The abortionist who oversees one of the most dangerous abortion facilities in the country was named as a finalist for Europe’s most prestigious human rights award. Three of the people nominated — McNicholas, Justyna Wydrzyńska of Poland, and Morena Herrera of El Salvador — were nominated as “women fighting for free, safe and legal abortion.” None of them won the award.
Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood for the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri and head of the Planned Parenthood mega-facility just across the Missouri/Illinois border in Fairview Heights, Illinois, is one of three finalists for the European Union’s top human rights prize.
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was first awarded in 1988 to Nelson Mandela and Anatoli Marchenko, and is meant to promote freedom of expression, minority rights, respect for international law, democracy, and the implementation of the rule of law.
Ultimately, the prize was given to Jina Mahsa Amini and the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement in Iran. Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, was arrested for not wearing a headscarf, and died three days later after being beaten while in police custody.
McNicholas still seemed pleased to be nominated. “As far-right politicians try to ban abortion across swaths of the U.S. and internationally, I’m thankful for the European Parliament’s nomination and spotlight on this critical issue of human rights,” she said. “Let this be a sign to those trying to roll back access to abortion: the world is watching.”
Had the European Union done due diligence, they would have learned that McNicholas is a fierce abortion advocate who has publicly stated that every abortion is moral, and insinuated in the past that she broke Missouri state law. In 2019, she testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reforms, and at the time, Missouri only permitted abortions up to 21 weeks and six days. McNicholas said her facility committed abortions through “viability,” a largely meaningless term — however, it is often medically accepted to be 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Yet McNicholas said the quiet part out loud.
“I’m not sure how I would even quantify that,” she said about viability, adding, “So again, as I said, my practice includes abortion care through the point of viability, and as we previously discussed, that could be at any point.” (emphasis added)
Additionally, at least 75 women were injured at the St. Louis mega-facility, and numerous health and safety violations were found, which included not washing hands between glove changes and violating infection protocol.
McNicholas’ facility, Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region (RHS), was known as one of the most dangerous in the country when the facility provided abortions. Missouri state inspectors cited RHS for 39 classes of violations involving over 200 incidents, 111 of which were related to failure to provide a safe and sanitary environment. A Missouri Senate report of RHS was also critical:
[P]lanned Parenthood’s own internal files reveal a shocking callousness toward vulnerable young women who seek their services. In fact, the procedures outlined in the materials reviewed may very well constitute outright medical malpractice… All of this indicates that Planned Parenthood is far more worried about the reputation, business model and public relations efforts than they are about the women in their care. It is difficult to conceive of any other organization, let alone an organization that holds itself out as providing women’s health services, being so recklessly indifferent to the health of their patients as to put such directives as those listed above in print for the use of their employees.
Despite all of that, RHS expanded its hours after the fall of Roe v. Wade so it could commit more abortions. After the state’s trigger law went into effect, RHS began referring patients just across the border to Illinois for abortions.
Examples of the injuries women experienced included hemorrhaging, fainting, seizures, and a stroke. A Senate investigation also found multiple instances of women having to return to RHS as many as five times for a single abortion procedure to be properly completed. And yet, all the while, women were also specifically instructed by RHS not to call 911 if they experienced complications at home.
Deliberately depriving human beings of their most basic and fundamental right — the right to life, without which no other rights can be exercised — does not qualify someone as a purveyor of human rights, unless the European Parliament simply ignores the fact that killing is what abortion actually does.
