Pro-life advocates in Augusta, Georgia have been praying that the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in their city would close for more than three decades. Last week, they said their prayers were answered.
The Augusta Chronicle reports the Planned Parenthood Southeast clinic on Broad Street in Augusta announced on its website that it is closing because of financial issues.
“For 35 years, Augusta Care Pregnancy Center has prayed that Augusta Planned Parenthood would close,” the pro-life group said in an e-mail to the news outlet. “Thousands of pregnant mothers have been wounded, some physically and some mentally. God has answered many prayers of the Augusta people.”
The abortion clinic has a history of health and safety violations with the state. In 2011, an investigative report revealed the state cited the Augusta Planned Parenthood for 23 violations and fined it $1,400.
In 2010, LifeNews reported the abortion clinic cut back its hours after a 40 Days for Life group began peacefully praying outside. Pro-lifers saw it as a hopeful sign that the clinic would close one day.
The pro-life pregnancy center plans to hold a news conference Monday to talk about the abortion clinic closing, according to the report.
Reports do not indicate when specifically the abortion clinic will stop doing business or if it has closed already.
Local Planned Parenthood officials said they made the decision to close the Augusta clinic because of “fiscal responsibility.”
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“In the shifting health care landscape both locally and nationally, Planned Parenthood must constantly assess operational efficiency and identify how to remain strong, serving as many patients as possible over both the short and the long term,” according to a press release from the abortion group. “As a result, Planned Parenthood Southeast is redirecting resources to other communities within the established service area.”
The closure is part of a larger trend that LifeNews reported about last week. Abortion clinics are closing at a record pace across the country as they fail to meet new health and safety requirements and the demand for their business drops, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
While abortion activists blame the closures on laws that require basic health and safety protections for patients, the report indicates that many factors are involved, including the lack of business and fewer doctors willing to do abortions. These numbers, coupled with plunging national abortion statistics, point to the fact that fewer women actually want abortions. As modern technology shows clear pictures of unborn babies in the womb, and as more pro-life groups offer women alternatives to abortion, more women have access to the education and resources to choose life for their unborn babies.
Between 2011 and 2015, at least 162 abortion clinics have shut or stopped doing abortions; 21 new abortion clinics opened in that same time period, the report states. The top four states that saw abortion clinics close were Texas with 30-plus, Iowa with 14, Michigan with 13 and California with 12, according to the report. A report from Operation Rescue also showed 53 abortion clinics closed in 2015 alone.
Lack of business has been a major factor in the closing of abortion clinics, according to the Bloomberg report. The news group found that of the 162 abortion clinics that closed, 19 percent were in counties with fewer than 100,000 people. This seems to indicate that rural abortion clinics aren’t doing as well financially.
In February, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Blacksburg, Virginia also announced that it was closing because it was losing business, LifeNews reported. A Bridgeport, Connecticut abortion clinic also told Bloomberg it closed in 2015 because of reduced demand.
