Pro-life writer Phoebe Lee did research on Planned Parenthood for her book Casualties of Indulgence: from Life to Aborted. She wrote about the case of a pregnant nineteen-year-old who asked a Planned Parenthood worker about adoption. According to Lee, the girl was given a misleading answer by the Planned Parenthood “counselor.”
Lee tells the story:
In one case, a 19-year-old asked a Planned Parenthood counselor for adoption options. According to her, they could not provide her with adoption assistance. The reasons for this are unknown. They told her she could go to the local health department or children’s services to learn about such options, but “her privacy may not be guaranteed.” The girl chose to abort.
According to Lee, this unnamed abortion patient was warned that most health departments and children’s services offices would not guarantee her anonymity if she adopted out her child. Lee argues that this is untrue. Although policies vary from state to state, the identity of the birth mother is usually kept confidential or is only revealed to those directly involved and, even then, only on request.
For example, in Chicago the information can only be revealed to the adoptive parents, the adopted children themselves, and biological siblings of adopted children.
After learning about the nineteen-year-old girl’s story, Lee decided to do some research of her own to see how Planned Parenthood responded to requests for adoption information. Posing as a pregnant woman, she called six different Planned Parenthood clinics, “located in towns or cities with a population of 50,000 or more, all within a 250 mile radius.”
Lee describes the results:
None of the Planned Parenthood representatives in any of these offices could offer me concrete assistance in my adoption request. Each representative told me I could contact children’s services or I could make an appointment to visit their Planned Parenthood office to receive information on all my options. In one city, the representative said if I visited their office and decided on adoption, she would give me a number to call for discussing adoption choices. When I asked for the name and number on the phone, the woman indicated I would have to schedule an appointment, insisting I needed to sit down with someone to review the options.
Apparently, Planned Parenthood refuses to give out information on adoption to pregnant women unless they come in for “counseling” first. Many women know from experience that this “counseling” often amounts to nothing more than pressure to have an abortion.
And Then There Were None, an organization for former clinic workers and abortionists, released a video about how Planned Parenthood clinics have a quota for how many abortions they should sell in a given period of time. Other former Planned Parenthood workers have spoken about the coercive tactics they used to sell abortions at Planned Parenthood. Catherine Anthony Adair spoke about how they withheld information about fetal development from patients, and lied when they were asked questions. Former patients have also spoken out about being lied to at Planned Parenthood.
Lee concludes:
If Planned Parenthood claims its greatest concern is family planning and ensuring a loving home for all children, then why could they provide me only with the same assistance I could have just as easily found looking in the Yellow Pages?
Perhaps the reason is that Planned Parenthood makes no money off adoption, just like they make no money if the woman gives birth and keeps her child. There is no need, then, to make it a priority to present it as an option for women. Planned Parenthood does, however, make money from abortion.
Planned Parenthood’s deceit and refusal to give information on adoption is not surprising considering its history. Phoebe Lee’s research is yet another nail in the coffin of the idea that Planned Parenthood gives “Care. No Matter What.”
Source: Phoebe Lee Casualties of Indulgence: from Life to Aborted (New York: Writer’s Showcase, 2001) 52-55
