Planned Parenthood's Prenatal Services

Planned Parenthood insists that they're not just about abortions. They boldly claim, among other things, that they offer prenatal care.

Planned Parenthood President Cecil Richards, speaking in 2011, said, "Prenatal care. Those are the kinds of services that folks depend upon Planned Parenthood for.

Lori Lamerand, the Cheif Executive Officer of Planned Parenthood Michigan also said in 2011, "Prenatal care! What is what we want to focus on. That is what is so vital.

So folks count on Planned Parenthood for prenatal care. Planned Parenthood wants to focus on prenatal care. This would lead one to believe that one could call up a Planned Parenthood and set up a prenatal care appointment, right?

So Life Action did just that: They called Planned Parenthood facilities all over the country, trying to schedule appointments for prenatal care. Here are a sample of the responsess they got:

Tempe, AZ:
"Planned Parenthood offers abortions, so they don't offer prenatal care."

Athens, OH:
"Unfortunately, no, we wouldn't provide any type of prenatal services here at Planned Parenthood."

Fort Collins, CO:
"We're not a prenatal care provider."

Albany, NY:
"No Planned Parenthood does prenatal care, hon."

Farmington, NM:
"We don't offer prenatal care at PP. We specialize in abortions."

Cornell, NY:
"We tell you you're pregnant, and then we offer at PP to do the abortions. OK? So we don't do any prenatal services here."

Merrillville, IN:
"No, we don't do prenatal services. I mean, It's called Planned Parenthood, I know it's kind of deceiving."

Fayettevillle, AR:
"We only offer family planning services and abortion services."

Fairbanks, AK:
"Not at all at Planned Parenthood."

Santa Fe, NM:
"No, see, we don't see pregnant women as a way of giving prenatal care."

Dallas, TX:
"We only offer termination services."

Bend, OR:
"We actually don't offer prenatal services. We're not licensed to do so in Oregon or Washington."

The call to the Virginia Beach, VA office is particularly telling. The on-hold message says: "Did you know that PP can take care of all your reproductive health needs? Whether it's an annual exam, pregnancy testing and counseling, prenatal care, we're here for you with high-quality, low-cost services." But when the employee answers the phone and the caller asks for prenatal care, the employee responds, "No, we don't, not at the moment... Neither our Hampton nor our Richmond office does."

If they don't actually provide prenatal serices, surely they can at least refer for those services, right?

When the caller asked the Council Bluffs, IA "Is there any other clinic you can refer me to?" the answer was less than helpful: "I don't know of anything. I would look around on the internet."

In all, Live Action called 97 Planned Parenthood offices across the country. Only five actually offered prenatal care.

I'm still waiting for Planned Parenthood's supporters to get tired of being lied to.

"I couldn't see how Planned Parenthood could ever redeem themselves...."

Ask yourself this: "What happens when a victim of sex trafficking gets an STD?"

Laura J. Lederer, a leader in the fight against human trafficking, looked into that question, and other related questions regarding how sex-trafficking victims come into contact with health care providers. What she and co-author Christopher A. Wetzel  found was published as "The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking and Their Implications for Identifying Victims in Healthcare Facilities" in the Winter, 2014 Annals of Health Law.

Lederer and Wetzel found, not surprisingly, that when sex-trafficking victims get sick or injured, or are put on birth control, or get pregnant, their pimps take them to health care facilities. During their time of sexual slavery, nearly 88% of trafficking victims are taken to a medical facility of some sort.

One medical care provider stood out above all others:

Survivors also had significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most commonly Planned Parenthood clinics, which more than a quarter of survivors (29.6%) visited.

Actually, 29.6 -- let's round it up to 30 -- is closer to 1/3 (33.3%) than it is to 1/4 (25%). That's an astonishing number. Nearly one-third of sex trafficking victims pass through the doors of Planned Parenthood..

At first glance, this would seem like very good news, right? If Planned Parenthood workers were properly trained, nearly a third of sex trafficking victims would come into contact with dedicated people who are trained and ready to identify them and offer them help in escaping from sexual slavery. This would be amazing!

What will Planned Parenthood actually do? Let's look at the experiences of one Planned Parenthood employee who saw for herself how the organization tackled the issue of staff spotting possible sex trafficking.

Ramona Trevino was working as a manager at a Planned Parenthood in Texas when the group Live Action was releasing various undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood workers engaging in questionable or even illegal practices.

"I just blew it off," Ramona said of the  videos. "I thought, 'This is ridiculous. We don't have anything to hide, so why are we so concerned about these undercover investigations? If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear, right?"

"In the beginning of 2011," Ramona continued, "another undercover investigation came out exposing Planned Parenthood workers aiding and abetting underage sex trafficking."

Planned Parenthood Federation of America went out publicly saying that they would retrain all of their staff on how they reported abuse.

When we were called into this meeting, I went in really believing that Planned Parenthood could redeem themselves. They're going to prove that they really do care about women and this is something that really concerns them. I walk into the room -- it's dark, we sign in, and there's a projector screen pulled down, and they begin to play all of the previous undercover investigations that had been put out about Planned Parenthood. And I became very perplexed. I thought, you know, "What's going on here? Are we showing these things because they're trying to show us what not to do? You know -- the things that are wrong, that we don't do these things?" 

And so I raised my hand and I said, "I'm confused. When are we going to actually begin the retraining? What can I do as a manager to take this information back to my staff and put -- enforce policies and procedures that would help protect women who are experiencing either sex trafficking or abuse, sexual abuse in any way? Because that's a difficult subject to talk about if you ever have a patient come in who expresses that." And so I really wanted to know how we dealt with that. 

And she immediately shot me down and she said, "We're not here to talk about that, Ramona. We're here to teach you how to identify if you're being videotaped or recorded or entrapped in any way."

"At that moment," Ramona said, "my heart just sunk. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I couldn't believe that we were actually there to train on how to identify if we're being recorded. Again, it goes back to why? Do we have something to hide? Why is this an issue for us? That experience for me left me so disgusted that I couldn't see how Planned Parenthood could ever redeem themselves after that."

In their paper, Lederer and Wetzel explore what Planned Parenthood and other health care providers could do in order to help protect and rescue sex trafficking victims, and to alert authorities who could bring the perpetrators to justice. Sadly, it doesn't seem that Planned Parenthood has any interest in moving in that direction. It's not the pimps and pedophiles that Planned Parenthood sees as problematic. It's the investigators who show what really happens behind closed doors.

The Ghoulish World of Fetal Tissue Harvesting

I have been working to isolate segments from the 4th video in the Center For Medical Progress videos about Planned Parenthood's role in fetal tissue harvesting. I hope to put up something more in-depth soon, but in the mean time, I will let these sections from the transcript of the full video speak for themselves. I will be reposting them later with clarifying information and comments.

I have inset screenshots from the video. Click to enlarge.

****

Transcript by the Center for Medical Progress

7 April 2015

Speakers:

Savita Ginde, MD, Vice President and Medical Director, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains

J.R. Johnstone, Clinical Research Coordinator, PPRM

Jess, Medical Assistant, PPRM

Two buyers and a nurse

****

Ginde: Intact. So we do basically D&Es. Intact is less than ten percent.

Buyer: Okay. Less than ten percent..

Buyer: OK. So, if they know that what we're looking for is intact, and gestational age later, are they able to – I'm ignorant of this, so I'm relying on you. Are they able to adjust the technique to provide that?

Ginde: No. Because we're not – It's not like we do inductions or anything where we would have an intact delivery of any type. So, it's really hit or miss on how everything comes out in the cannula.

Buyer: OK, and you can't control that at all? It's just what presents.

Ginde: Sometimes we get – if someone delivers before we get to see them for a procedure, then they are intact, but that's not what we go for.

Buyer: … Chemical contamination is the only contamination that we would be concerned with. Which is why, you know, for providers that use dig., they're can't use dig because it nukes the stem cells. ….

Ginde: …. we're planning on going from eighteen to twenty weeks by the end of the year....

(In the lab)

Jess: I just want to see another leg, with a foot.

Ginde: It's a baby. The question is. So –

….

Buyer: This is the placenta. This part of –

Ginde: This is part of the head.

Buyer: Oh wow. That – This is high quality.

Ginde. Yeah. The nose?

Buyer: Yeah, I see the mouth and everything.

Ginde: Oh look, here's some intestines. Once we take it out of water it will be harder to identify.

Buyer: This is –

Ginde: That's the pelvis.

Buyer: This is pelvis with rib cage.

Ginde: That's thorax

Buyer: Here, right?

Ginde: Exactly.

Buyer: So maybe –

Ginde: Look, something is attached to this.

Buyer: If we flip this over, maybe that's stomach.

Ginde: This is the head, I think. This is the cervical spine, and this is the lumbar/thoracic spine.

Buyer: Got it. This is the beginnings of the – so maybe if I flip it over, we might see heart.

Ginde: Possibly, it looks like a spleen. (Inaudible)

Jess: Usually the organs are cleaner –

Ginde: Oh, look, here's the heart. Is that right?

Buyer: Yeah.

Ginde: Here's the heart.

Jess: I'm trying to get in on it.

Ginde: My fingers will smoosh it if I try to pick it up. The heart is right there.

Buyer: You found the heart right there. I wonder if this is spleen. I'm sorry, not spleen, pancreas.

Ginde: So, what would be – the spear? Is that the best thing to use?

Buyer: Oh, this? This is just to hunt around and look. Then obviously, you'd have tweezers as well, to pick up certain pieces.

Ginde: I was going to get you some as well, but obviously that's not good use because it was possibly stretch out – so I just don't know. We probably have to get some proper instruments.

Buyer: Yeah. We would provide that. What have we identified? So, calvarium, in three pieces. With, this is –

Ginde: So you said they would want the cal?

Buyer: Yeah, they want the cal because they want the brain. This is neural matter over here, because here is the lower part of the law and cervical spine. So this is spinal cord and –

Ginde: So, that's what you want?

Buyer: So, yeah. This is neural matter. I believe this might be thymus and stuff.

Ginde: Let me see if I can rinse that a little more so it's not so bloody. You might be able to see a little better.

Ginde: So, that would be it, because no one ever wants hands or legs, anything like that.

Buyer: Sometimes.

Ginde: Really?

Buyer: Probably from larger gestations though because they want muscle or bome marrow like, from the long bones. And that would – this is very tiny. It would be difficult to extract bone marrow from this. You would want something a little bigger, it's easier to get in there. Oh, we've got a whole – is this long bone, Jess?

Jess: No. I think it's shoulder.

Buyer: It's just shoulder muscle.

Ginde: But sometimes with the residents, I tell them to poke around, and sometimes embryology will come full circle. Find all the parts you know, see what you can see. Especially with the thirteen, fourteen, fifteen weekers, I think it's pretty amazing. We find heart, we've seen kidneys andrenals, sometimes there's a thing I don't know what that is but it's a part.

Buyer: What's this? This is another six or seven –

Jess: This is nine.

Buyer: Oh, this is nine.

Jess: Yes. I think this has a lot of spinal fluid.

Buyer: That's the whole bottom half of the cadaver, right there. You've got two legs and –

Ginde: There's two arms missing. Here's the head, is this spinal column? Because here's her thorax.

Buyer: Must be. Yeah.

Ginde. Interesting. It's so big. Here's her heart.

Buyer: Oh. Wow.

Jess: Here's something. I don't know what it is but it looks like more than two.

Ginde: But, you don't want these, right?

Buyer: Well that's a very intact looking heart.

Ginde: Yeah, it is.

Jess: So fast, it's the twelve weeks and everyone wants to know, is it twins?

Buyer: You've been looking for twins all day.

Nurse: This might be (Inaudible)

Jess: As a trainee m y blood pressure goes up any time I can't find it all right away. I'm like, “Ahh! Where is it?”

Nurse: I found it in there.

Jess: Oh, the other one? OK, great.

Buyer: The other leg?

Jess: Yeah, the other leg. That's why I said think you. It was stressing me out. She said she saw it – oh, there it is. There's a little foot. There's another heart, completely perfect.

Buyer: Is that the cal?

Jess: Yes. The cervical –

Buyer: Yeah, and there's brainstem in there.

Jess: Yeah. I don't see the eyeballs. That looks like an organ of some sort, but I don't know what it is. Maybe – No, that's just placenta.

Buyer: You squeeze to try to find the cal, all the little pieces of it because it will crack.

Jess: There's an eyeball. (Inaudible) enough of the calvarium given how, I should talk to Dr. Ginde and see if she's comfortable with this. What do you think of the size of the calvarium? It looks like we don't have the whole thing in here.

Nurse: I think you do.

Jess: Yes, it just looks weird. There's this part and I saw this part.

Nurse: Sure. And then there's this part right here, too. It's the front and then I saw an eyeball, there's an eyeball. (Inaudible) I thought I saw two. It's in there, the other one's in there. See it?

Jess: This is where the nasal bridge is. See it?

Buyer: Oh yeah. There you go.

Jess: So only one fetus.

Buyer: I think this big thing right here is liver.

Ginde: Yeah. It's so soft though, but I guess maybe it doesn't –

Buyer: No, it's definitely not like an older liver. It's not doing all the same functions. I saw a kidney in here. And the cal. At first there was brin in here but –

Ginde: It got blasted out.

Buyer: It got blasted out with water.

Ginde: Well you know a lot of times especially with the second tris, we won't even put water because it's so big you can just put your hand in there and pick it up, the parts.

Buyer: Right, just pick it up.

Ginde: And so, I don't think it would be as -- war-torn.

Buyer: Ha. War-torn? Oh, dear. Our tech [name] was telling me what I was looking at before and saying it was thymus, he's pretty sure that's what it was. So I want to show him that little one again.

Ginde: This little thing? Want me to clean it off?

Buyer: So that, that definitely looks like brain. I think this is pancreas because the pancreas has that shape. It's got that long corn shape with a head and the tail of the pancreas. Then there’s ducts running through it. If you look closely, it looks like this is maybe half of it. We found the heart in there but – Yeah, I'll bet, because you look at this rib cage here and I bet there was a lot more stuff in there before it got the fire hose. So that's the other thing.

Ginde: I wonder if that was part of this. But is it, you know, do people say, they want twelve-week, I don't know, liver?

Buyer: Yeah. It's a specific request at twelve weeks. Brain is typically a later gestation but I've read plenty of research studies where they were growing plenty of neural progenitors out of seven week brain.

Ginde: I was just wondering if we shuold know ahead of time if we had a twelve-weeker, our goal was to get –

Buyer: Absolutely.

Ginde: If they were going to hose it, they would take the cal out first.

Ginde: I think, my experience at least, anecdotally, if the patients could do something with that, they would donate it. I don't know if they want to know that we are going to pick it apart but –

Buyer: Organ donation.

Ginde: They want to donate organs, they don't need to know the process you go through – the deceased individual to harvest stuff.

Buyer: So, somebody else just did that procedure, right? Because you were out here talking.

Ginde: She did. There's some organs for you.

Buyer: They're all attached.

Ginde: Here's some stomach, a heart, kidney, and adrenal. I don't know what else is in there.

Jess: Head, arms, I don't see any legs. Do you see the legs?

Ginde: I didn't really look but –

Buyer: Yeah, there it goes. Yup, you got all of them right there.

Jess: Another boy!