How Planned Parenthood fails sex trafficking victims

Planned Parenthood promotes itself as a place that women and girls can turn to in their hour of private need. However, when the doors are closed and the tapes are rolling, a much different reality exists behind the walls of Planned Parenthood’s facilities.

This was abundantly clear in Live Action’s 2011 sex trafficking investigation. When undercover investigators posed as pimps and underage prostitutes, Planned Parenthood staffers either turned a blind eye to both the perpetrators and victims, or they behaved in a way dangerously close to complicity. Former Planned Parenthood manager Ramona Trevino explains the details:

Planned Parenthood Lies about Training Staff to Report Sex Traffickers

Even Planned Parenthood (PP) seems to have realized its failures on some level. After claiming staff had acted with vigilance and care, PP ended up firing a staffer for her behavior in one of the videos. Some of the statements made by staffers include:

• “[I]f they’re under a certain age…[inaudible] – you know, me and my other counselor, like for the most part we want as little information as possible – cause we don’t want to be involved in that shit.”

• Pimp: “…Could we even sign off as a guardian, is that even possible?” PP: “If you were writing the support letter, yeah, you could say” – Prostitute: “Oh good” PP: “that you take care of them, you support them.”

Despite Planned Parenthood’s polished public image, the internal workings of its facilities are empty of real help for vulnerable minor girls trapped in dangerous circumstances. After Planned Parenthood claimed to report suspected trafficking to “federal and local agencies,” in 2015 and 2016, Live Action sent out a series of FOIA requests in all the states where Planned Parenthood claimed to suspect a possible sex trafficking ring. But the majority of requests came back empty. According to the responses Live Action received, Planned Parenthood had failed to file reports with local law enforcement, thus potentially sending a trafficked girl right back to her abusers, in all but one state — Arizona.

Ignoring real human trafficking and child sex abuse seems to be a prevalent problem inside Planned Parenthood. Dottie Laster, a child trafficking expert wrote, “I have often wondered where these multiple abortions took place and how medical professionals had not seen the extensive trauma to their bodies, spirits and souls.”

In September 2015, a legal report entitled “How Planned Parenthood ‘Cares’ for Child Victims of Sexual Abuse: A Summary of Planned Parenthood Failing to Report Sexual Abuse,” revealed that, in one case:

The child was taken to three different abortion facilities, including a Planned Parenthood facility. Given that the abuse continued for years it is evident that none of the abortion facilities made a report to law enforcement. This tragic case is an outstanding example of how the failure of many people, including Planned Parenthood employees, resulted in a child being raped for years.

In “The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking and Their Implications for Identifying Victims in Healthcare Facilities,” Dr. Laura Lederer, former Senior Advisor for Trafficking in Persons for the U.S. Department of State and founder of the non-profit Global Centurion, reports:

Survivors [of human trafficking] also had significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most commonly Planned Parenthood clinics, which more than a quarter of survivors (29.6%) visited. … Since pimps and traffickers generally exercise nearly complete control of their victims, these points of contact with healthcare represent rare opportunities for victim identification and intervention.

Yet such survivors are almost never rescued by Planned Parenthood, according to the statistics and records. Instead, they are sent back time and again to their pimps and abusers, and they return time and again to Planned Parenthood for abortions that are forced upon them. Genevieve Plaster from the Charlotte Lozier Institute writes that “[t]hese instances of forced abortion [during human trafficking] cover the crimes, allow for ongoing abuse, and further rob the victim of any sense of humanity as that humanity in her womb is also snuffed out.”

Steven Wagner, a former director of the Human Trafficking Program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explains how Planned Parenthood’s failure to report suspected human trafficking can amount to a virtual death sentence:

The average age of entry into commercial sex exploitation is about 14. The average life expectancy of someone in commercial sexual exploitation is seven years. Start at 14, dead by 21. The mortality rate for someone in commercial sexual exploitation is 40 times higher than for a non-exploited person of the same age. Helping a victim return to exploitation more quickly by terminating a pregnancy increases the odds of death.

Not only does Planned Parenthood abort the children of abused and trafficked minor girls, but it also apparently fails to report their abuse, continually sending them straight back into the literal jaws of death.

The institutional and systemic culture within America’s largest abortion provider is enabling serious harm against children. Planned Parenthood conceals sex-trafficking and aids the traffickers by providing “services” to trafficked girls with no strings attached and few real reports actually made.