From The Dispatch (from Saturday):

It wasn’t a real donor who called the Planned Parenthood office in Columbus.

It was an anti-abortion activist posing as a would-be contributor, and his request was outrageous.

He asked a receptionist whether he could “underwrite” abortions of minorities because there are “definitely way too many black people in Ohio.”

The receptionist said, “OK.”

That response, and similar ones from Planned Parenthood officials in several other states, has sparked an uproar among anti-abortion activists and a call for a congressional investigation of the nonprofit health-care provider.

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Central Ohio did not dispute that the staffer indicated such a contribution would be accepted, but said it was just another attempt by anti-abortion activists to discredit the organization.

“It was quite an unprofessional call that she received, and she struggled with how to address it,” said Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Stephanie Tresso.

“She filed an incident report and notified her supervisor, which she was supposed to do. Her supervisor then notified other Planned Parenthoods, and we realized that this was happening all over the country and it was an organized effort.”

The calls were made last July, an effort led by anti-abortion students at University of California, Los Angeles, and the exchanges have since been posted on YouTube.

One of the students, UCLA sophomore Lila Rose, defended the tactic and said the conversations show the willingness of Planned Parenthood to go along with such racist requests.

“They could have hung up, they could have disagreed, they could have said ‘No, we don’t discriminate,’ but not a single clinic did that, and that’s disturbing and shocking,” she said.

Tresso said the exchange with the Columbus staffer was edited to exclude her comments that the contribution would be used for black women or any woman in need. Rose said the conversations posted on YouTube were not taken out of context and speak for themselves.

J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio treasurer, secretary of state and Republican gubernatorial candidate, asked this week for a congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood based on the videos.

Blackwell said he learned about the phone calls and YouTube videos during a recent meeting with anti-abortion activists in Washington.

Outraged, he wrote to House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-West Chester, asking for a congressional investigation because Congress provides millions of dollars in taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood.

In a letter copied to the entire Ohio delegation, Blackwell detailed the call to the Planned Parenthood Columbus office and wrote, “As if this isn’t disturbing enough, it is not an isolated incident. The students taped similar conversations and responses from Planned Parenthood staffers in Idaho, New Mexico, Oklahoma and other states.”

Blackwell added that Planned Parenthood has reported that it gets $300 million annually in “government subsidies, more than one-third of its annual budget. I hope you will agree that such an organization needs, at a minimum, to be investigated by Congress.”

Boehner might not have seen the letter yet, Jessica Towhey, Boehner’s spokeswoman, said yesterday.

She did not comment on the request but said, “Boehner does not believe that American tax dollars should be used to fund abortions, and he has supported measures to stop public funding for Planned Parenthood.”

But Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Cleveland, said that she is “saddened that Ken Blackwell, along with a misguided group of students, have resorted to these deceitful tactics in an effort to attack and discredit a positive organization like Planned Parenthood.”

Tubbs Jones, who like Blackwell is black, said that Planned Parenthood has provided “quality family planning and other reproductive health care” for low-income and uninsured people and that its services “have been critical in the African-American community.”

“In light of the recent study released by the Centers for Disease Control (and Prevention), which noted that nearly half of African-American girls carried a sexually transmitted disease, it is clear that the services of Planned Parenthood are needed more than ever.”

It is amazing that Jones can make these type of outrageous comments and not get challenged on them. The Same Center for Disease Control she quotes is the same center which estimates that since 1973, atleast 14 MILLION black babies have been legally murdered (approximately 500,000/year… with some estimates as high as 1,000,000/year). In terms of the mortality rate, abortion kills more black people than all other ways that black people die… combined!

With 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion mills located inside of inner cities, Tubbs Jones apparently is more interested in lining the pockets of the abortion lobby with taxdollars than caring about the 1/2 of the black community which is murdered every year. True leaders of the “black community” should question liberal Tubbs Jones, as she obviously does not care about the black community or about saving the lives of innocent children.