"She's 16"

Many of you saw and listened to the 911 audio of the March 18 call from "Pamela" of the Planned Parenthood in Everett procuring an ambulance to rescue a patient who was bleeding uncontrollably and needed to be rushed to hospital.

While the call was already shocking and raised many questions on its own regarding the consequences of deregulation of the Washington State abortion industry, one portion of the audio had been redacted.

We posted the audio as we got it but looked into what was redacted and why. SNOPAC, the organization which handles 911 calls for Snohomish County, told us that they had redacted the patient's age, because they had decided it was "personally identifying."

We said no.

Many people are not aware that Washington has one of the strongest public records laws in the nation. "Public Records" laws may not sound exciting, but they are very important. And in this state, we have access to almost any record a government agency has.

The only exceptions are for things like privacy, but even there, the government agency has to provide you the record just with the personally identifying information redacted. And they have to back that up with citations of the privacy law. And if you think they have over-redacted, you can appeal.

We pointed out that there was nothing personally identifying about an age on its own, and we added that in an early communication from SNOPAC, we were explicitly told that there were no privacy issues in the call. We suspected that the patient had in fact been a minor. There's always a fear that Planned Parenthood might have tried to influence SNOPAC, but we don't have any evidence of that.

SNOPAC relented, without explaining the strange decision making changes, and we got just hold of the unedited audio. We were right. The patient was a minor. She was a 16-year-old girl.

This is extremely important because of a massive loophole in Washington state law which means that a minor of any age who is pregnant may get an abortion without any parental or adult protections or involvement. It could be your daughter.

There is no need for anyone to be there with a girl while an intimidating adult at Planned Parenthood bullies them, lies to them, and manipulates them into getting an abortion that will kill their baby and, as we see here, put them in hospital, possibly rendering them permanently infertile.

We don't know, in this particular case, whether the 16 year old girl was alone or not. Planned Parenthood refuses to answer questions about it. We asked SNOPAC if she was accompanied to the hospital, and if so by whom, but they have said they have no records that answer that question.

We have also contacted Providence Medical Center's admitting department. They have so far been extremely uncooperative also. It's not clear whether they are attempting to cover up moral outrages at Planned Parenthood. The fact is, given the shockingly casual tone of "Pamela's" voice, PP may be a good supply of recurring "business" for them.