Planned Parenthood has fired an employee who apparently advised a man pretending to be a pimp to underage girls and illegal immigrants. The New Jersey attorney general is also investigating.
The firing stems from an undercover video released by the anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood group LiveAction. LiveAction staged visits to eight Planned Parenthood clinics this month, including the Central New Jersey clinic shown in the video, during which an activist pretended to be a pimp. He told employees that he “managed girls,” including 14- and 15-year-olds and illegal immigrants, and wanted to know how to get them tested for sexually transmitted diseases and potentially get abortions without alerting authorities.
In the video, a manager at the clinic appears to advise the man and a female companion on how to avoid scrutiny by having the girls lie about their age or go to another non-Planned Parenthood clinic altogether.
“We were profoundly shocked when we viewed the videotape,” Phyllis Kinsler, CEO of the Central New Jersey chapter said in a statement released Tuesday, “which depicted an employee of one of our health centers behaving in a repugnant manner that is inconsistent with our standards of care and is completely unacceptable.”
“We have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of behavior, and the employee in the video was immediately suspended from her duties this [Tuesday] morning and was terminated this evening. We are fully committed to delivering high-quality reproductive health care to the women of our communities, complying with all laws, and upholding the highest ethical standards.”
Planned Parenthood says it conducted a full internal investigation. The woman told Kinsler about the visit later on the day it occurred, Jan. 13, Planned Parenthood says. Employees at another New Jersey clinic that got the same visit called the police, Planned Parenthood says.
The edited video was released yesterday. Last week, Planned Parenthood reported to the FBI that clinics in five states and Washington, D.C., had received the same visits from the man posing to be a pimp. The organization asked the FBI to investigate the potential prostitution ring, but noted that it was probably a hoax designed to target Planned Parenthood.
LiveAction is run by Lila Rose, an associate of James O’Keefe (who posed as a pimp in several infamous ACORN videos), and has been operating since 2006. In 2009, her group got two other Planned Parenthood employees fired over not reporting an (also fake) statutory rape.
New Jersey Attorney General Paula Dow says she will investigate whether Planned Parenthood broke any laws.
“At first glance, I find these allegations to be very disturbing,” she said in a statement to the Star-Ledger. Gov. Chris Christie referred the matter to her, she said.
LiveAction released what it says is the unedited video today:
