NEW YORK — Planned Parenthood, a perennial protest target because of its role in providing abortions, has notified the FBI that at least 12 of its health centers were visited recently by a man purporting to be a sex trafficker but who may instead be part of an attempted ruse to entrap clinic employees.
In each case, according to Planned Parenthood, the man sought to speak privately with a clinic employee and then requested information about health services for sex workers, including some he said were minors and in the U.S. illegally.
Planned Parenthood’s vice president for communications, Stuart Schear, said the organization requested an FBI probe of the man’s claims. Schear said Planned Parenthood’s own investigation indicates he has links to Live Action, an anti-abortion group that has conducted previous undercover projects aimed at discrediting the nation’s leading abortion provider.
Lila Rose, Live Action’s founder and president, declined to confirm or deny whether the clinic visits were part of a Live Action operation but did indicate in a phone interview that an undercover-videotape project of some sort was in the works. “The story that speaks loudest will be in the evidence,” she said.
The visits were made between Jan. 11 and Jan. 15 to health centers in Virginia, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Arizona and Washington, D.C.
Last week, Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting an FBI investigation. If the man’s assertions were true, she wrote, they would indicate possible violations of federal laws on interstate sex trafficking of minors. But she said the visits could be a hoax.
