Opinion: UCLA student’s clandestine videos take antiabortion fight to new level

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Our colleague Robin Abcarian, one of the most compelling storytellers in American journalism, has another one of her masterpieces on this site right now.

It’s the story of a 20-year-old UCLA student, Lila Rose, who’s taking the antiabortion struggle to a new level. She has secretly taped sting operations against Planned Parenthood abortion clinics across the country (see below). The tapes are displayed online on a website and YouTube as part of the ongoing struggle against legal abortions.

In these videos, Rose pretends to be a pregnant 14-year-old and ‘admits’ that her male partner is 31. Her alleged age legally requires reporting the pregnancy to authorities as a rape. But, according to the dramatically cut clandestine videos, the aides tell her just to say that her boyfriend is 17 ‘or whatever’ so that she can get the procedure to simply end the pregnancy.

Rose’s strategy, as Robin explains, is to undermine legal abortion by disseminating compelling videos showing Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, appearing to abet sexual abuse by circumventing age-reporting laws.

The videos of an attractive, reasonable young woman also play against the anti-abortion stereotypes of angry, older men imposing their moral will on females, and Rose’s latest video (see below) on a Memphis Planned Parenthood clinic already has had political repercussions in the state legislature.

Other videos are available at Rose’s website, LiveAction.org. Robin’s full story is available here.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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