Planned Parenthood of Ohio Defends Acceptance of Racist Abortion Donation
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 12, 2008
Columbus, OH (LifeNews.com) — Officials with Planned Parenthood in Ohio are finally responding to allegations a UCLA student newspaper made in February that they gladly accepted donations from a caller who said he wanted it used for racist purposes. The Advocate magazine called Planned Parenthood centers in several states.
The pro-life publication told LifeNews.com at the time that an actor posing as a racist donor called Planned Parenthood and asked that his donation be used to abort African American babies in order to "lower the number of black people."
The magazine said an Ohio Planned Parenthood representative, Lisa Hutton, told the donor that Planned Parenthood "will accept the money for whatever reason."
The abortion business has never responded, but Stephanie Tresso, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood in Columbus, talked with the Associated Press about the calls on Saturday.
She did not dispute that the Planned Parenthood staffer accepted the donation.
However, Tresso said the calls were a sham to discredit the pro-abortion group and she claimed the audio of the call posted on the Internet was edited. Tresso says pro-life advocates left out part of the staffer’s comments saying the money would be used for black women in need.
"It was quite an unprofessional call that she received, and she struggled with how to address it," Tresso told AP.
"She filed an incident report and notified her supervisor, which she was supposed to do. Her supervisor then notified other Planned Parenthoods, and we realized that this was happening all over the country and it was an organized effort," Tresso added.
She indicated Planned Parenthood staff have been trained about how to field similar phone calls in the future but didn’t indicate what that included.
Lila Rose, the editor of the student newspaper, also spoke with the Associated Press and defended the phone calls, saying they proved Planned Parenthood at least tolerates racism.
"They could have hung up, they could have disagreed, they could have said ‘No, we don’t discriminate,’ but not a single clinic did that, and that’s disturbing and shocking," she said.
