Oregon Planned Parenthood Opens Expanded Abortion Facility
by Maria Gallagher
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
November 5, 2003
Salem, OR (LifeNews.com) — The Governor of Oregon is showing his unabashed support for legalized abortion–again.
At the opening of a new Planned Parenthood center in Salem last month, Gov. Ted Kulongoski said, “There’s probably not been a time in the last 30 years that the issue of choice — that the idea that a woman has the right to make decisions about her reproductive freedom — was at risk as much as it is today.”
The Governor also claimed that those who support legalized abortion have become too complacent. “This is a struggle in which we are always going to have to be vigilant,” he said.
The Governor made his remarks at the opening of a new Planned Parenthood office named in honor of Charla Richards-Kreutzberg, a former obstetrics nurse who acted as an abortion center escort. She died in 1998.
Kulongoski counts the abortion lobby as one of his staunchest supporters. Last year, NARAL went so far as proclaiming Kulongoski as part of a “dream team.” Oregon Right to Life countered that Kulongoski was actually part of an “extreme team” that favored abortion on demand, including late-term abortions, which are opposed by a majority of Americans.
The opening of the $1.2 million Salem abortion facility appears to be part of Planned Parenthood’s ongoing campaign to expand abortion in the United States. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion operation.
The former Salem abortion center, which consisted of two houses attached to each other, performed 935 abortions from mid-2002 to mid-2003. That abortion rate was up a staggering 422 abortions from the previous year’s totals.
David Greenberg, a Planned Parenthood executive, told the Statesman Journal newspaper that some women come from as far away as California to get abortions in Salem.
In an effort to make the center “user-friendly,” the new facility includes a drive-through window for people to pick up condoms and other birth control devices. Planned Parenthood claims that abortions represent only a small percentage of the services provided by the Salem center.
However, Planned Parenthood’s own records consistently show that money from abortions makes up a large share of the income generated by Planned Parenthood facilities nationwide.
According to the Statesman Journal account, “The new facility offers soft lighting, a vaulted ceiling in the reception area, and soothing blonde wood fixtures.” In the view of pro-life activists, such amenities show the lengths the abortion industry will go to in an effort to make their operations appealing to women.
Pro-life activists picketed the opening of the new Salem abortion center in order to call attention to the harm abortion causes to unborn children and their mothers.
“I think it is a sad event for Salem,” Gayle Atteberry, executive director of Oregon Right to Life, told the newspaper. “Planned Parenthood now has a bigger and better facility in which they can kill children, kill babies.”
Related web sites:
Oregon Right to Life – https://www.ortl.org
