Across the nation on Valentine’s Day today, pro-life advocates held successful vigils at Planned Parenthood abortion centers to respond to a slate of new videos showing how the abortion business overlooks sex trafficking victims.
The videos show staff at various Planned Parenthood abortion centers nationwide essentially helping alleged sex traffickers obtain abortions and STD testing for underage girls victimized by the sex trade and provides them advice for skirting the law and getting the girls back on the street.
As a response, the Expose Planned Parenthood Coalition (of which LifeNews.com is a member) encouraged pro-life advocates to hold vigils at Planned Parenthood offices at noon on Monday across the country to highlight the videos and the massive taxpayer funding Planned Parenthood receives.
In the nation’s capital, representatives of Students for Life of America, Americans United for Life, the Family Research Council, the Susan B. Anthony List, 40 Days for Life, and Live Action, the group that filmed the undercover videos, joined together to stand against the Planned Parenthood abortion business downtown.
“We are standing for those, in the beautiful image of God, who have been killed in the clinics and those whose abuse has been furthered,” Live Action president Lila Rose told the crowd, according to a Daily Caller report. “Let’s pray for the victims, and not just today, but everyday.”
“The horrors exposed in the recent videos were not isolated incidents in the history of a group willing to be a chief ally in the exploitation of women and girls,” said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Yet, this organization insists that it deserves taxpayers’ continued support.”
In Orange County California, there were more than 100 people attending the vigil, which organizers called, “amazing.”
Another 60-plus pro-life advocates gathered at the Johnstown, Pennsylvania abortion center operated by Planned Parenthood — making it one of the more than 130 cities where the vigils took place.
Another group held a vigil in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to, as Toni Buckler of Clemmons put it, “raise awareness.” They held signs saying “I regret my abortion” and “Pray to End Abortion.”
Monica Miller, President of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, who led a vigil in Michigan, said, “Our goal is to de-fund Planned Parenthood and raise awareness in the community about their immoral and their illegal practices…Their entire organization is founded on the premise that you can treat one human being like trash. They say they take care of a woman’s health by killing her child. It’s corrupt. Ultimately, everybody is going to be disrespected in the end.”
Said Miller, “It is impressive how many people have come out today in the cold and wind just to be here for one hour. People have been driving by and waving and honking their approval. There has not been one negative comment. As awareness grows, so many are joining the fight and signing the petitions and taking initiative. The Auburn Hills community is a community that respects life and Planned Parenthood is not welcome here.”
“Are you sick and tired of Planned Parenthood getting $363 million of taxpayer funding a year — while aiding and abetting illegal underage sex trafficking?” the groups say on the Expose Planned Parenthood web site promoting the vigils. “Take a public stand Monday and tell Congress ‘No more tax funding for Planned Parenthood.”
“For the last two weeks, the national media has been abuzz with the shocking story of the undercover sting operation that caught abortion giant Planned Parenthood red-handed in the despicable act of aiding and abetting sex trafficking and prostitution of girls as young as 14,” the groups said. “Numerous undercover videos have now been released, documenting Planned Parenthood workers at multiple locations across several states assuring an undercover investigator posing as a pimp that the organization would secretly provide abortions and other services to underage victims of human trafficking, facilitating their exploitation.”
“The institution-wide scandal has now reached the highest levels at Planned Parenthood, with top executives making the appalling claim that their workers who were caught on video facilitating underage sex slavery “responded professionally,'” they said. “After receiving a record $363 million in taxpayer funds last year, Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards then had the audacity to send out an urgent appeal for abortion advocates to contact Congress — so the organization can rake in even MORE of your hard-earned tax dollars.”
The groups continue: “We must act swiftly and take a public stand against Planned Parenthood’s harmful agenda — raising awareness in the communities where we live, and calling upon Congress to immediately strip the abortion chain of all tax funding. This Monday, February 14, all people of faith and conscience are being called upon to hold one-hour “Vigils for Victims” of human trafficking during the Noon hour in the public right-of-way outside Planned Parenthood offices nationwide.”
Congressman Mike Pence has introduced legislation that would yank the Title X family planning money Planned Parenthood receives, and he recently told the Los Angeles Times he will go further and introduce an amendment to federal spending bills that would cut all federal funding for the abortion business.
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 centersin 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.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has already received the full, unedited footage of the Planned Parenthood expose’ videos and he told CBS 6 WVTR in Richmond that they are “shocking.”
Live Action has previously released more than a dozen hidden camera videos from ten states. This body of visual evidence shows several alarming patterns of illegal Planned Parenthood activities including cover-up of sexual abuse of minors, the skirting of parental consent laws, citing unscientific and fabricated medical information to manipulate women to have abortions, and Planned Parenthood’s willingness to accept donations earmarked to abort African-American babies.
