Over the past few months a 13-year-old girl telephoned scores of abortion clinics around the country to schedule an appointment. She made a point of telling clinic operators that she was pregnant by a 22-year-old man.
Reactions, say those who arranged these calls, varied. Some clinic staffers told her to shut up. In a few instances there was no reaction -- meaning her comment either had gone unheard or was silently ducked the way a batter leans away from a brush-back pitch.
The 13-year-old turned out to be an actress in the employ of Life Dynamics International, an anti-abortion group in Denton, Texas.
Life Dynamics said that under legal standards, the caller had informed the clinics that she was the victim of a statutory rape, and the clinics should have reported that to authorities.
The failure to report the calls is "certainly going on in Pennsylvania. I will tell you that," said Mark Crutcher, the director of Life Dynamics, who says the fictitious 13-year-old phoned clinics in Pittsburgh and around the state.
Crutcher wants prosecutors brought in to investigate, even though, given that the victim of this crime doesn't exist, it's a fair guess that he wants to try this case in the moot court of public opinion.
Past efforts by Life Dynamics haven't always left Crutcher beaming.
Two years ago, Life Dynamics forced congressional hearings into allegations that abortionists were killing viable fetuses to sell their body parts. Their claim fell apart when their star witness, Dean Alberty, admitted lying on a Life Dynamics videotape that also featured a woman with long brown hair, her voice digitized, detailing the sale of fetal tissue. Under questioning, Alberty conceded that the woman was himself, wearing a wig.
Last year, Crutcher came up with a copy of a building permit that suggests but does not prove that James Kopp was in Pittsburgh constructing a fence in Shadyside when the FBI says he was buying the rifle that killed Buffalo physician Bernard Slepian.
On the recent calls to clinics, the meaning of what was said and heard is ambiguous.
Consider the transcript of a call to a clinic in Hartford, Conn., broadcast on television station WTIC. The caller tells a clinic operator that she will be 14 next month.
Clinic: "The fact that your boyfriend is 22 and the fact you're 14, that makes us mandated, we're mandated reporters [of a possible crime]. That means we have to report that."
Caller: "So if you didn't know, it would be OK?"
Clinic: "It's not that it's OK. It's just that what we don't know, we don't know."
In another instance, a clinic employee told the caller "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, OK?"
When the state's abortion control act was passed more than a dozen years ago, it contained provisions requiring a 24-hour waiting period and mandatory pre-abortion counseling. Most clinics simply do that over the telephone when someone calls to schedule.
But the counseling doesn't usually include questions about who the father is, clinic officials say.
"When someone calls, our first question isn't, 'Who got you pregnant?' " said Kim Evert, director of Pittsburgh's Planned Parenthood clinic.
In the case of minors, Evert said, clinic staff determine if the parents have been told about the girl's plans. If the youngster says no, but is adamant about going ahead, clinic officials can take the matter before a judge to seek a court order bypassing the parental notification rule.
All in all, it does not appear that Pennsylvania's abortion control law, which was passed to reduce the number of abortions, controls much of anything. Abortion remains possibly the least restricted medical procedure in the land.
But it does not follow that these clinics are automatically covering up child abuse when they allow a minor to get an abortion. First, every conviction requires a victim and unless the underage kid plans to cooperate, all you've got is a pregnant underage kid looking for an abortion.
"Most of the time when they call they don't call and say 'Oh, and by the way, my boyfriend's four years older -- is that a problem?' " Evert said.
Crutcher now is promising to line up lawyers to sue clinics on grounds that they are covering up statutory rape. His initial release on the matter even drew a link to pedophilia -- an obvious attempt to ride a completely unrelated scandal.
What no one has promised to line up is a pledge to frame the abortion debate around the morality of abortion: When does human life begin and in what circumstances may it be ended? When it comes to abortion, we are prepared to debate everything but the issue, even to the point of dragging some confused and frightened switchboard operator into court.
Dennis Roddy can be reached at droddy@post-gazette.com
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