Planned Parenthood

The girl's voice in the videotape is tiny and tentative. She is talking to a nursing aide in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Ind. The girl wants an abortion. The aide explains that the girl will need a parent's consent because she is only 13. The girl balks; she does not want to name the father. "Cause, I mean, he would be in really big trouble," says the girl. Her boyfriend, she explains, is 31. The aide drops her head into her hands.

In a scathing letter to Orange County officials, Planned Parenthood accused them of having "gerrymandered" the process for doling out health grants and having imposed obstacles to prevent it from running a breast-health program.

The political wing of Planned Parenthood on Tuesday announced an unprecedented voter-mobilization effort targeting the young, often low-income women who rely on the group's clinics for gynecological exams, birth control and abortion. The nonprofit expects to raise at least $10 million over the next 10 months to recruit patients, as well as their friends and families, to lobby legislators and vote for candidates who support Planned Parenthood's agenda.

A whistle-blower lawsuit contends that Planned Parenthood affiliates in California overcharged the state and federal governments by at least $180 million for birth-control pills, despite internal and external warnings that its billing practices were improper. In the federal suit, P.

The mother of a Riverside woman who died of toxic shock syndrome after allegedly undergoing an abortion procedure at Planned Parenthood filed a malpractice suit against the organization and a Riverside County hospital this week. The lawsuit alleges that Edrica Goode, 21, went to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Riverside for an abortion Jan.

California health regulators have taken action against a Riverside Planned Parenthood clinic for failing to report an abortion patient's death in a timely manner, but did not fault the medical care provided at the facility. Edrica Goode, 21, of Riverside died Feb. 14 of toxic shock syndrome at Riverside County Regional Medical Center. In a lawsuit, her mother, Aletheia Meloncon, alleges that the Planned Parenthood clinic and medical center showed negligence in treating Goode.

The building permits were issued to Gemini Office Development. The sign at the construction site said Gemini Health Center. But as he watched the installation of bulletproof windows and security cameras at the office space in Aurora, Ill., a worker began to get suspicious. He told his priest, and the priest went to an anti-abortion group. And late last week, the protesters went to work.

An Illinois city may continue to block the opening of a Planned Parenthood clinic while officials investigate whether the abortion-rights group lied to obtain its building permits, a federal judge ruled Thursday. Planned Parenthood used the name Gemini Office Development in applying for permits to build the $7.5-million clinic in Aurora. As recently as March, the organization used the Gemini name on a permit application and added: "Tenant is not determined . . . unknown at this time."

A suburban Planned Parenthood clinic prohibited from opening after antiabortion activists raised questions about how it received its building permits will be allowed to open, city officials said Monday. Mayor Tom Weisner said reviews by three different attorneys found no legal basis to deny an occupancy permit to the clinic, and the permit was issued Monday afternoon. Planned Parenthood said it would start seeing patients at the building today.

Question: What is Plan B? Answer: Plan B is the brand name of an emergency contraceptive, sometimes called the "morning-after" pill. The drug, made by Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc., consists of two pills, each containing a high dose of a synthetic version of the hormone progestin, which is also in regular birth control pills. The pills are taken 12 hours apart.