All News PipeLine #2: Congress to Investigate Planned Parenthood's Institutional Practices And Policies

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Congress to Investigate Planned Parenthood's Institutional Practices And Policies

By Susan Duclos

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is probing into Planned Parenthood's "institutional practices and policies."

A Republican-led House committee has launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood, requesting a mountain of documents covering everything from audits to abortion-funding records to its policies on reporting sexual abuse.

In a move Democrats decried as "unfair and unjustified," Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., earlier this month wrote to Planned Parenthood informing them that the House Energy and Commerce Committee was looking at the group's "institutional practices and policies."

Stearns also cited what he called the group's "extensive record of violating state sexual assault and child abuse reporting laws, and of encouraging young girls to lie about their ages to circumvent state reporting laws."

The line was an apparent reference to a series of sting operations conducted by anti-abortion group Live Action. The group has released videos which appear to show, in some cases, Planned Parenthood employees offering advice to people posing as sex traffickers.

Via email from Live Action:

For the first time in history, Congress has launched their own investigation into the well known abuse scandals and sex-trafficking cover-up within the walls of the nation’s biggest abortion chain, Planned Parenthood. Earlier this year, Live Action's undercover videos prompted the first Congressional defunding of abortion giant Planned Parenthood. Now, for the first time, Congress has launched their own investigation into the well known abuse scandals and sex-trafficking cover-up within the walls of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. As Live Action has documented and revealed for the past several years, Planned Parenthood's ruthless abortion first mentality has furthered victimized and endangered vulnerable women and young girls.

Planned Parenthood workers caught on tape. These undercover investigations have resulted in the firing of certain Planned Parenthood employees. Proponents for Planned Parenthood have accused the Live Action crew of editing the videos to misrepresent the criminal activities.

Below the videos are links provided by Live action to what they describe as uncut footage of the videos above and more and below that are the transcripts provided on the Live Action site.

The videos below are of three separate undercover investigations at three different locations.