MEMPHIS, April 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Following the release of undercover footage from a Memphis Planned Parenthood clinic, showing a PP employee instructing a 14-year-old girl to lie to a judge in order to obtain a secret abortion, state lawmakers have introduced legislation that could divert taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood in Tennessee.
In the video the girl, who was actually a 20-year-old undercover student, Lila Rose, tells the PP employee that she is 14 years old and her boyfriend is 31, meaning that, according to law, Rose is a victim of statutory rape. However, the PP employee nevertheless tells Rose to lie to a judge about her boyfriend’s age in order to get permission to have an abortion without her parent’s consent.
Tennessee law states that a minor must have parental consent before undergoing an abortion.
In response to Planned Parenthood of Greater Memphis Region’s contesting the veracity of the footage, the group responsible for filming, Live Action, has sent the state Attorney General and Memphis District Attorney an unedited version for review. The full footage is also on YouTube for public viewing at https://youtube.com/watch?v=IvAGwJcs6c8
Rose today commended the Tennessee state lawmakers, led by Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey and Sen. Jack Johnson, who have questioned the state’s over $700,000 funding of Planned Parenthood.
“Why would citizens tolerate paying the bills of an organization that protects statutory rapists and victimizes young girls?” asked Rose. “This is the sad result of the careless abortion-first mentality that has persisted at Planned Parenthood for decades.”
On Monday, Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region CEO Barry Chase sent an email to state legislators asking them to stop the bill and claimed that Live Action’s president, Lila Rose, refused to send his organization the unedited footage, even though neither Rose nor Live Action received any correspondence from Planned Parenthood.
“We have not received a request from Planned Parenthood for the raw footage, so their efforts to raise doubts about the validity of the tapes are made only to mislead,” Rose said in response. “The typical last-ditch effort of Planned Parenthood is to wantonly suggest that the unedited tapes might prove them innocent. But to better illustrate the deliberate cover up of statutory rape and abuse by Planned Parenthood, we have made the entire video public.”
Live Action has released similar footage from five other clinics, located in Arizona and Indiana, as part of its Mona Lisa Project, which shows Planned Parenthood employees as they respond negligently to reports of statutory rape and offer secret abortions instead.
Find out more at www.liveaction.org.
Action’s letter to TN lawmakers. See the letter here: www.liveaction.org/memphis/letter.html.