Today, Live Action released its first video in a series entitled “Gendercide: Sex-Selection in America.” Consistent with Planned Parenthood’s pattern of abuse and habitual disregard for the health and safety of women, the video reveals Planned Parenthood willing to help a woman kill her later-term, unborn child if an ultrasound reveals the child is a girl.
The callousness and flippancy of the Planned Parenthood employee is breathtaking, as she laughs about having four children and aborting two others. She tells the woman that she can have other children if she aborts a daughter, “So just continue and try again”—as if later term abortions are trivial, a game to be played until you get the sex you want.
But what the video reveals about Planned Parenthood’s radical agenda is especially significant. Forget the mantra, “Safe, Legal, and Rare.” Planned Parenthood will do abortions for any reason, at any time, and without regard to the woman’s health and safety.
First, Planned Parenthood will do abortions for any reason. In the video, the woman states that she will seek an abortion if her unborn child is a girl. The Planned Parenthood employee details how the woman can get an ultrasound and come back to Planned Parenthood for an abortion if the child is a girl. Planned Parenthood claims to care about women—but obviously that concern does not extend to women in the womb. Taking a life simply because it belongs to a girl is the ultimate form of sex discrimination.
Second, Planned Parenthood will do abortions at any time. The Planned Parenthood employee describes an unborn child at 20-23 weeks, “The brain is already developed, a lot… Pretty much everything’s already developed.” In addition to “pretty much everything” already being developed, medical evidence demonstrates that an unborn child can feel pain at 20 weeks. But that doesn’t stop Planned Parenthood. The only thing standing in the way of its agenda of providing abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy is a state law prohibiting later-term abortion.
Finally, Planned Parenthood will perform late-term abortions without medical reason, thereby endangering the health and lives of women. In the video, the Planned Parenthood employee has no qualms about providing a late-term abortion for the woman, even though there is no medical reason for the abortion. Yet, it is undisputed that abortion poses a higher medical risk to the woman when the procedure is performed later in pregnancy. Compared to an abortion at eight weeks of gestation or earlier, the relative risk increases exponentially at longer gestations. The incidence of major complications is highest after 20 weeks gestation—the time at which the Planned Parenthood employee acknowledges the woman will first learn her baby’s sex, and can come back to Planned Parenthood if she wants to abort once she knows if the baby is a girl.
It is nothing but medically irresponsible to perform an unnecessary procedure, for a deadly discriminatory reason, which will kill one female and put the other at extreme medical risk (including death).
The video highlights the need for state and federal legislation prohibiting sex-selection abortion and abortions at and after 20 weeks gestation. AUL’s model bills, the Sex Selective and Genetic Abnormality Ban Act (sex selection ban) and the Women’s Health Defense Act (late-term abortion ban), are available here. To date, only 4 states prohibit sex-selection abortions (AZ, IL, OK, and PA), and 11 states prohibit abortion at or after 20 weeks (AL, AZ, DE, GA, ID, IN, KS, NE, NC, OH, and OK). In May, AUL’s President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest testified before a Missouri House subcommittee hearing on HB 1933, the Abortion Ban for Sex Selection and Genetic Abnormalities Act of 2012, based on AUL’s model. AUL’s Staff Counsel Mailee Smith filed written legal testimony supporting the same bill.
On the federal front, the House of Representatives is currently considering H.R. 3541, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2012 (PRENDA). H.R. 3541 would prohibit sex discrimination against an unborn child by proscribing the killing of the child based on his or her sex. Passage of PRENDA is vital to prevent sex-based violence and to ensure that women are treated with respect and dignity. Americans United for Life Action is urging Members to vote for PRENDA and will be scoring the vote on H.R. 3541.
Planned Parenthood’s true agenda—to provide abortion for any reason, at any time, no matter the risks—stands in stark contrast to the views of the majority of Americans. A recent poll revealed that 77 percent of Americans support bans on sex-selection abortions.
Live Action’s video drives home the point that Planned Parenthood is an enemy of the American people, and particularly women.
