Planned Parenthood is constructing a huge, new abortion facility in Alabama this summer with the hope that the new state abortion ban will never go into effect.
The Huffington Post reports the 10,000-foot facility is located near an interstate highway in downtown Birmingham. It is expected to open in November.
“It’s going to be a big, state-of-the-art facility with several exam rooms, offices. It will just be a new, beautiful building,” said Barbara Ann Luttrell, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Southeast.
According to the report, the abortion group bought the land for $430,600 last year.
The current Planned Parenthood facility in Birmingham does not abort unborn babies and has not for almost two years, but the new facility will, according to various news reports.
Local pro-life advocates are working hard to prevent abortions from coming to their city. On Thursday, they held a rally outside the building site to pray and raise awareness, CBS 42 reports.
“We still stand and we will kneel in prayer that this facility will not be built,” said the Rev. Harry Reeder of the Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
Reeder said Planned Parenthood gives “false counsel” to pregnant women to steer them toward aborting their unborn babies.
The Rev. Terry Gensemer of Metro Birmingham Life Forum said he wonders why Planned Parenthood is moving forward with the project after state lawmakers passed an abortion ban earlier this spring, Fox News reports.
“It was surprising when we found out that they were going to build this,” Gensemer said. “My question is after the bill passage, why are they continuing to be so aggressive when the possibility exists that they won’t be able to be in business?”
The law, signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in May, protects unborn babies from abortion in all cases; exceptions are allowed to save the mother’s life. If the law goes into effect, it would be a felony to abort an unborn baby in Alabama. However, the abortion industry is suing to block the law. Its fate at the U.S. Supreme Court level is uncertain.
HELP LIFENEWS SAVE BABIES FROM ABORTION! Please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
Planned Parenthood leaders have said their “core mission” is abortion, and they are challenging dozens of pro-life laws across the country.
In the past few years, Planned Parenthood also has been constructing huge new abortion facilities in major cities. In May, news broke of plans to open a $10 million abortion facility in Charlotte, North Carolina. It recently opened others in Waco, Texas, New Orleans, New York City and Washington, D.C. Another is planned for San Francisco.
Meanwhile, it has been closing dozens of its rural facilities. Many of them were low-revenue facilities that did not do abortions.
Randall O’Bannon, Ph.D., the director of education and research for the National Right to Life Committee, previously wrote about the plans for new abortion mega-clinics after Planned Parenthood announced plans to open a $9 million clinic in New York City in 2014.
“Though abortions are significantly down in the U.S. as a whole, business is booming at Planned Parenthood,” he wrote.
“But what is clear is either that most of the clinics that closed were not abortion performing clinics or that Planned Parenthood has made up for those abortion losses with giant new mega-clinics built to take their place. The new centers do not appear to have picked up the lost cancer screenings, but they do appear to have kept the lucrative abortion business steady” at a time when abortions are dropping across the U.S., O’Bannon said.
Last year, Planned Parenthood’s annual report listed a record $1.66 billion in revenue, including about half a billion taxpayer dollars. That same year, it did 332,757 abortions – more than one third of all abortions in the U.S. and more than any other abortion group.
Alabama currently has three abortion facilities in the state in Montgomery, Tuscaloosa and Huntsville; none of them are owned by Planned Parenthood.
