Abortion reporting law to protect minors passes House
By Brigid Curtis Ayer
A national sting operation aimed at exposing the truths behind the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood, has prompted Indiana lawmakers to take action to protect young women from repeated sexual molestation. The Indiana Catholic Conference supports legislation to combat sexual abuse of children.
A youth-led, pro-life organization called Live Action has released videos showing Planned Parenthood employees telling a male client, who posed as a pimp, how to cover up the child abuse he had committed with young girls, and how they could assist him in continuing to conduct his sex trafficking business. These videos are posted online at www.liveaction.org.
Freshman lawmaker Rep. Randy Frye, R-Greensburg, authored House Bill 1474 to address the abuse.
“I’m very pro-life,” said Frye. “One of the biggest motivators for me to run for office was out of frustration on how the legislature was not handling pro-life issues.
“After I was elected, Indiana Right to Life came to me and asked if I’d be interested in carrying the bill. And, of course, I said yes.”
“The bill really hit home for me,” said Frye. “I was a professional firefighter for 26 years, [including] 21 years in the city of Indianapolis. There were more than just a few times when we would go on a 911 run. We would find a very young mother in labor, and find out one way or another that the father was mom’s ex-boyfriend or someone much older.”
Frye said the legislation is a twofold bill.
“Obviously, it’s about abortion and the age of the father, but it also requires the aborting physician to notify the state within three days of the abortion if the woman is under age 14.”
Under current law, the abortionist has six months to do so.
“If you have a suspected child abuse case and you wait six months, the perpetrator might be in another country,” said Frye. “While the bill is a pro-life bill, the child abuse aspect is even the bigger issue here.”
House Bill 1474, Terminated Pregnancy Form bill, would change two reporting requirements. It would require reporting the age of the father, and require the reporting to occur within three days of the abortion if the mother aborting is under 14 years old.
Dick Thompson, a lobbyist for Indiana Right to Life, said, “The news media has reported all across the country cases where very young girls have been involved in a sting operation and child sexual abuse is not being reported to authorities. More than anything else, I am very familiar with the requirement in the pregnancy termination report, and that report leaves out the age of the father.
“Indiana law is very clear. If a lady under the age of 14 has an abortion, she has been sexually abused. If the age of the father is reported on the form, then it’s a red flag for the Indiana Department of Health,” Thompson said.
“If the abortion is obtained by a girl who is under 14 years of age, the abortion provider must notify, within three days of the abortion, the Indiana Department of Health and the Indiana Department of Child Services,” he said. “If the age of the girl is under age 14 and the age of the father is 15, then they might not be as concerned, but if the age of the father is 27, the Department of Child Services is definitely going to want to look into it further.
“The goal of the legislation is to prevent a young woman who has been sexually molested, and actually becomes pregnant [then] has an abortion, to have some follow-up on that. Otherwise, the molestation could continue, and she would have to have another abortion,” he said.
Thompson said when he looked at the termination of pregnancy reports, it was a glaring error.
“There was the name of the mother, the age of the mother and name of the father, but not the age of the father,” he said.
The Live Action videos exposed a similar pattern among Planned Parenthood employees in New York, New Jersey and Virginia aiding and abetting the sexual exploitation of minors and young girls.
Last year, the pro-life group released similar videos from three Indiana abortion facilities.
House Bill 1474 passed the House on March 30 by a vote of 83-11, and passed the Senate Health and Provider Services Committee on April 6 unanimously.
Frye said there has been no opposition to the bill, and he is very confident the bill will become law.
If passed and signed by Gov. Mitch Daniels, the bill will go into effect on July 1.
(Brigid Curtis Ayers is a correspondent for The Criterion. For more information on the Indiana Catholic Conference, log on to www.indianacc.org.) †
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