Planned Parenthood of Indiana has fired a health center aide who was caught on video telling a woman who claimed to be a pregnant teen to lie about the age of the father.
A member of an anti-abortion group posed as a 13-year-old and secretly shot the video at the clinic in Bloomington in June. In the footage, the woman, who is a 20-year-old student at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the aide she had been impregnated by a 31-year-old man.
It also showed the aide telling the patient to seek an abortion in Illinois, where parental consent is not needed, and to lie about the man's age.
Betty Cockrum, Planned Parenthood of Indiana's president and CEO, issued a statement Thursday saying the assistant violated the group's policies on reporting abuse.
"While this video was altered and edited from its original form, it is clear the actions by the employee in question were unacceptable. A thorough internal review of this matter has taken place and the health center assistant shown in the video is no longer employed by PPIN," the statement said.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana did not identify the aide.
State law requires sexual acts between an adult and a child younger than 14 to be reported to police or child welfare officials.
The Indiana Department of Child Services had said it would not investigate the matter because it did not involve an actual teen.
The Monroe County prosecutor's office had said it could not consider prosecution unless it received an investigative report from the Bloomington police. The student who filmed the footage had not filed a complaint with police.
All employees of the network's 35 Indiana health centers had been retrained on reporting procedures and policies, Cockrum said.
———
Information from: The Herald-Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
