Liberal groups, including the NAACP and the Sierra Club, are rushing to the defend of the nation’s largest abortion business after videos were released last week showing Planned Parenthood staffers helping alleged sex trafficking ring operators.
The video, cover Planned Parenthood centers in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and a Planned Parenthood center in Richmond, Virginia — both of which had staffers helping the alleged sex traffickers find information on how to obtain abortions without facing scrutiny and get STD testing for the girls. Three more videos released afterwards show three additional Virginia Planned Parenthood abortion clinics helping the sex traffickers.
A Planned Parenthood staffer in New Jersey has already been fired, New Jersey officials are looking into a shoddy abortion center Planned Parenthood referred to in its video, and the Virginia attorney general has received the full footage of the Richmond Planned Parenthood expose’ and state officials there are calling the footage they’ve seen “shocking” and “disturbing.”
On Friday, a collection of 27 organizations sent a letter to Congress asking lawmakers to resist the urge to support a bill sponsored by Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana to cut the millions in taxpayer funding the Planned Parenthood abortion business receives through the federal family planning program.
The letter, which Politico obtained, reads: “Right-wing groups are once again attempting to destroy an organization dedicated to providing crucial primary care services to Americans that need them most. Armed with heavily edited videos, countless lies and a shameless echo chamber that repeats unfounded accusations ad nauseam, they’ve now turned their sights to Planned Parenthood, which offers a range of important health and reproductive services.”
The letter comes after a strategy call the liberal “media watchdog” group Media Matters coordinated with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and other liberal activists, with support from liberal billionaire George Soros, designed to respond to the videos. The game plane the settled on mostly revolves around viciously attacking Live Action and its credibility.
People for the American Way also signed the letter and its vice president, Marge Baker, talked with Politico about why it did.
“We realized very quickly we needed to get together and stand up against the right-wing smear machine and make a strong statement in solidarity with an important organization,” she said. “The bigger picture is too important — that’s why you see such a range of organizations on this letter.”
Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, the group that conducted the undercover investigations, denounced the letter, the web site indicated.
“[T]hese organizations are more concerned with defending Planned Parenthood’s willingness to cover up sex abuse and sex trafficking of children, rather than facing the facts. … The only acceptable response to a self-identified sex trafficker is zero tolerance. It seems these organizations have overlooked that and are now lying to Congress,” she said.
Rose previously told Fox News, “I think that they bottom line with the feds is they’re [Planned Parenthood is] claiming that Live Action went into their clinics and they’re saying, how dare they? You know, they’re making it about us.”
“Planned Parenthood claims that they made reports. But that was only after, and they say this themselves, they became suspicious that it was Live Action doing the investigation. What we have documented, Laura, is across the board. We have been documenting this for years now. They cover up- institutionally, Planned Parenthood is covering up the sexual abuse of minors and now it goes as far as aiding and abetting a prostitution ring,” she added.
But Paulette McElwain, president of the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, defended her employee in one interview.
“She followed all of our protocols and behaved professionally,” McElwain said. “Our job is to provide information, and that’s exactly what she did.”
Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council, reacted to that, saying, “Incredulously Planned Parenthood’s own defense is that the one worker, who told the undercover “pimp” how his underage prostitute could still earn money after an abortion, was doing the right thing.”
