"Without Planned Parenthood, these 166 girls would have had nowhere to turn for medical and emotional help. They would have been forced to bear the babies of their rapists or seek life-threatening abortions in questionable facilities. But more importantly, they would have been ostracized by their families, or communities, or whoever they were avoiding by turning to PP."

Two things are often omitted in discussion of this issue:
1). Kansas is a parental-notification state, so either the parents would have known about the pregnancy or the girls would have had a judicial bypass.
2). Kansas law at the time defined sex with a fourteen-year-old as a felony, but not the kind of felony that automatically triggered an abuse report. Kansas practice, as defined by an attorney general in 1992, was that a report was required only if there was "injury" in addition to the sex act and pregnancy itself, and that persons in a mandatory-reporter situation were to determine that on a case-by-case basis. In 2003 Phil Kline issued an opinion, as AG, that all cases of sex with someone younger than 16 must be reported. His opinion was overturned by several courts and there was an injunction against its enforcement for much if not all of the period that the case was in dispute. (I'm not totally clear on the timetable for the injunction, but here's the court ruling against him: http://reproductiverights.org/sites/crr.civicacti…. So a doctor who did not report the pregnancy of a fourteen-year-old did not ipso facto break the law; if s/he did not think that the situation met the "additional injury" requirement, then s/he was bound by medical confidentiality laws. Kline's argument was overturned in part on the grounds that states cannot nullify federal protection of patient privacy.

The articles linked on this site say that there were only two abuse reports in abortions for 166 girls who were "fourteen and under," but for all we know, the 164 unreported ones were all girls who were fourteen. I don't know whether reporters are required to notify the state of abuse if it had already been reported. Since the parents (or a judge) would have to know about the pregnancy, I'm guessing that it's possible that more than two of the girls were under 14, but that the abuse had already been reported by the parents.

12,000 women are raped every day! That's millions of women a year who need STD treatment, if not abortions. Rape victims aren't the exception here. They are an enormous part of why Planned Parenthood is essential. If you want to reduce the number of abortions, you should be supporting women's rights and helping to reduce the number of rapes that occur every day in this country. The way you reduce rape is by supporting community programs and education for low income people. Go for it!!

You write that when you choose to have sex, you choose to accept the consequences. I agree — this is why I am never going to have sex in my entire life, because I never, ever want to have a baby!! I plan to be a virgin at age 50. I just hope I don't get raped before then!!

You write "a parent has the responsibility to provide the basics: food, shelter, and care". But then you say that we expect men to pay child support. Paying money is SO DIFFERENT from providing food, shelter and care. Are you saying you don't expect men to provide food, shelter and care? Man, I would totally have a baby if all I had to do to support it was hand out some cash! The problem is that I don't want to quit my job to actually feed and care for it.

Anyway, I don't think you can equate food, shelter and care to child support at all. What I'm saying is that if you're forcing women to provide these things for the babies during the first 9 months of life, with the expectation that they will continue to provide those things for the next 18 years, you should also be supporting laws that FORCE men to literally care for their children for 18 years. Men should legally be FORCED to shelter and feed their children — not just pay $$. There is an enormous difference and if you're supporting laws banning women from getting abortions, then by your logic, the law should also force men to literally stay home and feed and care for their children.