News of a second video showing a Planned Parenthood of Indiana counselor providing advice that could violate state criminal statutes was enough to prompt The Indianapolis Star to provide front-page coverage Wednesday. The second video, released Tuesday, shows an individual posing as a 13-year-old telling Planned Parenthood staffers that she was pregnant by her 31-year-old boyfriend.
Part of the reason this received more coverage than the first video was the fact that the incident happened a few miles from the Star's offices. Another factor is that it is becoming clear that criminal laws may have been broken and that a pattern appears to have developed of Planned Parenthood staffers looking the other way when an apparent crime of violence on a child has been committed:
The second video, shot at the clinic in the 8900 block of Georgetown Road, shows a Planned Parenthood counselor's response when told the age of the man who impregnated the girl: "I don't care how old he is," the counselor said.
Indiana law requires anyone learning of sexual acts between an adult and a child younger than 14 to report them to police or child welfare authorities.
Planned Parenthood said in a statement Tuesday that its first priority was to patients, but it was committed to following all state laws. It said it was investigating the matter and had not established whether the second video had accurate content.
Overall, the Star's story is quite good and makes up a lot of ground that was lost in the days that have gone by since the story first made news about two weeks ago. While the Associated Press placed the fact that another Planned Parenthood staffer was suspended at the top, the Star article leads with the fact that lawmakers are requesting an investigation, but a few little details were missing that other news reports fortunately mentioned.
For example, a television news report on the matter notes that Planned Parenthood's revenue from taxpayers is no small amount:
A state contracts database shows Planned Parenthood of Indiana currently has four or five state contracts valued at more than $3 million, the largest a two-year grant for family planning services.
The organization that has arranged these videos say both were shot on June 24 and maintain that they have been to Planned Parenthood clinics elsewhere in the country. Whether or not this story will gather any steam is yet to be seen, but some are predicting that the next year will be an interesting one for Planned Parenthood.