Planned Parenthood tells 17-year-old it doesn't offer prenatal care

At the blog of Bound4Life, Susan Tyrrell tells the story of a 17-year old girl named "Addison" who became pregnant. Addison's parents sent her to Planned Parenthood, an organization they knew little about. (Presumably, it helps one "plan parenthood," right?) Tyrrell writes:

After a home pregnancy test told her she was pregnant, Addison and her fiancé headed to the Houston Planned Parenthood for a blood test. There were no freebies for uninsured Addison here; her fiancé had to pay $70 for the blood test, and they told her the charge first thing, she says. But that wasn't the part that drove her off.

After sitting in the waiting room for two hours, Addison was not allowed to have her fiancé come back with her for the test, despite telling them she was uncomfortable and hated needles. He had to stay in the front waiting room while Addison was taken to a back room, then an exam room where she waited another hour before a Planned Parenthood employee came in with a list of questions for her, asking how many sexual partners she had, details of her sexual relationship with her fiancé, and other things. Then she asked Addison the magic question.

"Do you want to have an abortion if you're pregnant?" When Addison told her no, the woman said: "Well, you are only seventeen. You really need to make sure you're ready for parenting and consider abortion."

But Addison was opposed to abortion, and it had ever even occurred to her to consider abortion.

When they called later to confirm she was pregnant, they said, "We know you said you didn't want an abortion in your visit today, but we wanted to make sure that is still the case?"

"I said I did not want an abortion and hung up," Addison says. But she called back for help:

"The same day I called them and told them that I had a blood test and it confirmed pregnancy, and I needed to see if I could see a doctor about prenatal care and what I could and couldn't do, and what would keep the baby healthy. They then told me that unless I had a sexually transmitted disease or wanted an abortion that they could no longer help me. I said so y'all do not help pregnant women? They told me no that they didn't have doctors for pregnant women."

Sadly, Addison discovered that the 6-story building that advertised itself as a women's health center and claimed to care for uninsured women was really there for abortion, STD treatment and birth control.

She says she thought to herself, "I thought this was Planned Parenthood, not once-you're-pregnant-we-can't-help-you."

Ultimately, she ended up at a hospital with cramps, and found out she was 10 weeks along instead of the 4 she thought, but the baby didn't make it. Addison lost her baby to a miscarriage later that month.

Addison grew up fast last month. Not only did she find herself a pregnant college freshman at 17, but she found out behind the name Planned Parenthood were a bunch of folks who only wanted her to plan her parenthood if it meant killing her baby. All the ads about health care for uninsured women went right out the window. "Choice" to these workers really meant "Choose to abort your baby or choose to stop seeing us for treatment."

Read the entire story, which, Tyrrell points out, is far from an isolated event.