Very Interesting

It seems that Pedophiles' Pal Planned Parenthood has the same problem with email based rumors as Christians. Writing for The Dawn Patrol, The Raving Atheist tells of what may become PP's counterpart to the persistant rumor that Madelyn Murray O'Hare is still trying to end religious broadcasting (apparently from the grave as the wording of this letter has not changed one iota since it first surfaced).

There is an email being circulated among abortion supporters claiming that Crisis Pregnancy Center that shares a parking lot with a local branch of Margret Sanger's organization. According to the email :

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group -- one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic, and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there -- the "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace. Our clinic director reports that she was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

If this is true, and I have my doubts, then the staff at that CPC needs to be fired abd prosecuted for fraud. As much as I abhor abortion, the deliberate use of falsehood must never be in our arsenal.

Why do I doubt the story? For one thing, given PP's history of fear mongering this story would have been all over the news. I don't buy the explanation that they were protecting the girl's privacy. A news release could leave out that information. Fortunately there are ways to check the veracity with a little leg work. Which is what commenters at Dawn Patrol did. One found the locations of the PP offices in Indiana. Another found the CPC locations in Indiana. A third cited Generations for Life which pointed out this:

It occurred to me today that if, in fact, the Indianapolis Police had shown up at the Planned Parenthood acting on a tip that a girl was being forced to have an abortion, they obviously would have filed a police report.

Since police reports are matters of public record[emphasis added here], I called the Indianapolis Police Department to find out if there was any police report that would corroborate Planned Parenthood’s version of events.

The woman I spoke with at IPD did a search and came up with: nothing.

I also asked her to do a search on the crisis pregnancy center. Again: nothing.

If the CPC really did engage in “a campaign of intimidation and harassment,” it’s rather hard to believe that the police were never contacted. If Planned Parenthood cares so much about women, wouldn’t their first move have been to call the police on the girl’s behalf before telling the public?

I can only conclude that this is most likely a slanderous hoax. If, however, it proves to be true I hope that those responsible are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Likewise if it proves to be a hoax.