Pro-life activist Brandi Swindell is working to take the place of Planned Parenthood and become a national life-affirming women’s health care provider. Cosmopolitan magazine recently published an article profiling the Generation Life cofounder and her work to develop the new women’s health centers.
Because of her extensive experience as an activist in the pro-life movement, Swindell believes that she has the connections necessary to make her dream a reality.
Swindell is calling her goal to replace Planned Parenthood the “Stanton Revolution.” One of her pamphlets reads: “We will not just COMPETE. We will not simply EXPOSE. We will not only DEFUND. It’s time to REPLACE Planned Parenthood.”
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Cosmopolitan wrote on the incident that turned Swindell’s heart toward the movement:
While Swindell was working at a national park during the late 1990s, a friend she met at the camp became pregnant and went to a clinic 2.5 hours away for an abortion. Swindell said when she saw her after the procedure, it was like seeing a completely different person.
“I could feel it in the air and I could see it in her limp body, she was lying in the fetal position and she had had the abortion,” Swindell said. “That experience changed her. She wasn’t the same vibrant girl that she was before.”
This experience greatly impacted Swindell and inspired her to become involved. She began working with the pro-life music ministry Rock for Life and the Christian Defense Coalition, and later Generation Life. She is currently working on her new health centers, Stanton Healthcare, named after suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Her first center opened in 2006 in her hometown of Boise, Idaho, according to the report. It began as a small-scale crisis pregnancy center. After realizing that Boise had a high abortion rate and that there wasn’t a local clinic offering ultrasounds, Swindell said she decided to expand her center.
“I was like, ‘How is there no center here?’ So I went, “OK, I guess I better roll up my shirt sleeves and start it.’”
The Stanton health center is crucial for the women in rural Boise, especially low-income women and their families. It has a mobile ultrasound clinic designed to help patients in rural areas. It provides affordable health care for women. The clinics verify pregnancy without cost, and the staff helps low income women apply for Medicaid. The Boise center offers pregnancy and parenting materials, such as baby clothes and toys, and it even has a “spa” room where pregnant women can receive massages, according to the report.
“Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the world. The women of Idaho deserve better and more options,” Swindell said previously. “Every woman should have access to quality healthcare and compassionate abortion alternatives. To ensure those facing unexpected pregnancies receive professional, quality and life-affirming medical care at no cost, Stanton recently bought property right next to Planned Parenthood Meridian and we plan to build a new state-of-the-art clinic.”
Swindell is planning to open the Meridian, Idaho clinic in 2017, according to the magazine. She said the clinic will offer ultrasound, pregnancy confirmation, uterine and ovarian diagnostics, STI testing and treatment, prenatal care and postnatal follow-ups and possibly mammograms. Swindell already has other centers in Idaho, North Carolina, Alabama and Ireland; and another one is planned for Detroit, Michigan, according to the report.
Here’s more:
Based on their plans for growth, Swindell expects to have 30 Stanton affiliates operating within 18 months of the Meridian flagship’s opening, and add 15 to 20 new clinics per year afterward. While some of the Stanton clinics opening their doors will be the full-fledged medical models like the Meridian and Boise sites, others will be able to identify as a Stanton clinic on a smaller scale, either with more limited medical services, by launching mobile centers in remote areas, or even as a doctor taking referrals and using his or her own office as a part-time clinic so patients can access care.
Tina Whittington, executive vice president of Students for Life of America, spoke to the magazine in support of Stanton Healthcare: “What Brandi is doing is creating an actual alternative. Not just resources, but a medically viable alternative, and that’s really what we need.
“We know that Planned Parenthood is the Goliath of the other side,” Whittington continued. “We need to look at what they offer that we can, too, and I think that’s really what Brandi’s done. She has the model down, she has the business plan, she is smart, she is savvy, and she’s high-passion. She has created something that has longevity and is replicable, and I think that’s the big thing.”
