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Live Action Films sting follow-up

By Scott Tibbs, December 20, 2008

Regarding the criticism of Lila Rose of Live Action Films in a December 18 letter to the editor by Mara Margolis, it is a bit of a stretch to say that Rose "is not concerned" about the sex abuse scandal at Planned Parenthood. Yes, it is true that Rose is an anti-abortion activist. That is not exactly a secret, so the claim that her investigations of Planned Parenthood are a "PR cover up" for her anti-abortion agenda is just plain silly.

Ms. Rose (like me and many others) is opposed to Planned Parenthood because they are America's #1 abortion provider. But opposition to PP's abortion "services" does not indicate that we do not oppose PP's other bad behavior. The fact of the matter is that Planned Parenthood staff believed that a 13 year old girl was pregnant by a 31 year old man and attempted to cover it up.

Margolis complains that "parental consent laws have severely restricted choice" regarding abortion. It has never made sense to me why teenage girls (especially young teens) should have access to abortion without parental consent. This has been said so many times it has become a cliche, but when a 14 year old girl cannot get her ears pierced in some states without parental consent, why should she be able to get a major elective medical procedure like abortion without parental consent? And what about the right of parents to rear their children as they see fit? (Within reason, of course.)

Michael Newton makes the laughable claim in the comments section that the LAF sting is like mailing illegal material to someone without their knowledge or consent and then alerting law enforcement. That is just plain stupid. The Planned Parenthood "nurse" was not trapped into covering up sexual abuse. Once given the information, she made the decision to do that based on the knowledge she had.

Newton then criticizes my consistency on protecting life, saying "it only counts when they're "unborn" and something less than biologically viable." Why? Because I wrote earlier this week that "it would be a mistake to send American combat troops" into Sudan to deal with the genocide in Darfur.

Newton dishonestly fails to include my entire statement, where I very clearly stated that "more aggressive diplomatic intervention and humanitarian aid is appropriate" to deal with the crisis. I also said that "(t)he military should not be used unless there is a vital national security interest at stake, and even then military force should be a last resort." Newton's attempt to spin my comment as a statement that we should do nothing is simply a lie.

By the way, Michael, I have never claimed to be a Libertarian, meaning a member of the Libertarian Party. What I have said is that I am a philosophical libertarian. There are quite a few philosophical libertarians who consider themselves to be Republicans.