Three Louisiana Abortion Centers Fail to Report Child Rape

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jul 7, 2011   |   4:18PM   |   Baton Rouge, LA

Three abortion centers in Louisiana, according to state documents, have failed to properly report instances of statutory rape to state officials, as required by state law.

The documentation comes from the state health department, according to pro-life blogger Jill Stanek, who cited information from the documents today. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals indicates three of the seven Louisiana abortion centers — Causeway Medical Clinic, Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge, and Gentilly Medical Clinic for Women — all had problems.

The issues were revealed, Stanek indicates, in the court documents the state health department filed in response to a lawsuit from one of the abortion centers seeking to overturn a new state law that allows state health officials to close down abortion centers that run afoul of state health and safety laws and put women’s health at risk.

Stanek says the Louisiana health department notes the following problems:

  • LDHH investigators paid an unannounced visit to Causeway earlier this year, issuing its report on May 23.  Four medical records reviewed revealed minor girls ages 14-15 were given abortions with no report filed with the state. Incredibly, unnamed Causeway “Administrator S1″ admitted “there was no policy in the facility regarding mandatory reporting of abuse of minors as it relates to carnal knowledge, incest, or rape. S1 further indicated it had not been the practice at the facility to obtain the sexual history of minors regarding the age of the father of the unborn children to determine if reporting would be required as per Louisiana Law.”
  • While Delta had a policy on hand to report suspected minor sexual abuse, one medical record reviewed revealed the boyfriend of a 15-yr-old patient was 18. He had committed statutory rape, but a report was never filed. This facility also failed to ensure notarized parental consents were received for minor aborting patients, also in violence of Louisiana law.
  • Gentilly, a particular blight on the New Orleans community, was shut down May 26 under Louisiana’s new, aforementioned “zero tolerance” law for “”significant health and safety risks to clients.” A May 6 LDHH report gave more insight why. Paramount was “there was no policy in the facility regarding mandatory reporting of abuse of minors…. [Administrator] S1 [i]indicated she would assume that the patient would automatically tell the physician if they had been raped. S1 indicated it had not been the practice of the facility to notify the police when age differeneces between the patient and the father of the unborn child revealed Misdemeanor or Felony Carnal Knowledge. S1 indicated she had not been aware of this law.”

The health department closed the Gentilly Medical Group for Women abortion facility in New Orleans back in May.

The Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) issued a notice of license revocation to the “Gentilly Medical Group for Women”, an abortion facility near the corner of Gentilly Blvd and Elysian Fields Ave in New Orleans. According to Louisiana Right to Life, the order requires the facility to immediately cease operations.

The revocation follows the passage of Act 490 in the 2010 Louisiana legislative session giving DHH the power to immediately close an abortion facility under certain circumstances. Before the passage of the law, DHH revoked the license of the Gentilly abortion facility in January of 2010 due to various problems but the revocation order remained under appeal since that time.

DHH Secretary Alan Levine indicated last January that the Gentilly Medical Clinic for Women abortion center operated without a trained nurse on staff, without a site-specific Louisiana controlled dangerous substance license, and without a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration controlled substance registration. All three are required for an abortion center in Louisiana to be run with proper approval from the state health department.

“Louisiana law is very clear on the requirements to maintain a safe medical environment for women seeking abortion services,” said Levine, according to WWLT.

“We have a duty to ensure women have safe choices for the services they are legally entitled to,” he continued. “This clinic has been in clear violation of our state’s health standards and we cannot allow Louisiana citizens to get inadequate or unsafe care.”

On September 3rd, 2010, DHH utilized Act 490 for the first time to revoke the license of “Hope Medical Group for Women” in Shreveport. However, a temporary restraining order was issued by a District Judge Michael Caldwell in Baton Rouge on September 14, 2010 and the “Hope” abortion business remains open pending the appeal.

About the problems at Hope, Bruce D. Greenstein, secretary of Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals, said, “The findings of the Department’s survey included several egregious safety violations and at least one resulting in immediate jeopardy. The Department’s conclusion was that women visiting this facility would have their health and safety compromised.”

Failure to report statutory rape has long been a problem in the abortion industry.

In April, Life Dynamics released tapes from some of the 813 Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation centers it called across the country. The group placed the calls from Texas, where it is legal to record a phone conversation without the consent of the other party. In the phone calls, an actress portrayed a 13-year-old girl who claimed her 22-year-old boyfriend impregnated her and that she wanted an abortion to keep her parents from finding out.

Live Action followed up on Crutcher’s sting operation with its own investigations over recent years and have found at least ten Planned Parenthood centers where staff are willing to arrange for abortions for underage girls who seek abortions after becoming the victim of statutory rape.

One video showed staff at a Wisconsin facility counseling a purportedly 14-year-old girl to not divulge how a 31-year-old man impregnated her.  The video also shows Planned Parenthood staff coaching the girl on how to obtain an abortion without her parent’s consent — in violation of Wisconsin state law.

In Texas, in May, pro-life groups called Texas abortion centers and the probe found them hiding cases of statutory rape and skirting parental involvement laws.

In February, documents showed Planned Parenthood in Kansas ignored 164 cases of statutory rape.

Last December, a judge issued a ruling saying a Cincinnati, Ohio Planned Parenthood abortion business rushed an abortion it did on a 14-year-old girl who was a victim of sexual abuse. The case was brought by parents whose minor daughter had an abortion at a Planned Parenthood facility without their knowledge after being sexually abused by her adult coach. The parents allege that Planned Parenthood failed to comply with the statute requiring reports of known or suspected child abuse as well as Ohio’s parental consent statute.

A Planned Parenthood in Indiana in 2008 suspended an employee after a video showed the staffer covering up a girl’s statutory rape. The video was a part of an earlier series of undercover investigations Live Action performed with a UCLA student, Lila Rose, posing as a 13-year old girl who had sexual relations with a 31-year-old man.

On tape, the Planned Parenthood nurse acknowledges her responsibility to report the abuse, but assures the student, Lila Rose, she will not.

“Okay, I didn’t hear the age [of the 31-year-old]. I don’t want to know the age,” she tells Rose.

A video in Alabama showed a staffer at a Birmingham, Alabama Planned Parenthood a woman who appears to be a victim of statutory rape that “we bend the rules.”

In this new video, the Birmingham Planned Parenthood counselor tells Rose, who pretends to be a 14-year-old statutory rape victim that it “does sometimes bend the rules a little bit” rather than report sexual abuse to state authorities.

Since February 1, 2011, Live Action has released footage from New Jersey, Virginia, and New York Planned Parenthood clinics, all of which have been met by an ever-changing defense from Planned Parenthood.

The sting operations revealed Planned Parenthood center staffers were willing to provide assistance to alleged operators of a sex trafficking ring — ranging from helping them arrange abortions for the underage girls they said they were victimizing to showing them how to avoid scrutiny and skirt parental involvement laws. The videos covered Planned Parenthood centers in Richmond and also other centers in Roanoke, Charlottesville, and Falls Church. A District of Columbia Planned Parenthood also encouraged and assisted sexual traffickers, as evidenced in an undercover audio file.

Live Action also filmed Planned Parenthood staff helping sex traffickers in New Jersey — and the nurse who aided the alleged traffickers there has already been fired while the state health department is looking into the problems further.