Alabama Planned Parenthood failed to report suspected rape, report says

Mobile, Ala., Aug 29, 2015 / 04:28 am

An Alabama Planned Parenthood clinic did not report the suspected abuse of a 14 year-old girl who had two abortions in four months at the clinic, according to findings by the state's health department.

A 14 year-old girl visited the Mobile, Ala. clinic twice in April 2014 and received a medical examination. According to her health history kept at the clinic, she "had two living children given in separate births."

The girl visited the clinic again in August. According to records from an Aug. 18 medical exam, "this was the second abortion in four months," the health department found. However, they added, "there was no documentation in the medical record of the facility reporting suspected abuse to the proper authorities or the reasons why a report was not made."

The clinic's director of patient services confirmed to the department in a November 2014 meeting that no report was filed.

Alabama has a mandatory reporting law where persons dealing with children – doctors, health care workers, teachers and clergy, for instance – must report to law enforcement "when the child is known or suspected to be a victim of child abuse or neglect."

The report comes as the national Planned Parenthood organization is under scrutiny for its possible role in clinics offering fetal tissue of aborted babies for money. A congressional investigation of the organization has been launched to see if its clinics broke the law. The Senate unsuccessfully voted to defund the organization, whose affiliates receive over $500 million in federal money annually.

The organization's president Cecile Richards sent a letter to Congress on Thursday claiming that it and its affiliates have remained entirely within the law with respect to any offering of fetal body parts for money.

In its November 2014 survey, the state of Alabama found other violations at the Mobile clinic, including possible violations of the state's parental consent for minor abortion laws, and distribution of the RU-486 abortifacient to a patient with low hemoglobin without consulting a medical director.  

Furthermore, clinic workers did not wash their hands properly on multiple occasions, the document found, which would violate the state's protocol for infection control.