| Planned Parenthood Escapes Legal Charges after Now-Former Employee Caught Covering up Rape Planned Parenthood announced Wednesday that it has fired the abortion clinic employee caught on tape covering up the statutory rape of a 13-year-old. However, Child Protective Services have said they will not prosecute the woman because the girl she illegally advised had only posed as a youngster who had been raped, and no rape had actually occurred. Lila Rose, a 20-year-old UCLA student, brought an undercover camera to the Bloomington clinic, and footage released on the Internet last week showed her posing as a 13-year-old seeking an abortion after having relations with a 31-year-old man. Though presented with a clear case of statutory rape punishable as a felony under Indiana state law, the nurse assured Rose that she would not report the affair to Child Protective Services in spite of her obligation to do so. "Okay, I didn't hear the age [of the 31-year-old]. I don't want to know the age," the nurse told Rose. In the video she then instructs Rose how to obtain a secret abortion by crossing state lines to avoid Indiana's parental consent law. The nurse also suggests covering for the 31-year-old man by saying he is only 14. She says, "You've seen him around, you know he's 14, he's in your grade and whatever. You know what I mean." (To see the Live Action video, go to: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2113345/indiana_planned_parent) Steve Vaughn, director of the Indiana Department of Child Services, told the Indiana Daily Student that child services will not pursue charges against the employee because there was not an actual minor involved when she broke the law. "Since there was no minor involved, that takes us out of the picture," Vaughn said. Vaughn also said that, had the case been real, the department would have pressed charges against the employee privately and not involved Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) issued a statement yesterday asserting that "a thorough internal review of this matter has taken place" and that "the health center assistant shown in the video is no longer employed by PPIN." It is uncertain whether Monroe County prosecutor Chris Gaal will pursue charges. Gaal was not available for comment as of press time. Rose's documentation caught the attention of several news media outlets, and she appeared on FOX News' O'Reilly Factor last week to discuss the scandal. Recently she told the Daily Student she was discouraged by authorities' hands-off attitude toward the employee as well as their compliance in letting Planned Parenthood absolve themselves of guilt. "Planned Parenthood is blaming the cover-up on a single woman, and that's wrong," Rose said. "I think they need to be convicted for their many abuses." Rose said she wants authorities to investigate Planned Parenthood in response to proliferating evidence that the taxpayer-funded institution routinely disobeys the law. Rose and her organization, Live Action Films, have exposed similar abuses by the abortion giant in the past and say that they plan to release more condemning footage as part of what she calls the "Mona Lisa Project." "The Mona Lisa Project is ... meant to illustrate the wide-spread problem," Rose said. "For them to not recognize that it's their ideology, they need to be convicted as an organization." Contact: Kathleen Gilbert Source: LifeSiteNews.com Source URL: http://www.lifesitenews.com Publish Date: December 11, 2008 Link to this article: |
December 12, 2008
Planned Parenthood Escapes Legal Charges
Health Plan for Students that Covers Abortion
| Catholic University of San Francisco Develops Health Plan for Students that Covers Abortion The University of San Francisco (USF), a Catholic institution, has a new student health insurance policy that provides coverage for abortion. Full-time USF undergraduate students are automatically enrolled in the university's plan unless they request a waiver and are able to prove that they have other, comparable insurance. According to the plan document, which is available on the USF website, the student health insurance was "developed especially for eligible University of San Francisco students and their eligible dependents." In other words, it appears that the USF coverage was included in a custom policy developed for the Catholic institution. The Catholic Key, the newspaper of the diocese of Kansas City – St. Joseph, first reported this story on its Internet blog and notes that there is nothing in California law that would require USF to provide coverage for abortion. The Cardinal Newman Society, which works to promote the renewal of Catholic higher education, calls on USF president Father Stephen Privett to immediately take action to remove the abortion coverage. "Given the importance of life issues for Catholics, it is stunning that USF's student health program would pay for abortions," said Patrick Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society. "I pray that this was a mistake and not a willful action of the Catholic university, but regardless of how the abortion coverage ended up in the policy, it clearly cannot remain." Contact: Adam Wilson Source: The Cardinal Newman Society Source URL: http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/ Publish Date: December 12, 2008 Link to this article: |
London Hands Out the Pill to Teens
| London Hands Out the Pill to Teens without Prescription Women in London soon will be able to get birth-control pills without a prescription in an effort to reduce the number of teen pregnancies, The Telegraph reported. Starting next month, women as young as 16 can obtain the pill in the two areas of London that report some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country: Southwark and Lambeth. Officials say the initiative then may be implemented throughout England. Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said there are good reasons a physician's visit typically is required before a woman goes on the pill. "An accurate medical history and physical are important to assess her level of risk in taking this drug," she said. "To bypass this protective measure — especially with teenage girls who may not be aware of their medical risks — is unwise and may be harmful." Earll also warned that birth-control pills do nothing to stop sexually transmitted infections, which have reached epidemic levels around the world. Source: CitizenLink Source URL: http://www.citizenlink.org Publish Date: December 11, 2008 Link to this article: |
Guidance on Issues of Procreation, Medical Research
| Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of a Person), an Instruction from the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on ethical issues arising from biomedical research, provides guidance on how to respect human life and human procreation in our heavily scientific age, said Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. "We welcome the Instruction as theologians, medical personnel, researchers and married couples consider new scientific and medical procedures that have profound ethical implications bearing upon the procreation of children and the integrity of marriage," Cardinal George said in a December 12 statement. "We applaud developments which advance medical progress with respect for the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception," he said. "We oppose discarding or manipulating innocent lives to benefit future generations, or promoting the creation of new human life in depersonalized ways that substitute for the loving union between a husband and wife." Dignitas Personae can be found at http://www.usccb.org/comm/Dignitaspersonae/ |
Condemning Cloning, Embryonic Stem Cell Research
| Vatican Condemns Cloning, Embryonic Stem Cell Research The Vatican, in its first authoritative statement on reproductive science in more than 20 years, today condemned human cloning, designer babies, embryonic stem cell research that destroys human embryos, and a host of techniques widely used to help infertile couples. The sweeping 32-page document, which comes from the Catholic Church's highest rule-making authority and has the approval of Pope Benedict, warns about the moral dangers of a variety of procedures, including the freezing of unfertilized eggs and embryos, the injection of sperm directly into eggs, and the genetic testing of embryos to identify those with defects. |