Troy King's Abortion Oversight

On Thursday, I read an interesting piece in the Birmingham News on Planned Parenthood in Birmingham, which you can also read here. Turns out, the Alabama Department of Health put the Birmingham branch on a year's probation for a number of major health violations. These violations included 9 of 9 cases where officials did not authenticate a parent's signature providing consent for a minor's abortion. One instance even used an expired driver's license with a different last name from the parent. In other cases, officials didn't look into possible cases of abuse, and we all remember the UCLA college student who produced a video of the abuses at the Birmingham center which included an official's agreement not to report statutory rape as required by state law.

Well, after the probation, the Attorney General's office commented, and they gave us this:

Alabama Attorney Gen­eral Troy King looked into the case, but the 12-month statute of limitation on the offense had expired by the time King's office knew of the tape, said Chris Bence, King's chief of staff. Public Health, however, took the tape as a complaint and started an investigation.

I understand Troy King's response in this particular case, but this raises a larger question: why was Troy King, a so-called 'social conservative' overlooking possible abuses earlier? It is true that King could not act on the tape, but one must wonder by Public Health is doing a better job in making sure that Alabama's laws are enforced than our state's top law enforcement officer.

This returns us to a concern long-made on this blog. A good attorney general should be proactive, and not reactive. King is always reactive, waiting for the media to surround a crime, or a tape, and then he holds glitzy press conferences with officials around him to appear 'on the job.' However, the 'job' in actuality is part of a perpetual fight against crime when the cameras are off. There have been suspicions about Planned Parenthood practices for a number of years in different states and raised by different individuals. Instead, Troy King never considered taking proactive action and was instead caught in a trap once the tape was released.

The Birmingham News piece demonstrates yet another reason for an assertive, proactive conservative attorney general who will actually address real problems in this state.