BY KYM LIEBLER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Warren County authorities investigating a corruption of a minor case searched Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky on May 1 and took custody of a fetus aborted there April 4. The fetus will undergo DNA tests to determine who impregnated a 15-year-old girl, Warren County Prosecutor Tim Oliver said Wednesday. If the father is 18 or older, he will be charged with corruption of a minor, a fourth-degree felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison, authorities said.
To obtain the fetus, Warren County sheriff's deputies received a search warrant from Hamilton County Municipal Court to enter the Mount Auburn clinic and remove the remains.
According to the affidavit for the search warrant, the 15-year-old girl's mother learned March 17 that her daughter was pregnant and had been sexually involved with a 20-year-old man.
The girl told her mother the 20-year-old was the father of her unborn child.
Although the man initially denied having sex with the girl, he later admitted to drinking tequila with her and getting drunk on a couch. He said he woke up the next day and took the girl home.
He told police, "Unless she did it while I was passed out, I do not remember it," according to the affidavit.
Since 1986, Ohio law requires that at least one parent be notified before a minor can obtain an abortion.
A new law that was to take effect Wednesday, but has been stayed, would require most minors to have parental consent for an abortion. Enforcement of the new law was temporarily blocked April 29 by U.S. District Judge Sandra S. Beckwith until she decides the constitutional challenge to the new law brought by Cincinnati's Women's Services of Walnut Hills.
Melissa Saladonis, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, declined to discuss the Warren County case or say whether the girl's mother had been notified about the abortion.
"Patient confidentiality is paramount to what we do and what we're about. Patients expect 100 percent confidentiality," she said.
Ms. Saladonis said that in the majority of cases in which minors -- those under 18 -- have abortions, their parents consent to the procedure. "Eighty percent of the minors we serve have consent and bring their parents with them to the surgery."
This is the second time Warren County prosecutors have executed a search warrant for an aborted fetus, Mr. Oliver said. In 1992, prosecutors removed a fetus from an abortion clinic in Montgomery County to establish paternity.
"This is something that happens rarely, but it does happen," Mr. Oliver said. "Bottom line, a crime was committed and police are duty bound to investigate it."
Alphonse A. Gerhardstein, lawyer for Planned Parenthood, said the clinic cooperates with police investigations and "as a general matter, Planned Parenthood will keep available any information needed to handle a post-abortion matter."
