Live Action Films and Lila Rose return with another undercover video today, this time at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Indianapolis.  Their Rosa Acuna Project focuses on the propaganda and misleading information provided to young pregnant women at their clinics, some of which might arguably violate informed-consent regulations, but which mainly serve to rebut charges from Planned Parenthood that they provide a beacon of truth in the abortion debate.  In this incident taped last September, the undercover reporter asks about the procedure, and that prompts the nurse to struggle for euphemisms to avoid the use of the word “baby.”  When pressed whether a 10-week old fetus has the characteristics of a person, the “patient” gets a rehash of the “clump of cells” description:

When the woman, purportedly 10-weeks pregnant, asks the clinician, named “Sarah,” when her baby’s heart begins to beat, Sarah replies, “It’s around I think the 8th or the 9th week that you can hear the heartbeat.” The heart actually begins beating 3 weeks and 1 day after conception, according to Moore and Persaud’s well-known textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. The Planned Parenthood clinician also insists, “It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus,” which, she claims, is “not like a person.”

In the video, Sarah assures the woman that “having an abortion is safer than carrying to term.” The woman asks, “The abortion won’t hurt me from having more kids in the future, will it?” and the counselor replies, “Nope.” But a 2009 study from the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey recently found that a previous abortion increased a woman’s risk of pre-term birth by 20%, and a 2003 report from the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research notes a 55% increased risk of future miscarriages for women who have abortions.

Lila Rose, UCLA student and president of Live Action, says the new footage places Planned Parenthood well outside the medical mainstream. “Planned Parenthood’s counseling is based on its abortion-first mentality rather than the medical facts that women need,” observes Rose. “Planned Parenthood gives vulnerable women misinformation to sell them the abortion.” Indiana informed consent state law requires that women receive accurate medical information before undergoing an abortion.

Just remember, our tax dollars support these material misrepresentations. Make sure to let your Congressman and Senators aware of this.