New York Times Notices Planned Parenthood Badness

 HT: LifeNews

Botched Care and Tired Staff: Planned Parenthood in Crisis: New York Times, February 15, 2025. 

I will add information along with links to my sources. 

Intro: Nakara's Failed Abortion

Albany Health Center -- Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood

The article starts with the story of a woman named Nakara, who learned that she was 8 weeks pregnant just as she was breaking up with her abusive boyfriend and living in a domestic violence shelter with her two daughters. Sadly, the shelter referred Nakara to Albany Health Center - Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood for an abortion instead of to a pregnancy center that would have helped her to find a home for herself and her children. 

It's obvious that Planned Parenthood isn't in the business of helping vulnerable single mothers avoid homelessness. If they had helped Nakara find housing, they might very well have lost not just that abortion sale but likely repeat abortions. 

But even though their mission is to get rid of fetuses, not get rid of problems, they failed even in that. Someone at Planned Parenthood examined the tissue, found it "consistent with estimated gestational age," and disposed of it rather than send it to a laboratory to ensure that the abortion had been complete. Planned Parenthood discharged their patient back to the shelter without any provisions made for aftercare.

 Living in the shelter with her children, Nakara noticed that she was still bleeding heavily and cramping severely.  She went to St. Peter's Family Health Center to be put on birth control. She reported the cramping and bleeding, so the staff performed a pregnancy test, which was positive. The health center referred Nakara back to Planned Parenthood to ensure that the abortion was completed. Nakara called Planned Parenthood on the spot, with the practitioner present, but nobody answered the phone Nakara left a message.

Sadly, she still didn't go to a pregnancy resource center that would have ensured that she got healthcare and found a home.

Planned Parenthood called Nakara back and assured her that the abortion had been successful and it was normal to have a positive pregnancy test for up to a month after an abortion. They made no arrangements to examine their patient.

Twelve weeks after Planned Parenthood failed to kill the fetus, Nakara went into labor and gave birth to a live baby who died about an hour later. Based on the estimated gestational age, Nakara's baby would have been about 20 weeks of gestation, barely on the cusp of where survival was theoretically possible but highly unlikely. It's unclear if proper medical care would have enabled Nakara to continue her pregnancy long enough for her baby to be viable. What is clear is that regardless of whether you think an abortion was the right thing to do, Planned Parenthood clearly failed their patient.

I'll note that this Planned Parenthood also performed an abortion on an underage rape victim. It's unclear who brought the victim for the abortion, but given Planned Parenthood's propensity to abort victims and return them to their abusers, that can't be ruled out in this case.

(Albany woman sues three healthcare providers after botched abortion, WNYT News 13, October 4, 2022; Nakara Alston v. Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood complaint)

Other Examples of Badness

After some information about Planned Parenthood's funding, the article moves on to other examples of problems:

• 
  A woman in California who alleged that Planned Parenthood caused nerve damage by improperly implanting a birth control device in her arm.
• A woman in Nebraska who went to Planned Parenthood in 2022 for an IUD. They inserted the device after somehow failing to notice that the woman was four months pregnant. The woman rushed to an emergency room several hours later and gave birth to a stillborn baby. 
• Planned Parenthood North Central States, which oversees the clinic in Nebraska, failed to enter sexually transmitted infection test results into charts, resulting in women not being notified that they had tested positive. 
• An Omaha Planned Parenthood allowed sewage from a backed-up toilet to seep into the recovery room for two days. Employees just shoved absorbent exam pads under the door to block the leak, which did not prevent patients from vomiting due to the stench.
• A former Planned Parenthood nurse in Minnesota, Grace Larson, described how the clinic operated as "a conveyer belt," and admitted that in their rush to see patients they would sometimes hand out expired medications, give patients the wrong medications, or take patients to the wrong room and prep them for the wrong procedure. (N.B. There was a case where a woman went into Planned Parenthood for an exam for birth control pills. She was prepped and put into stirrups and without even talking to her the doctor walked into the room and began performing an abortion procedure while she screamed at him to stop. He had entered the wrong room and hadn't bothered to confirm who his patient was. Source: Washington DC Legal Times, May 24, 1993)
• A woman sent an email to the Planned Parenthood affiliate's president, saying that when she went in for an IUD she was told "it would be rough, and just ride it out." She suffered bleeding and sharp pain for months but when her mother would call to try to get help for her, she'd just get frustrated phone menus that took her nowhere. Another doctor found that the person at Planned Parenthood who had inserted the IUD had botched the job. To add insult to injury, even after the family paid off the bill for the botch job, the affiliate kept billing them.

Sympathy for Staff

"[M]any clinic employees said they felt a sense of mission going to work every day. They recount stories of seeing children as young as 12 and 13 years old receive abortions, sometimes because a family member impregnated them."

How many of those girls were returned to their abusers for more? It's not like Planned Parenthood has a stellar record of reporting sexual abuse and statutory rape.

Back to the Bad Stuff

This time it's disgruntled employees. "Scores of former employees have sued Planned Parenthood, raising complaints that include refusing to pay overtime or provide breaks, pushing out employees who needed time off to deal with injuries or newborn babies, and firing people who complained about discrimination or clinic practices."

"Dozens of current and former employees also said that there complaints were met with reminders that they were in a 'mission moment,' meaning a time of crisis for reproductive rights so urgent that it overshadowed their concerns." Translation: Not only is the abortion more important than the patient; it's more important than the staff.

My Thoughts

The reporter, Katie Benner, did a rather lackluster job of finding Planned Parenthood badness, as did her research helper Susan Beachy. Here's a few examples they might have considered:

• A Planned Parenthood in Nevada sent 24-year-old Alyona Dixon home in 2022 after providing her with abortion pills. She went septic and died. Let's add her to the list of other Planned Parenthood deaths that I know about: Cree Erwin-Shephard in 2016, Tonya Reaves in 2012, Roselle Owens in 2009, Edrica Goode in 2007, Vivian Tran and Holly Patterson in 2003, Diana Lopez and Irene Stevenson in 2002, and Elise Kalat in 1987. 
• The rather gruesome selection of videos the Center for Medical Progress shared in which Planned Parenthood doctors talked about changing how they perform abortions in order to get saleable fetal parts as ordered by procurement agencies. That includes the abortionist who talked about how to handle a live birth: "Pay attention to who's in the room." 
• A woman named Tamara who had just gone to Planned Parenthood in Hempstead, NY for a pregnancy test, was convinced to go ahead with an abortion, and was sent home to learn that she had been pregnant with twins and only one had been removed -- except for a foot that was left behind. 
• A Planned Parenthood in Chicago performed an abortion on a 17-year-old girl who had been brought in by the 45-year-old man who had gotten her pregnant. The abuse continued for another year.
• Amanda Davis underwent an abortion at a Boston Planned Parenthood, wasn't given any provisions for aftercare, was unable to reach anybody as she suffered pain and cramping and passing large clots. Finally she want to a hospital and learned that the Planned Parenthood doctor had only removed about 25% of her unborn baby and had left the rest to rot in her body over a two month period. 
• Roughly a third of sex trafficking victims pass through Planned Parenthood at some point, but they're not very good at helping the women escape or reporting the abuse if the victim is underage.