THE WEDNESDAY STOPP REPORT

A tale of two states

As we were putting together the news reports which drive the WSR each week, we were struck by the dichotomy in the fight against Planned Parenthood in two states. Here are two evolving stories:

Planned Parenthood getting comfortable in Idaho

Five years ago, Planned Parenthood in Idaho ventured outside of the Boise area for the first time and opened a clinic in Twin Falls. As Planned Parenthood announced and then made this move, it met strong opposition from the major pro-life group in the state, Idaho Chooses Life. It was a contentious battle, but eventually, Planned Parenthood did open the facility.

Once Planned Parenthood is operating in a community, it is critical that opposition to its existence must come from local people. The fight cannot be run from the state or national level. Unfortunately, in Twin Falls, that ongoing local opposition to Planned Parenthood did not materialize.

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Twin Falls opening for business. Planned Parenthood celebrated five years of damaging the minds and souls of the community by offering a tour of its facility, a cocktail party, a viewing of a propaganda film and a pizza party. According to a recent article in the Twin Falls Times-News, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Idaho “couldn't be happier” and even went on to say, “the community is really supportive.”

While strong pro-lifers like Kelly Walton, former head of the Idaho Citizens Alliance, disagreed and said, “There's a large segment [of the community] that wishes they weren't here,” the fact is that this displeasure has not carried forward to visible and active pro-life opposition to PP.

The newspaper article quotes a local doctor who pointed out that he doesn’t hear much about Planned Parenthood from the community these days. "My impression is frequently, a lot of people don't know about it,” he said.

It was feared from the beginning that the Twin Falls facility would act as a feeder to Planned Parenthood’s abortion facility in Boise. The fact is that abortion in Idaho began to rise after the PP clinic opened. Although abortions in Idaho fell from 1,378 in 1998 to 738 in 2001, they began to rise after the PP opening in Twin Falls and were at 911 in 2003.

The result has been that Planned Parenthood has become very comfortable in Twin Falls because of the lack of visible opposition to its operations. In fact, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Idaho said the success of the group's three Idaho offices means it will be able to open another by late 2008 or early 2009.

Planned Parenthood mergers in Ohio

Pro-lifers in Ohio have been working very hard across the state to fight Planned Parenthood. These efforts, both at the state and local level, have resulted in Planned Parenthood closing five clinics over the last four years. In addition, many PP affiliates in the state have struggled just to maintain a steady income level.

On July 12 Planned Parenthood announced that Planned Parenthoods of Greater Cleveland, Mahoning Valley, North Central Ohio, Stark County, and the affiliate that serves Summit, Portage and Medina counties will all be merging to create a single consolidated affiliate to be called Planned Parenthood of Northeastern Ohio. The headquarters of the new affiliate will be in Akron at 444 W. Exchange St.

The reason for Planned Parenthood mergers is always the same: money, money and money. Merging affiliates cuts down on the number of high salaried staff. In this case it will eventually mean only one executive director instead of five, one medical director, one public relations director, etc. Mergers occur because of the affiliates’ inability to grow financially.

We have recorded the following PP affiliate mergers in just the last three years:

• 2004 – Planned Parenthood affiliates in Cincinnati and Dayton merged to form Planned Parenthood of the Southwest Ohio Region
• 2004 – Planned Parenthood of Greater Indiana merged with Planned Parenthood of North Central Indiana to create Planned Parenthood of Indiana
• 2005 – Planned Parenthood of Niagara County merged with Planned Parenthood of Buffalo and Erie County
• 2007 – Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge merged with Planned Parenthood Health Systems (as noted in May 16 edition of the Wednesday STOPP Report)
• 2007 - Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona and Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona affiliates will merge in October

The recent trend of affiliate mergers is not coincidence however. When PP merged its affiliates in Cincinnati and Dayton, it followed a model established by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. At Planned Parenthood’s annual conference in California earlier this year, mergers were the buzz of the conference. Planned Parenthood even ran a workshop, “Mergers without the Mania: Organizational Structures for Change.”

In reviewing the financial data of the five Ohio affiliates that are now merging, it is clear that the reason for this merger is to cut costs. Most of the affiliates have had financial losses over the last five years. PP of Mahoning Valley, for example, has lost money in four of the last five years.

This poor financial showing is the result of the continuing pressure being put on Planned Parenthood by pro-lifers in the state. That pressure has now led to the consolidation of five affiliates into one – a consolidation that will greatly lessen PP’s influence in the state.

The lessons of Idaho and Ohio

The differences between what is happening in Ohio and what is happening in Idaho are indicative of the willingness of local people to take up the fight against Planned Parenthood. Time and time again we have seen that persistent local activity eventually scores major victories against PP, while local indifference leads to PP successes.

We cannot overemphasize the importance of being a constant reminder in your community--a reminder to Planned Parenthood by your peaceful, prayerful presence at its clinic that it is not welcome and a reminder to the members of your community that each day, Planned Parenthood is exploiting and hurting children and that it cannot be tolerated.

Even though Planned Parenthood is gloating in Twin Falls, we remind the citizens there that it is not too late to get PP out of their community and to prevent PP from expanding even further. We encourage the people of Twin Falls, and all communities where Planned Parenthood still resides, to take heart and be reinvigorated in active and public opposition of Planned Parenthood.

We encourage the good pro-lifers in Idaho to look to Ohio as a perfect example of the importance of fortitude when it comes to the fight against Planned Parenthood. The most effective means of defeating PP in your community is simply exposing the evil of its operations and continuing to draw attention to the damage to your community and the lives of innocent children.

Planned Parenthood circling the wagons?

For years, American Life League’s STOPP department has offered the Plan for Defeating Planned Parenthood. In this plan, we emphasize that while there seems to be no way to take on this multi-million dollar, publicity-savvy abortion giant nationally, on a local scale citizens have as much, if not more, power to defeat PP’s evil operations. Think about it:

• When it comes to getting Planned Parenthood’s perverse sex ed programs out of the schools and youth organizations, who has more power than a parent?
• When it comes to de-funding Planned Parenthood’s deadly work in your city, who better to convince the city council to remove funding than a citizen and townsperson?
• When it comes to exposing the truth about Planned Parenthood and offering real hope and real help to women in crisis pregnancies in front of PP’s clinics, is there any more effective way than offering your kind smile and loving words face to face?

Based on its recent merger activities, Planned Parenthood obviously knows the answer to these questions and realizes that it can’t compete with concerned citizens at the local level. It knows that peaceful, prayerful presences at its individual clinics are slowly crippling its entire organization. It knows that it cannot get away with its lies in local communities when citizens expose the truth in letters to the editor and conversations with community leaders.

In 1993, Planned Parenthood put forth a plan for operating 2,000 clinics by the year 2000. Not only did Planned Parenthood fail to reach that goal, but as of this year it operated 859 clinics (including 42 express clinics) across the country. The fact that Planned Parenthood is consolidating its affiliates is a sign of great success and an indicator that it is now on the defensive.

However, as you can see in the story about Twin Falls, it is crucial to keep the pressure on Planned Parenthood. If you have already successfully gotten PP’s programs out of your schools, its clinics out of your town and your city’s money out of its pockets--praise God! But don’t stop yet. Once you defeat Planned Parenthood in your city, immediately begin work on defeating it in your county. Once you have kicked it out of your county, then move onto your state.

Remember though, if Planned Parenthood is still operating a clinic in your community, is still getting tax money from your local government or is presenting its sex ed programs in your schools and youth organizations, focus your efforts locally first. Only after Planned Parenthood has retreated from your local community should you move on to the next level.

If each community would get active and refuse to allow Planned Parenthood to conduct its perverse and deadly business on the local level, it would sweep the feet out from under this abortion giant. This, in turn, will certainly lead to the success of defeating Planned Parenthood once and for all.

If you are not yet active in fighting Planned Parenthood in your community and want to learn more, or if you are active and need information or resources, please e-mail us or call 888-546-2580 and we will be glad to assist you in any way that we can.

Fruits in the fight to keep Planned Parenthood out of Portland

American Life League has been working with the people in Portland, Oregon since February to assist in their opposition to a new PP abortion facility that is slotted to be placed in an African-American neighborhood and next to a Muslim prayer center. In March, ALL sent two members of its STOPP department to help with several organizational meetings. We will also be sending out another staff member to continue to work with them in August.

Over the course of the last several months, there have been some frustrating developments, such as the city’s approval of the sale of the land to a developer, who will eventually sell it to Planned Parenthood. However, last week the Catholic Sentinel reported the PP clinic is still not yet a done deal.

Despite the fact that the fight to keep Planned Parenthood out of the area has raged now for many months, members of the community seem to be more united than ever in their opposition to PP and its new abortion clinic. Catholic, Protestant and Muslim citizens of Portland continue to stand as a peaceful, prayerful witness at the proposed site. Members of the community continue to distribute information exposing Planned Parenthood as well as a petition letter to the mayor.

In fact, over these many long months, the groundswell of opposition has grown and grown. More people in Portland are being made aware of the evil of Planned Parenthood and its operations.

We congratulate the people of Portland for their courage and fortitude in their fight against Planned Parenthood and ask that our readers keep these people and their work in prayer daily.

To keep up to date on the developments in Portland, visit Precious Children of Portland.

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