“That’s Not A Baby Growing Inside of You."

Ed Morrissey has a powerful video posted which is part of a series produced by Live Action's Rosa Acuna Project. Jill Stanek answers the question, "who is Rosa Acuna,"  key to understanding the purpose of the project:

Who is Rosa Acuna? In a case that went all the way to the US Supreme Court (which declined to hear it in October 2008), plaintiff Rosa Acuna sued abortionist Sheldon Turkish for giving her false information about her preborn baby's development.

The project reveals evidence of counseling abuses at Planned Parenthood obtained through undercover student investigations.  In the video below you will see the pressure and deliberate lies told to prospective patients in order to sell the abortion:

  New undercover footage from an Appleton, WI Planned Parenthood abortion clinic shows clinic staff, including the abortion doctor, lying to two young women about fetal development and encouraging the one who is pregnant to obtain an abortion because "women die having babies."

In the undercover video, when the two women ask a Planned Parenthood counselor if the pregnant woman's 10-week-old unborn child has a heartbeat, the counselor emphasizes "heart tones," and answers, "Heart beat is when the fetus is active in the uterus--can survive--which is about seventeen or eighteen weeks." On the contrary, embryologists agree that the heartbeat begins around 3 weeks. Wisconsin informed consent law requires that women receive medically accurate information before undergoing an abortion.

The counselor then says, "A fetus is what's in the uterus right now. That is not a baby." Dr. Prohaska, the abortion doctor, insists, "It's not a baby at this stage or anything like that." Prohaska also states that having an abortion will be "much safer than having a baby," warning, "You know, women die having babies."

Ed Morrissey points to the blatant distortions in the discussion of "heart tones" vs "heart beats:"

The explanation of “heart tones” is particularly dishonest. The counselor says it can’t be a heartbeat because the baby clump of cells isn’t viable, but that it becomes a heartbeat at 17-18 weeks.  But a child isn’t viable at that point, either.  It does come closer to corresponding with the legal limitations of Planned Parenthood’s abortion services, however.

Of course women do die having babies, though advances in medicine make this as unlikely as dying during an abortion, perhaps less so.  Nevertheless, as a former high school support counselor, my larger objection is the "sales pitch."   Though I am reluctant to discuss this matter in a blog for fear of violating confidentiality, I can speak in general terms to the vulnerability of any young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy.  They are extremely vulnerable.   

Although I am strongly pro-life, I would not have told a vulnerable young woman the counter to what she hears from Planned Parenthood, she can't kill her baby.  The point of counseling is not to impose your values but to explore the client's values.  The undercover student asked exactly the type of questions you hear from someone who doesn't quite buy the "this is a lump of cells," rationale for abortion.  The younger the client, the closer they are to the womb, so to speak; they tend to lean more towards being pro-life.  In short, it wasn't necessary to impose my values.

My job, however, was to bridge the gap and open a dialogue with the young woman's parents and brought in support services from an outside counselor who was also personally pro-life to assist the family from that point.  I remember asking her once what the long term consequences were for a woman who was pro-choice who had an abortion.  Her answer was truthful, there aren't many if, this is a big if mind you, they have had other children and truly understand the implications of the choice they are making.  This is a minority of abortion cases and definitely not a population I saw in counseling.

Besides a host of long-term physical complications facing women who abort, the short and long-term psychological complications are astounding.  These include; PTSD, suicide ideation, eating disorders, alcohol and drug abuse,  relationship problems, sexual dysfunction, and quite commonly repeat abortions.  It's a death spiral that seems hardly a solution in retrospect, to avoid being "punished with a baby."  Suffice to say, without offering particulars, I saw these very real complications far more often than I did not.

When the liberals in the country decry those who want to deny women their choice, they ought to consider who is truly denying the choice here.  The video clearly depicts the high pressure sales job facing vulnerable women in the hands of the abortion industry that thrives on expanded profits when the death-spiral consequences of  denying a young woman honest answers about the consequences of her decision to abort kick in.  Abortion is a billion dollar industry that feeds on the vulnerable in a moment of fear and weakness.  The industry thrives hoping no one honestly explores a young woman's attitude about abortion, ignores her values and hopes to prey on her fear instead.  That these same vulnerable young women, can and very often do, languish in years of emotional torment is the dirty secret of an industry that only succeeds when the choice of life is denied.

UPDATE:  Jill Stanek has more on the lies told to the young woman in the video.   Cassy Fiano also comments at Stop the ACLU and on her blog.