In September of 2012, a thirteen-year-old girl from Elwood, Indiana was overpowered and raped by her seventeen-year-old neighbor and became pregnant as a result. Her abuser was found guilty of molesting her and two other child victims and faces sentencing this week. The girl, now fourteen, chose to carry the baby to term and is due in early July.
The crime is tragic, but not rare.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in Indiana, hundreds of girls aged fourteen and under become pregnant each year. Most of these pregnancies are the result of child molestation. Under Indiana law, child molestation occurs when a man seventeen or older has sex with a girl thirteen or under, or when an older man has sex with a girl fifteen or under.
As Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics revealed in his research report “Child Predators,” “[a]ccording to the most reliable studies, among girls fifteen and younger who become pregnant, between 60 and 80 percent of them are impregnated by adult men. We have also uncovered data showing that as the age of the victim goes down, the age of the perpetrator goes up.”
The girl from Elwood is only one of thousands of young girls across America: children bearing children, through no fault of their own.
Earlier this month, Planned Parenthood of Indiana weighed in on the tragic Elwood story via their official Facebook page. Planned Parenthood of Indiana posted a link to an article in the Indianapolis Star about the rape in Elwood along with this insightful comment: “As this article notes, heartbreaking stories like this are all too common in Indiana, which ranks second in the number of teen sexual assaults. Comprehensive sex ed can make a difference in preventing sexual assaults.”
When I saw that, I shut my eyes in disbelief.
First, try telling the girl in Elwood, Indiana – a ninety-five-pound little girl who was forcibly raped in a car – that sex education could have made a difference in preventing what happened to her. It was not the girl’s lack of sexual education, but the man’s lack of any semblance of humanity that is fully and completely to blame.
But second, am I the only one who remembers Planned Parenthood of Indiana’s disgusting history of breaking the law to cover up the abuse of thirteen-year-old girls? In 2008, Lila Rose posed as a thirteen-year-old victim of statutory rape and went undercover at Planned Parenthood clinics in both Bloomington, Indiana, and Indianapolis, Indiana. Though she made it absolutely clear to staff members at both clinics that she had been impregnated by a man who was thirty-one years old – a full eighteen years her senior – the staff at both clinics repeatedly told her that they did not care how old the man was and that they could help her get an abortion without anyone knowing the man’s age. Under Indiana law, it was the clinics’ express duty to notify authorities of the statutory rape the girl was reporting to them. What was Planned Parenthood’s response? The girl was assured that her privacy would be protected and no one would ever know. Absolute silence. No authority was ever notified.
In what universe is sex between a thirteen-year-old and a thirty-one-year-old a private decision that deserves to be protected?
I suppose it is the same universe where hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are funneled to Planned Parenthood. And it is probably the same universe where we trust Planned Parenthood to send “educators” and curricula to our schools to “educate” children about their sexual freedom.
Behind the bright pink banners, talk of cancer screenings, and “Care: No Matter What” slogan lurks a sinister agenda. It is an agenda which claims that sexual assault is “heartbreaking” but aid molesters by offering to perform abortions on child-victims, without notifying parents or authorities. It is an agenda that, instead of mourning the loss of innocence and childhood of a thirteen-year-old little girl at the hands of a sadistic molester and vowing to crack down on child-abusers, chooses to emphasize comprehensive sex education.
It is time that Planned Parenthood be exposed for what they truly are – an organization feeding, not ending, the cycle of abuse of thousands of young girls in Indiana each year.
You can be a vital part of exposing Planned Parenthood. Use your Twitter, Facebook, and your voice to get out the word about the true agenda of Planned Parenthood. Expose them.
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” -Ephesians 5:11 (ESV)
