Just last Wednesday, the news broke that a Birmingham PlannedParenthood clinic was put on a year-long probation. The Alabama State Health Department had opened an investigation into the clinic after Live Action released an undercover video, showing clinic staffers covering up sexual abuse and skirting the parental consent law.

When our team of student journalists investigated the Birmingham clinic a year and a half ago, I was posing as a 14-year-old girl impregnated by my 31-year-old “boyfriend.”  When I told the clinic workers I was 14 and didn’t want my parents to find out about my abortion, the staffer responded that someone with “the same last name” could give permission for my abortion—directly contrary to Alabama’s parental consent law.

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After they heard my “boyfriend” was 31, they told me to speak to Dr. Desiree Bates, the clinic manager. Bates, they said, “does bend the rules a little bit” and “whatever you tell us stays within these walls.” Our investigators have seen firsthand that Planned Parenthood routinely breaks laws meant to protect underage girls. (more…)