Ohio, April 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A case involving an Ohio teen and her parents who sued Planned Parenthood over a 2004 abortion has been “resolved and dismissed” this week, according to a statement from the Alliance Defense Fund.
The woman, referred to in court documents as “Jane Roe,” was 14 when she received an abortion at a Planned Parenthood in Southwest Ohio. The father of her child was her 21-year-old soccer coach, John Haller.
According to court documents, the young girl had given staff at Planned Parenthood a cell phone number that she claimed belonged to her father. In fact, it belonged to Haller who, when reached, pretended to be her father and gave his consent to the abortion. Roe had given the correct name and address of her father, but lied and claimed that he had no home phone number.
In a ruling this past December in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, Judge Judy Luebbers found Planned Parenthood to have violated Ohio informed consent laws for failing to meet with the teen 24 hours in advance of the abortion, and failing to obtain written consent from her parents.
The clinic had told Roe that someone would have to pick up an “information packet” for her prior to the abortion. Haller, who Roe claimed was her “step-brother,” picked up the information packet for her and later brought her in and paid for the abortion.
“What happened here is you had a fourteen year old girl who gave a cell phone number of the abuser and Planned Parenthood’s only attempt to contact the parents was to call the cell phone number,” said Brian Hurley said in an appearance on Cincinatti’s WLWT News after the December ruling. “Their argument that they made a good faith effort to contact the parents, quite frankly, in our opinion, is ludicrous.”
“We know for certain, had they done their job, she would not have had the abortion,” he added, saying that the abortion had resulted in “severe trauma.”
In a statement from the Life Legal Defense Fund, Executive Director Dana Cody called this week’s final resolution of the case “an act of desperation on the part of Planned Parenthood.”
“They went, in a matter of months, from litigating every inch of their defense to a sudden willingness to resolve the matter,” she said.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews, ADF Senior Counsel Steven Aden offered his own speculation on why Planned Parenthood agreed to a resolution.
“Planned Parenthood wouldn’t want the explosive facts of this lawsuit as alleged by the plaintiffs out in the public eye, given how much damage it has sustained in its public images from recent revelations of aiding sexual traffickers by Live Action,” he said.