Planned Parenthood Responds To Live Action's Latest Smear

Planned Parenthood responded this morning to discredited conservative activist Lila Rose's bogus “gendercide” attack on the organization, stating that the staffer shown in the “hoax patient encounter” was fired after the incident and that the organization “condemns seeking abortions on the basis of gender.” From The Huffington Post:

A Planned Parenthood spokeswoman told The Huffington Post on Tuesday the staffer in the video “did not follow our protocol” for dealing with “a highly unusual patient scenario.”

“Planned Parenthood insists on the highest quality patient care, and if we ever become aware of a staff member not meeting these high standards we take swift action,” she said in a written statement. “Within three days of this patient interaction, the staff member's employment was ended and all staff members at this affiliate were immediately scheduled for retraining in managing unusual patient encounters. Today opponents of Planned Parenthood are promoting an edited video of that hoax patient encounter.”

This spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Federation of America also told The Huffington Post that the organization condemns seeking abortions on the basis of gender, but its policy is to provide “high quality, confidential, nonjudgmental care to all who come into” its health centers. That means that no Planned Parenthood clinic will deny a woman an abortion based on her reasons for wanting one, except in those states that explicitly prohibit sex-selective abortions (Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Illinois).

In material accompanying the highly edited video, Live Action claimed that this proved Planned Parenthood is facilitating rampant “gendercide” in America. But statistics show that sex-selection does not happen with any regularity in the United States, as the vast majority of abortions are performed before gender is detectable, and the gender birth ratio in America is close to even.