A group of Eastern Washington High School students met with Representative Mary Dye at the state capitol on Monday to lobby for increased contraception coverage as part of a Pullman-area teen council chapter of Planned Parenthood's Teen Lobbying Day.
After the discussion started by the students on expansion of funding for contraception, Dye, who also shared with the students that she does not support the issues they were lobbying for, spoke to them about empowerment of women and making good choices. Dye asked them about their behavior, specifically whether they were virgins.
The conversation was condemned by the Planned Parenthood worker who brought the teens to lobby for the abortion giant, according to press report.
"I've never been in any type of meeting, especially with teens," Rachel Todd said, "where an adult, especially an adult legislator, was so incredibly disrespectful and inappropriate."
Todd said the students looked at her after Dye asked about their virginity, and she told them they didn't have to answer.
Dye released a statement on the discussion later on Monday.
"I met with a local group of teenagers today who represented Planned Parenthood," she said. "I appreciated their time and professionalism. I shared with them that I did not support the issues they were advocating for. Following a conversation they initiated on birth control for teenagers, I talked about the empowerment of women and making good choices – opinions shaped by my mother and being a mother of three daughters. In hindsight, a few of the thoughts I shared, while well-intended, may have come across as more motherly than what they would expect from their state representative. If anything I said offended them or made them feel uncomfortable, I apologize."
The spokesman for Washington's advocacy division of Planned Parenthood criticized Dye for her remarks to their student lobby group as well.
"Our teens, many of them who are lobbying for the very first time, expect a certain amount of professionalism in these meetings," stated Erik Houser.
One of the students was also critical of what Dye had said.
"It seemed kind of insane for her to say that, especially on the record, to constituents," said 18-year-old Alex Rubino.
Not everyone found fault with Dye's part of the conversation with the Planned Parenthood teens.
KIRO radio host Jason Rantz said in his post today for mynorthwest.com titled "No apology necessary to Planned Parenthood teens" that Planned Parenthood's criticism of Dye is over the top.
"Rep. Dye says she went into mom-mode and wanted to talk to them about them making good choices," Rantz said. "That is why she asked the question about whether or not they are virgins. You have a mom talking to teens who are there to push for birth control. If your kid starts asking you about birth control, something tells me you'll instinctively do more than have a policy discussion."
Rantz then got to the heart of the matter, stating, "Planned Parenthood seems more concerned that a lawmaker might judge teenage girls for having sex before they may be ready for the consequences."
While Planned Parenthood's representatives expressed shock at their Washington State teen lobbyists being asked about their sexual behavior while advocating on the organization's behalf for contraception funding, the abortion behemoth, which has inroads in countless schools across the U.S. to provide "comprehensive sex education," regularly pushes explicit discussions of sex behaviors when it comes to its own programs targeting teens.
Planned Parenthood recently reissued its 2010 pamphlet "Healthy, Happy and Hot" overseas, continuing to promote the idea internationally that it's okay for teens to withhold their HIV status from sexual partners, something that flouts medical advice and breaks U.S. law.
In June 2014, Live Action published a report on its investigation into a Planned Parenthood sex ed program for teens, which promoted a concept known as BDSM (bondage and dominance, dominance and submission, sadomasochism), playing with feces, drinking urine, and bestiality. Planned Parenthood was also offering a seminar for teenagers called "50 Shades of Safe," promoting BDSM.
A 2012 video targeting teens on Planned Parenthood's Facebook page portrayed being a promiscuous female positively, being critical of the negative connotations with the term "slut" and saying that sluts are "confident in their sexuality."
Former Planned Parenthood worker Lavonne Wilenken first told her story, featured in the book Bad Choices: A Look Inside Planned Parenthood, in 1992 of witnessing the coercive and biased counseling by Planned Parenthood workers toward teenagers considering abortion, sharing as well one instance where her facility forced an abortion on a 17-year-old.
Wilenken was later joined by Abby Johnson, Catherine Anthony Adair, and other former Planned Parenthood employees who have spoken out on the abortion giant's coercion and censoring of information from young women to steer them toward abortion.
Last summer, Planned Parenthood advertised its "Take Charge" program, a plan to bill Medicaid for birth control, for which the abortion business boasted on its website that it would facilitate teens lying to their parents and avoid billing their insurance for the contraceptives.
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