacks

The Ohio branch of the leading player in the nation's abortion industry, Planned Parenthood, is blaming the callers for a fiasco in which a local official was caught on tape agreeing to take a donation designated to eliminate blacks.

WND has reported previously on the work of Lila Rose, editor of the Los Angeles-based Advocate, who has conducted several undercover investigations of Planned Parenthood.

In one taped interview, an Idaho official for Planned Parenthood said it was "understandable" that a donor would want to contribute to abortions targeting blacks so that his own, presumably white, child would have less competition in college.

In the Ohio case, a wire report now has characterized those recorded interviews as "prank phone calls." The report also quotes a spokeswoman for the "health care provider" saying they were just an "attempt to portray Planned Parenthood as racist."

The Associated Press report said the caller to a Columbus, Ohio, clinic "asks a receptionist if he can make a donation that will be used to underwrite abortions on minorities because there are 'definitely way too many black people in Ohio.'"

The response from Planned Parenthood's employee? "OK, whatever."

Now Columbus Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Stephanie Tresso has told the AP the conversation took place, but accused the callers of "just another attempt … to discredit the organization."

Tresso also alleged the audio has been edited to exclude the receptionist's comments "that the contribution would be used for black women or any woman in need."

"It was quite an unprofessional call that she received, and she struggled with how to address it," Tresso told AP. "She filed an incident report and notified her supervisor, which she was supposed to do. Her supervisor then notified other Planned Parenthoods, and we realized that this was happening all over the country and it was an organized effort."

Rose told AP the conversations simply reflected Planned Parenthood's agreement with racist requests.

"They could have hung up, they could have disagreed, they could have said 'No, we don't discriminate,' but not a single clinic did that, and that's disturbing and shocking."

Shortly after the audio recordings by the Advocate were released and started appearing on YouTube, a coalition of black leaders demonstrated in Washington demanding that Congress defund Planned Parenthood.

"African-Americans are having abortions at a hugely disproportionate rate according to their population, and Planned Parenthood has no shame whatsoever in accepting money that specifically targets our community," said Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union.

The protesters, mobilized by the group Students for Life, demanded Congress stop funding Planned Parenthood, which received more than $336 million in government grants and contracts in the most recent fiscal year, according to the organization's annual report.

The leaders presented documentation of the Advocate investigation revealing a willingness to accept a donation for an abortion based on race.

"Planned Parenthood's questionable, and possibly criminal, business practices are having a profound effect on African-American communities all across this nation," the leaders wrote.

The Advocate's Idaho investigation recorded an actor wanting to make a donation and a woman identified as Autumn Kersey, vice president of marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho.

Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely.

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Actor: Like the black community for example?

Planned Parenthood: Certainly.

Actor: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.

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Actor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don't want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.

Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don't, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.

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Actor: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college.

Planned Parenthood: All right. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I've had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I'm excited, and want to make sure I don't leave anything out.

Hear conversations with Planned Parenthood staffers

WND earlier reported on another investigation in which Rose posed as a 15-year-old seeking an abortion at a Planned Parenthood center in Santa Monica, Calif. A Planned Parenthood staffer suggested Rose could say she was 16 and avoid complications.

"Well, just figure out a birth date that works. And I don't know anything," the staffer said.

The Texas-based pro-life group Life Dynamics previously conducted an extensive undercover project in which an adult volunteer posing as a 13-year-old called every Planned Parenthood clinic in the U.S., saying she was pregnant by a 22-year-old boyfriend. Almost without exception, the clinics advised her to obtain an abortion without her parents' knowledge and told her how to protect her boyfriend, who would be guilty in any state of statutory rape.

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger supported eugenics through birth control to cull people she considered unfit from the population. In 1921, she said eugenics is "the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems."

At one point, Sanger lamented "the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all." Another time, Sanger wrote, "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."