Undercover video shows workers 'giving misinformation to women'
A team of activists whose undercover videos revealed Planned Parenthood employees advising patients to lie to a judge and ignoring apparent cases of statutory rape has launched a project to uncover lies told to the patients.
The new Rosa Acuna Project led by Lila Rose at Live Action.org unveiled today its first undercover video revealing counselors and an abortionist in Wisconsin apparently misleading a potential patient.
The video, according to Live Action, reveals "clinic staff, including the abortion doctor, lying to two young women about fetal development":
In the video, two women ask an abortion business counselor if a pregnant woman's 10-week-old unborn child has a heartbeat. The counselor informs them it is "heart tones."
"Heartbeat is when the fetus is active in the uterus – can survive – which is about 17 or 18 weeks," she says.
However, Live Action said embryologists confirm that the heartbeat of an unborn child begins at about three weeks.
Along with breaking mandatory informed consent laws in certain states, Rose told WND misinformation provided by physicians can cause women to make poor choices.
"When a woman is coming in there and is asking questions about her unborn child, then she is lied to, you're talking about a life and death matter," Rose said. "Whether the child will be alive or will be dead is an incredibly important decision."
She said women have reported that such decisions are most important they have made in their lives.
 Lila Rose |
"These supposed health providers are callously and willfully giving misinformation to women," she said.
On the video, the counselor states, "A fetus is what's in the uterus right now. That is not a baby."
The abortionist, identified only by his last name, Polhaska, says, "It's not a baby at this stage or anything like that."
He says that "women die having babies" and an abortion is "much safer than having a baby."
The North Gillett Street Planned Parenthood in Appleton, where the video was made, could not be reached for comment. The telephone system did not allow an opportunity for a caller to leave a message, and the system then disconnected the call.
The video follows by just a few weeks the decision by Abby Johnson to quit her position as director of the Planned Parenthood branch in Bryan, Texas, and become a pro-life activist after viewing an ultrasound of a 13-week-old unborn baby being aborted in her clinic.
In an interview, she told of the Planned Parenthood's orientation towards abortion as a revenue generator.
"They don't want to talk about when your baby has a heartbeat," she said. "They don't want to give the woman information that could give her a connection with her baby."
Rose, a 21-year-old UCLA student and president of Live Action, said medical lies and manipulative counseling are routine at Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion business.
"They will do or say anything in order to sell more abortions to more women, whether it is covering up sexual abuse or lying to women about medical facts," said Rose. "Our team has visited dozens of Planned Parenthood clinics undercover. Planned Parenthood, while claiming to support patient self-determination, operates with an 'abortion-first mentality.'"
The video is the first in the "Rosa Acuna Project," a multi-state undercover project about abortion counseling. The organization expects to release more videos in coming weeks.
Live Action's earlier videos revealed Planned Parenthood branches willing to conceal sexual abuse and accept donations intended to abort a black child. The videos resulted in several demands to investigate the organization as well as the dismissal of employees.
"Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar organization with nearly $350 million of government funding, and stands to gain hundreds of millions more from national health care," said Rose. "Do we really want to subsidize an organization that gives women in need atrocious misinformation and predatory abortion practices?"
Planned Parenthood has had other issues with delivering information to patients. In South Dakota, it has fought a years-long battle over a state law requiring the organization to tell potential abortion customers that the procedure will "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being."
U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier ruled that Planned Parenthood must follow a 2005 state law requiring the language. Earlier, Planned Parenthood had substituted its own language instead of delivering the information specified by the state.
The dispute went as high as the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the state can "use its regulatory authority to require a physician to provide truthful, non-misleading information relevant to a patient's decision to have an abortion."
