After one Planned Parenthood affiliate closed four centers following Texas’ decision to yank a considerable amount of taxpayer funding the abortion business receives, now the Waco, Texas abortion center has announced it is making cuts.
Planned Parenthood of Central Texas informed the Waco Tribune newspaper it is scaling back the number of appointments it is making at its abortion center, where it had 8,000 customers for abortion and non-abortion “services” last year. The abortion facility is also cutting staff and has reduced the number of nurse practitioners from three to one.
Felicia Goodman, community affairs director for the local Planned Parenthood, told the newspaper she is worried the cutbacks will make it so fewer women schedule appointments with the abortion business.
“If people have to wait too long, they either give up or they go to the emergency room,” Goodman said.
The legislature, when it made the budget cuts involving Planned Parenthood, put a renewed focus on providing women and community residents with better health care in non-abortion settings and shifted funding priority in Waco to Waco’s Family Health Center for primary health care services. Allen Patterson, Family Health’s chief financial and operating officer, told the newspaper that the health clinic, which does not do abortions, will expand if necessary to accommodate new clients seeking non-abortion health care or family planning services.
Goodman said the cuts have made it so Planned Parenthood of Central Texas is looking at merging with the Austin Planned Parenthood affiliate by the end of the year to cut back on administrative and office expenses.
“We have always had many, hundreds, of loyal supporters and our hope is that they will continue to be loyal supporters and really come through and know we’re looking at long-term, sustainable strategies,” Goodman said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
The pro-life group Elijah Ministries responded to the cuts, saying, “The irony of Planned Parenthood’s plight should not be ignored by their supporters. Planned Parenthood is suffering its greatest losses, cutbacks, and disfavor under the most pro-abortion president and administration in the history of the United States.”
The group continued: “Planned Parenthood may continue to keep a stiff upper lip with its famous last words, “We are not going anywhere” to maintain their fool’s paradise, but they are on the wrong side of the Lord. They are on the wrong side of His moral commandment, “Thou shall not kill.” They are on the wrong side of history. They will go the way of slavery before them. History will condemn their grisly trade.”
Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County announced over the weekend that will close four of its centers and lay off half of its staff in response to the cuts the state legislature approved, which state pro-life groups like Texas Right to Life and Texas Alliance for Life supported. The abortion business plans to shut down centers in Rio Grande City, San Carlos, Progreso and Mission.
The Planned Parenthood affiliate will consolidate its offices and refer existing customers to remaining centers in McAllen, Edinburg, San Juan and Weslaco.
While it claims the cuts will deny women access to some non-abortion health care Planned Parenthood also provides, thousands of other agencies and medical offices are located throughout the state that provide the same or better quality health care for women without the trappings of also destroying lives in abortions.
The closings come after another Planned Parenthood affiliate closed its abortion-referral facility in Sherman in the northern part of the state as a direct result of the bill Governor Rick Perry signed that the Texas legislature approved revoking taxpayer funding for the abortion business.
The center closed our months after former manager Ramona Trevino resigned her post at Planned Parenthood. Trevino is now speaking out about her pro-life conversion and resulting exodus from the organization responsible for the most abortions in the United States.
According to the pro-life group 40 Days for Life, which publicized the closing and which helped Abby Johnson leave a Bryan, Texas Planned Parenthood center, Trevino explains that, although this particular Planned Parenthood did not perform surgical abortions, she was struggling “with [her] conscience . . . on contraception, abortion and [her] role in it all.” All Planned Parenthood centers make abortion referrals and some of them dispense the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug that has killed dozens of women and injured another 2,200 in the United States alone.
Also last month, pro-life advocates were given the good news that an abortion center shut down in Pensacola, Florida.
The closing follows news last week that Planned Parenthood would no longer do abortions at some Arizona locations because it declined to follow new pro-life laws enacted in that state.
Meanwhile, a California-based abortion business closed in July after 40 Days for Life pro-life prayer events there.
Earlier this year, Family Planning Associates, one of the largest abortion center chains in California, closed the abortion business it runs in Newport Beach. Operation Rescue president Troy Newman informed LifeNews about the closing of the FPA abortion facility and he said the Newport Beach location is one “where pro-lifers have been sidewalk counseling and praying for decades” and “its closure is an encouragement that we are winning.”
With FPA closing up shop in Newport Beach, it joins the closing of all five Golden Gate Community Health locations in the San Francisco area. Formerly known as Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, the GGCH abortion centers closed after financial problems and mismanagement forced national Planned Parenthood officials to disaffiliate the local affiliate.
Also earlier this year, two Pennsylvania abortion clinics operated by abortionist Soleiman M. Soli were closed by state officials in the wake of the discovery of Kermit Gosnell’s “house of horrors” where he killed a woman in a botched abortion and killed hundreds of babies in birth-induced abortions that are essentially infanticides. Soli closed the clinics and retired rather than clean them up.
The closings follow the permanent closure of a Planned Parenthood abortion referral center in Ohio. Planned Parenthood of Northeast Ohio will be closing one of its centers north of Columbus, in Galion, because it says it is has come up on financial difficulties that make it necessary to consolidate.
