Planned Parenthood Threatens UCLA Pro-Life Advocate on Abortion Coverup

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 15, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Planned Parenthood Threatens UCLA Pro-Life Advocate on Abortion Coverup Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 15
, 2007

Los Angeles, CA (LifeNews.com) — Planned Parenthood is upset that a pro-life student at UCLA posed as a pregnant teenager and exposed it for advising her to disguise statutory rape. In an undercover investigative story for a student-run newspaper, UCLA student Lila Rose posed as a pregnant 15 year-old and entered a Santa Monica Planned Parenthood.

She told officials there that a 23 year old man had impregnated her and her article in The Advocate newspaper says PP staff assured Rose that if she said she was 16 or older, they wouldn’t have to report the rape.

Unbeknownst to Planned Parenthood officials at the time, Rose taped the conversations and posted them on the popular web site YouTube.

The abortion facility staff encouraged her to "figure out a birth-date that works," to obtain the abortion and avoid getting the man in trouble with the police.

That isn’t going over well with the abortion business and Mary Jane Wagle, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles sent Rose a letter threatening to sue her.

According to the letter, which LifeNews.com obtained, Wagle claims the videos were made "through false pretenses and unlawfully" and that the conversations they contain "were surreptitiously recorded without the knowledge and consent of PPLA employees."

Wagle claims the videos violate the state’s invasion of privacy laws and she demands that Rose remove the videos from YouTube and provide the original copies of them to PPLA officials as well as cease all communications with the abortion business.

"If you do not take these three steps, PPLA will seek appropriate legal remedies," Wagle wrote and threatened that failure to respond could be met with several fines at $5,000 each for violating the state law on privacy.

Responding to the letter, David French, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, told CNS News that Planned Parenthood is "engaging in a campaign…to bully an 18-year-old to distract attention from the fact that their employees were engaging in unlawful behavior."

French is providing legal counsel to Rose and told the news service that "Nothing changes the truth of what’s contained in those videotapes."

"Planned Parenthood was advocating that a patient lie, advocating a way around mandatory reporting requirements for statutory rape, and nothing that Planned Parenthood does as far as trying to bully her regarding the tapes themselves can change those facts," he said.

French said that Rose doesn’t want to wind up in court and that she will comply with Planned Parenthood’s demands.

After releasing the videotape, Rose told LifeNews.com that "California’s mandatory reporting laws for statutory rape are supposed to protect pregnant minors."

"Underage girls are being targeted by predators, and Planned Parenthood is busy covering up the evidence. How many other rapes has this one clinic covered up?" she asked.

The story appears in the second issue of the newspaper and the first one had details about the UCLA case.

In that situation, the counselor told Rose, who again claimed to be pregnant, that the college has no resources available for students keeping their babies. The counselor also encouraged the student to get the state health system to pay for the abortion.

The advice came from Ann Brooks, nurse practitioner and counselor at the UCLA Health Center.

Rose said the counseling was entirely aimed at encouraging an abortion — thinking that was the only option to help her stay in school.
The student said Brooks also advised her to use Medi-Cal to fund her abortion with taxpayer funds.

"I have a place I can send you where they will get you signed up for Medi-Cal coverage and they just don’t ask," the counselor reportedly said.

Brooks allegedly said Rose should have an abortion because of a lack of support for pregnancies on campus and the discomforts of pregnancy.

"Most of the students I talk to terminate their pregnancies," Brooks said, describing the unborn child as "a collection of cells."

She added that Rose could expect "physical difficulties" during pregnancy and the "embarrassment of your classmates" as a pregnant student living in the school dorms.

Brooks said "UCLA doesn’t support people who are pregnant and make things easier for them necessarily."

Related web sites:
The Advocate – https://www.laadvocate.com