Contact: media@liveaction.org, 323-454-3304
APPLETON, Wisc., Dec. 15 — Responding to last week’s release of an undercover video showing biased counseling at an Appleton, WI Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman called on authorities to investigate and declared that state legislators should “make sure Planned Parenthood doesn’t mislead young girls like this in the future.”
In the video, both the abortion doctor and counselor repeatedly insist to a reportedly 10-week-pregnant woman that the unborn child “is not a baby” and offer several contradicting definitions of “embryo” and “fetus.” The counselor claims that the fetus’s heart does not start beating until “about seventeen or eighteen weeks.” Later the abortion doctor, Dr. Prohaska, tells the woman, “you don’t want to wait” to get an abortion and warns her, “women die having babies.”
Two leading embryologists, Drs. Dianne Irving and Ward Kischer, stepped forward last Thursday and called information presented during the counseling session “scientifically erroneous and absurd.”
Grothman states that “the medical society should begin an immediate investigation into what was said, as to whether this doctor should continue to have a medical license.” According to the American Medical Association’s Code of Ethics, “the physician’s obligation is to present the medical facts accurately to the patient.” Wisconsin law requires women undergoing abortions to receive medically accurate information.
On Friday, Teri Huyck, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, released a statement asserting that the abortion doctor provided “honest, medically accurate information.” Huyck called the videos “edited.” Live Action, the group responsible for the video, has sent the full unedited footage to Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Outagamie County District Attorney Carrie Schneider for review. Grothman says he would “assume the local District Attorney will check into this.”
Lila Rose, the 21-year-old president of Live Action, says last week’s reactions point to a growing divide between abortion workers and the medical community. “Planned Parenthood poses as a mainstream health provider but their actions reflect just the opposite: they hide the scientific facts of fetal development so they can sell more abortions to more women,” says Rose. “An abortion is not a mere surgery. Instead, abortion determines whether a woman’s unborn son or daughter will live or die. Planned Parenthood’s pattern of medical malpractice and refusal to accept correction from scientific authorities further separates them from the rest of the medical community, who base their treatment on sound scientific guidance, not deceiving patients.”
Video: http://liveaction.org/rosaacuna
