Planned Parenthood Aids Pimp's Underage Sex Ring

[Skeptic Ginger]

And that obligation is not legally optional in most cases.

I believe the site I linked to said 48 of 50 states had reporting laws. But what does differ from state to state are definitions of statutory rape and what specifically is considered abuse.

If you are 14 you can be treated in this state for STDs without parental consent. If a 14 yr old tells me their 15 yr old boyfriend was the likely source of the girl's STD, I can give her a prescription for her boyfriend without seeing him. This is the CDC's recommended standard of care.

Expedited Partner Therapy

Expedited Partner Therapy (EPT) is the clinical practice of treating the sex partners of patients diagnosed with chlamydia or gonorrhea by providing prescriptions or medications to the patient to take to his/her partner without the health care provider first examining the partner.

The law differs depending on the state.

Then there is the age of consent and that differs by state as does the definition of statutory rape: STATUTORY RAPE LAWS BY STATE

WA State has figured out it is wrong to treat a 16 yr old having sex with a 15 yr old like a criminal. At the same time there are laws protecting young teens from older partners and from partners in positions of authority over the teen. This law makes sense as it is written. Not every state has such enlightened laws.

I'm not aware of any colleagues who would treat a 12 yr old with an STD and not make an extensive effort to address the bigger issues than just the infection. But the reality is some kid's have sex beginning at fairly young ages. When I was 12, 2 of my friends were sexually active. By the time I was 15, most of my friends were. There wasn't any child abuse involved. There weren't any older guys involved. Teens have sex. It's a fact of life.

After the Conyers Georgia syphilis epidemic, Asking Some Unasked Questions

I want to place these teenagers' sexual experience in some larger context. While it might have seemed to some of the girls in this report that twelve is the age for first sexual intercourse, twelve is not the average age for girls nationwide; it is hard to know if it is even for the girls of Rockdale County. The most recent statistics indicate that 38.5 percent of 15-17 year old girls have had sexual intercourse; this proportion is unchanged from the 1988 rate. Several studies have shown that by 9th grade, 25% of girls, on average, have had sexual intercourse in this country. Whether they wanted to have this experience, why, and what it meant to them, is data that has never been collected.

If you haven't seen the Frontline documentary of the epidemic, it is well worth the hour. It didn't shock or surprise me that much. There was some behavior that was beyond my own experience as a teen but not by that much.

The idea health care professionals are assisting teens in prostitution or ignoring an abusive situation is a ludicrous fantasy at best, and a purposeful deceitful campaign to malign health care providers at worst. And I believe the worst is what is occurring in the case of PP.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, skeptic ginger. You have the exact same obligation that everyone has: you have an obligation to follow the law. As a citzen, I find it offensive that you think your position gives you some special privilege to ignore the laws you don't like. I also wonder if you would be willing to tell your patients or your employer that you think obeying the law is optional. I suspect you don't really have the courage of your convictions on this point.

Your ignorance of the facts in the PP case and in your false assumptions about other health care providers and what they do when treating sexually active teens is sad, really sad. There's a phony campaign to malign dedicated health care providers and you appear to have bought the lie, hook line and sinker.

 

[Gaspode]

Keep it civil please. Address the argument, not the arguer.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Gaspode

 

[Rufo]

You have an erroneous view of the reality of delivering health care. I suggest your view has been distorted by the propaganda campaign against Planned Parenthood and other womens' health care workers the anti-choice extremists think trashing will help achieve some naive goal.

Health care workers readily report infectious diseases and potential child and other domestic abuse. Why wouldn't we?

But there is more than a little evidence one sometimes has to balance the risks and benefits of decisions if the decision could prevent a child from seeking health care. You are talking about highly educated very experienced health care workers making professional decisions. But ignorant people with their little causes think they can make better decisions.

So these ignorant people show up at town hall meetings screaming at legislators to not get between people and their doctors. But some of those same people are just as easily led by the nose to show up at state legislation sessions lobbying to get other people they've never met and health care professions who do know what they are doing to follow some uneducated misguided creep's idea of not sinning.

I think you really misunderstood my position here. I thought I made it very clear that I have no respect for groups like Live Action or the sort of propaganda they spread, including the kind presented in this thread.

My post was in response to comments I interpreted as suggesting that health care workers should not report crimes at all, for the sake of not intimidating victims from seeking help. I think this is a complicated issue, and that there needs to be a balance between reporting crimes and not intimidating victims.

As far as I can understand, this is your position as a health care worker as well. Read my later post. If you still think my opinion is so different from yours, we can discuss that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Keep it civil please. Address the argument, not the arguer.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Gaspode

I don't want my comments lost to the AAH forum. It's infuriating to see people fall for this fallacious characterization of nurses, and nurse practitioners, which make up the bulk of PP employees.

Susceptibility to believing this lie is based on political ideology and a willingness to believe the sources that are echoing the propaganda. That's hard to just leave out of the discussion.

But I will try harder to discuss in general terms, the qualities a person must possess to be susceptible to being conned by something so obvious and disgusting as this con.

 

[Vortigern99]

No, skeptic ginger. You have the exact same obligation that everyone has: you have an obligation to follow the law. As a citzen, I find it offensive that you think your position gives you some special privilege to ignore the laws you don't like. I also wonder if you would be willing to tell your patients or your employer that you think obeying the law is optional. I suspect you don't really have the courage of your convictions on this point.

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", April 1963.​

 

[Ziggurat]

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.​

Martin Luther King, Jr. had the stones to know that when breaking an unjust law, you should still EXPECT to be punished for it. And he and other civil rights activists had the courage of their convictions to break laws they thought unjust publicly, and accept the consequences of doing so, in an effort to get those laws changed.

But that's not what's being argued for here. What's being argued for here is the right to simply ignore laws and suffer no consequences. That is not anything King ever argued for. Doing so does not bring us closer to just laws, it brings us away from the rule of law and towards the rule of man. That is no path to justice.

 

[Vortigern99]

Interesting response. You may be correct that "What's being argued for here is the right to simply ignore laws and suffer no consequences." King himself, in the same Birmingham letter I linked above, says:

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. -- King, 1963.​

I don't mean to derail the discussion, but I do think this is an interesting and related sidebar.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am absolutely not claiming certainty that all victims will seek help. Maybe not even most. I understand the problem, and it's not a simple situation. What I'm saying is that finding a balance that works is difficult. ...

If [the laws] demonstrably do not work, they should be reconsidered. ...

The problems and solutions are complex, which is precisely why the laws should be general and leave the providers flexibility to make educated, experienced professional decisions.

There are 2 problems with many of the laws. One problem is the difficulty writing legislation that fits every situation. A 12 yr old living on the street having sex with a 14 yr old is not the same as a 12 yr old showing up with an STD and it looks like the sex partner was within the family. The way the WA law is written addressing the age gap and position of power over the minor makes much more sense than some blanket law anyone having sex with a 12 yr old is a criminal.

The second problem is busybodies with moral agendas and legislators who don't have medical educations are the writers of many of these laws. Idiots in this state lobbied the legislature to ban giving a vaccine with thimerosal in it to a child under 3 and pregnant women. It wasn't based on the scientific evidence, it wasn't based on public health recommendation, in fact the public health testified against the law, and the law makes the stupid assumption physicians and nurse practitioners can prescribe dangerous drugs with narrow toxicity limits but we aren't competent to prescribe the right vaccine for a patient. The ignorance in that is mind boggling. In addition, the first year the law was implemented surprised clinics who normally order flu vaccine 9 months ahead of when it is given. No one could order thimerosal free vaccine. The result put pregnant women and young children at serious risk. There was no thimerosal free flu vaccine available to give.

But those ignorant anti-vaxers who lobbied the legislature to pass this law and protect fetuses and children against Big Pharma were happy little campers. And the legislators, not knowing jack about the process involved in administration of flu vaccine were oblivious to the risk they put people at.

One needs a license to practice medicine for a reason. There are professional boards that oversee medical practice. Yet legislators when lobbied by the morality police think they are doing no harm. Some of the legislators themselves are the acting morality police.

So it's hard even for professionals to write practice guidelines because one cannot easily spell out all the possible ways a patient might present. Add to that legislators who don't know much about medical practices, and throw in the activists in the community who believe in all kinds of propaganda and the resulting laws can be really problematic.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Martin Luther King, Jr. had the stones to know that when breaking an unjust law, you should still EXPECT to be punished for it. And he and other civil rights activists had the courage of their convictions to break laws they thought unjust publicly, and accept the consequences of doing so, in an effort to get those laws changed.

But that's not what's being argued for here. What's being argued for here is the right to simply ignore laws and suffer no consequences. That is not anything King ever argued for. Doing so does not bring us closer to just laws, it brings us away from the rule of law and towards the rule of man. That is no path to justice.

This is where you just don't get it. The health care providers are not breaking the law as the right wing echo chamber falsely advertises. In an extremely rare circumstance a provider may act in the best interest of a patient and may work around a very bad law, but the vast majority of mandatory reporting is reported.

You seem to have an incredibly distorted view of the facts. There may be some really bad state laws that put some health care providers in a bind on some occasions. But this is extremely rare and very distorted by the anti-abortion fanatics. The distortion started with the attorney general in Kansas going off on his own personal moral mission by trying to subpoena abortion clinic records on a witch hunt looking for minors who's pregnancy might have fit the state's mandatory abuse reporting law.

This tactic has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting sexually abused children or prosecuting their sex partners. The sole purpose of this tactic is to harass abortion providers and women who have abortions.

The people trying to prove PP workers are skirting reporting laws call up or show up purposefully trying to entrap the workers. If you call up and say, I'm 13, I have an STD but I'm not coming in unless you agree to not tell anyone, what is the best thing for that provider to do?

When you set up the circumstances like that you get a totally distorted perception of what is going on. First, that kind of call is extremely rare, so making the calls falsely portrays how often it occurs. And second, the provider who has the teen's interest at heart may very well agree and when the kid gets there try to talk the teen into an alternative course of action. But you can't do that if the teen never comes in.

Not to mention if this really were a teen with an STD, what about the provider's obligation to prevent more people getting infected?


The anti-abortion crusade is one of the most hateful, shortsighted selfish campaigns of today.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm writing my check to donate to Planned Parenthood as we post. I urge other people to do the same. And contact your legislators to offer a counter opinion to this McCarthyesk attack on PP.

 

[BenBurch]

I'm writing my check to donate to Planned Parenthood as we post. I urge other people to do the same. And contact your legislators to offer a counter opinion to this McCarthyesk attack on PP.

The people who did that and the people who repeat this all over the internet are lower than slime. I'm donating right now.

 

[Emet]

Media Matters Action Joins 26 Others In Defending Planned Parenthood From Right-Wing Attacks

February 04, 2011

Today, Media Matters Action Network joined 26 progressive organizations in sending a letter to members of Congress to express their "opposition to any effort to defund Planned Parenthood." Planned Parenthood has come under attack from conservatives after Lila Rose, an Andrew Breitbart-promoted videographer, presented heavily edited video she claims proves the organization engaged in systemic criminal activities.

http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201102040006

 

[Emet]

The Siege of Planned Parenthood
February 4, 2011

As if we didn’t have enough wars, the House of Representatives has declared one against Planned Parenthood.
(...)
This month, they’re going after an organization that provides millions of women with both family-planning services and basic health medical care, like pap smears and screening for diabetes, breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.
(...)
“What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?” demanded Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chief sponsor of a bill to bar the government from directing any money to any organization that provides abortion services.
(...)
But here’s the most notable thing about this whole debate: The people trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business do not seem concerned about what would happen to the 1.85 million low-income women who get family-planning help and medical care at the clinics each year. It just doesn’t come up. There’s not even a vague contingency plan.
(...)
There is no comparable organization to Planned Parenthood, providing the same kind of services on a national basis. If there were, most of the women eligible for Medicaid-financed family-planning assistance wouldn’t have to go without it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/opinion/05collins.html

 

[Upchurch]

So, lemme get this straight: Someone steals James O'Keefe's schtick exactly and people are just accepting that what it depicts is in any way accurate? Why is anyone taking this at all seriously?

Two adages come to mind:

1. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
2. If you can't beat them with facts, bury them in BS.

 

[Emet]

So, lemme get this straight: Someone steals James O'Keefe's schtick exactly and people are just accepting that what it depicts is in any way accurate? Why is anyone taking this at all seriously?

Because it can have a direct impact. See my above links. Both state and federal legislative bodies can and do listen to the garbage--and then act.

 

[Aepervius]

@SkepticGinger

There are recourse to fight unjust law. One of them is to bring the law to various court and through process to get it repelled. The other is willful civil disobedience, which can and WILL land you in prison.

You may want to say that you are practicing civil disobedience with all the negative consequence it might entail, but you can't say that other moral/ethical obligation override the law (well you can asy, but I doubt the judge will take that into account).

ETA: as far as I can tell reporting is always mandatory.

 

[Upchurch]

Because it can have a direct impact. See my above links. Both state and federal legislative bodies can and do listen to the garbage--and then act.

What I meant was, why are people on this board taking this serious as if it represents events as the actually occured?

 

[TraneWreck]

This tactic has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting sexually abused children or prosecuting their sex partners. The sole purpose of this tactic is to harass abortion providers and women who have abortions.

This is the key point in all of this, and it's getting lost in the debate we're having here.

The members of the forum defending mandatory reporting and the firing of the PP employee are doing so for significantly more ethical reasons than those that drove the scumbag-videographers to set up the "sting."

On the societal level, this isn't a debate about legal technicalities. This is 100% about shaming, humiliating, and scaring women and girls for thinking about getting an abortion. The workers in these videos, both the 2008 versions and the latest nonsense, are trying their best to accommodate desperate, abused people trapped in a system made unecessarily complex by politics.

If we're going to play this game where we destroy people's lives because they failed to follow every technicality of the law, even the statutory requirements run directly contrary to the best interests of the patient, then we need to extend that anal legal compliance to every situation.

I look forward to the thread where the people championing the firing of the PP workers argue just as passionately that Cheney and Bush need to prosecuted for war crimes since they both admitted to approving waterboarding.

The law is the law. We signed treaties that called it a war crime. There's no black and white, just strict adherence to the letter of the law.

 

[TraneWreck]

What I meant was, why are people on this board taking this serious as if it represents events as the actually occured?

It appears that at least one of the videos was maliciously edited:

But Live Action also appears to have doctored the audio of its Richmond "sting," moving audio from one portion of their video to a different portion.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102040026

Public opinion is not guided by the same principles that bind the legal system. We're under no obligation to view people as innocent until proven guily, and at this point, we should assume that any "sting" video coming from the right is 100% *********.