Abortion records will aid hunt for abusers

In Indiana, anybody under the age of 14 who has sex is, by law, a victim of abuse.

As attorney general, Steve Carter’s job is to investigate whether Indiana clinics have treated child sex-abuse victims at state expense but failed to report the crime – as the law also requires.

But when Carter asked clinics run by the nation’s largest abortion provider for records that might lead to the prosecution of men who prey on young girls, Planned Parenthood refused – and sued the state instead!

Welcome to the wacky world of abortion politics, where law, compassion and even common sense must be vilified if they appear to threaten the rights invented by the Supreme Court 32 years ago in its infamous Roe vs. Wade decision.

I’ve known Carter for years, and he has never been a leader (publicly, at least) in the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party. So when he assured me this week his request for the records of about 80 young patients treated at 22 Planned Parenthood clinics had nothing to do with abortion, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Planned Parenthood’s response, on the other hand, clearly had everything to do with abortion – despite its lofty assurances to the contrary.

Although Carter wouldn’t discuss specifics because of his active investigation and Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit, he did reveal this much:

The state’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit requested the records March 1 as part of its investigation into whether Medicaid recipients as young as 12 and 13 had been neglected by the clinics’ failure to report sexual abuse to the proper authorities.

During the Medicaid unit’s investigation, Carter said, names of the patients would be kept strictly confidential, becoming public record only if prosecutors – not Carter’s office – decided to file criminal charges. The children involved did not necessarily receive abortions, Carter said; Planned Parenthood also offers counseling, diagnoses, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and other services. Nor is the unit targeting Planned Parenthood, he added.

“We’ve been doing these investigations since the 1970s, and there’s never been a case where we have not maintained the confidentiality of records,” Carter said. “It may be unpopular to request to look at these records, but we take our obligation (to investigate fraud and abuse claims) seriously, and we’re frozen for the moment.”

And so, in the name of “protecting privacy,” Planned Parenthood may be shielding from prosecution men who abuse the very people the organization supposedly exists to serve.

That makes no sense, of course, if Planned Parenthood cares about protecting girls and prosecuting statutory rapists. But the organization’s obstructionism makes perfect sense if its first priority is to protect abortion and the millions of dollars it generates.

The organization’s motives become obvious when its conflict with Carter is viewed in a larger context. In Kansas, for example, Attorney General Phill Kline (supported by a court order) has requested medical records of more than 80 women who obtained late-term abortions in 2003. Kline has said he is looking for evidence of child abuse or violation of a state law restricting abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The Justice Department faced similar complaints last year after it requested medical records from a New York hospital it said were necessary to defend objections to a federal law banning late-term “partial-birth” abortions.

In each case, abortion-rights supporters objected on “privacy” grounds – the same grounds the Supreme Court used in 1973 when discovering a constitutional right to abortion that had somehow gone undetected for nearly 200 years. And confidentiality, of course, is sought by many abortion patients.

But consider what Planned Parenthood and its allies are really saying here:

If rapists must go free to ensure privacy, so be it.

And if states or Congress choose to restrict later-term abortions – as even Roe vs. Wade allows – we will make those laws, including Indiana’s, impossible to enforce by denying access to records needed to prove illegal activity took place.

Karen Pearl, interim president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, made the organization’s motives clear when she told The Associated Press: “What we are witnessing is an alarming attack on medical privacy across the country. Politicians with rigid anti-choice agendas are trying to rip apart the covenant we have with our patients.”

But is the pro-life movement behind Carter’s investigation? It’s impossible to say for sure, although it’s no secret that groups such as Texas-based Life Dynamics have been anonymously calling clinics run by Planned Parenthood and others to see if they would report sexual activity involving young teens.

Did Life Dynamics or its allies relay their findings to Carter?

And would it really matter, even if they did? The factual guilt or innocence of an alleged sexual predator should not be determined by the motives of the people making the charge.

“We’re not the ones who made this a public issue,” Carter said of his previously confidential investigation. “We didn’t make this a public issue. The other side has chosen to draw public attention to this.”

Allen County Right to Life Executive Director Cathie Humbarger, who was in Indianapolis this week lobbying for a bill that would require abortion clinics to be licensed and inspected once a year – abortion advocates oppose that, too – believes Planned Parenthood’s priorities are misplaced.

“Defense of our children should be our foremost concern,” she said. “This is not about abortion; this is about child abuse. What’s more important – privacy or kids? And if we don’t defend them, who will?”