In March, nearly 2,000 pro-lifers showed up at the El Centro City Council meeting in California to air their concerns over an agreement between Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest and El Centro Regional Medical Center that would allow abortions at their new facility. The opening of this facility was particularly controversial because the City of El Centro is a conservative part of California that borders Mexico and Arizona.
Initially, pro-lifers were able stop the facility from performing abortions because they didn’t meet certain safety requirements. However, Planned Parenthood threatened to sue and argued that the City of El Centro was denying their request to perform abortions because of personal beliefs.
Tracy Skaddan, general counsel for Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, said, “We complied with all the building, fire, and safety requirements for licensure, but the City of El Centro Fire Chief made an arbitrary and unilateral decision to deny our final documentation. City officials have no business allowing personal beliefs to trump the safe and legal abortion services that are protected by both state and federal laws. The City of El Centro is not following the law regarding building and fire inspection standards for health facilities of this kind.”
Now, unfortunately, the fire chief of the City of El Centro has signed the last document needed to allow them to offer abortions. Previously, he said the center needed to be reclassified as an outpatient surgical center and implement a fire suppression system.
Planned Parenthood “health educator,” Maykent Salazar, has been working to promote the new center because she believes family planning isn’t discussed in the City of El Centro. She said, “I mean, we have no clinics where people can talk about what they feel or what they think. It’s just taboo. It’s there, but no one talks about it.”
She added, “I think we in the Valley all deserve the right to choose what we want to do with our bodies and with our lives — that involves choosing what contraceptives we want to use, choosing if we want to have a baby or if we don’t want to have a baby, and when do we want to have him.”
Thankfully, many citizens of El Centro disagreed. For example, Pastor Chris Nunn explained that the abortion business isn’t welcome in their town since their population is 70% pro-life. He said that although there’s nothing wrong with a new clinic coming to town offering genuine help to women, Planned Parenthood isn’t doing that. He explained, “… Planned Parenthood kind of disguises itself as a clinic, and tries to come in under the guise of a clinic, in order to perform abortions, and prey on our young women. And that’s really what we have a problem with.”
The citizens of El Centro have good reason to be concerned about Planned Parenthood’s abortion business because in 2013, they performed 327,694 abortions, maintaining their position as the largest abortion business in America. They also raked in $305.3 million and continued to receive over a half-billion dollars in taxpayer dollars.
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Their breast cancer screening services dropped by 17% and their prenatal services by 4%; and for every adoption referral, the abortion giant performed 174 abortions. Overall, Planned Parenthood reported more than $127 million in excess revenue, and more than $1.4 billion in net assets.
Additionally, Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., recently spoke out against the abortion facility.
She said, “Everyone knows that Planned Parenthood is after money, offering abortion and harmful byproducts; and in that process they target the most vulnerable American women and families; Latinos and African Americans. Now they are after the women of Mexicali and their babies, because they are easy prey to their lies that they offer ‘safe, legal and rare’ abortions. These women don’t need death care, they need help. Pregnancy care centers, adoption and agape love are available in El Centro. Families just need to know where to look.”
