Pro-abortion lawmakers are looking to eliminate the few safeguards that are in place for preborn babies in Pennsylvania, where abortion is permitted through 24 weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood Keystone is closing one of its facilities in a suburb of Philadelphia, complaining there aren’t enough abortion facilities, and blaming those safeguards. But as America’s abortion giant, it has played a big role in the decline of abortion businesses.
In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Signe Espinoza, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates, said the abortion corporation’s Warminster facility will be closing this summer. In a statement, the organization claimed the decision to shut down the facility was due to “the changing health care environment.”
“Abortion is legal in Pennsylvania, but it sure as hell is not accessible. We had more than 145 abortion clinics in Pennsylvania when Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Now, we have less than 20, and five of them provide medication abortions only,” Espinoza said. “Those clinics started really closing after laws were passed in Pennsylvania — waves of what we call ‘targeted restrictions on abortion providers’ which are designed to close [a clinic] or make it way more difficult for it to operate. The opposition has been chipping away at access to abortion care. In such a hostile environment, in such a restrictive state, it’s been really difficult to expand access to care.”
READ: SHOCK: Abortion complications triple in pro-abortion Pennsylvania
Roe was decided in 1973 — over 50 years ago — so it’s hardly a surprise that the number of abortion facilities has changed over half a century. Furthermore, Espinoza failed to mention that it’s Planned Parenthood itself that puts so many abortion facilities out of business.
Planned Parenthood has been called the Walmart of the abortion industry because it drives smaller, independent abortion facilities out of business. According to pro-abortion author Melody Rose:
For example, Peter Bours, a physician in Oregon, reports that new Planned Parenthood franchises in his area are making one of his offices financially untenable; whereas he has once provided 100 or more abortions per month in his Portland office, he now performs around 20. Referring to Planned Parenthood as “the Walmart of abortion clinics,” Bours contends that the larger providers offer inferior services, and that as a result women are being poorly served by the expansion of the organization in abortion provision. Although very competitive in terms of price, Bours maintains that their level of care is lower, and that patients often see clinicians with less training than physicians at smaller facilities might have.
Bours is not the only one to have made this assertion; the Wall Street Journal has also reported that Planned Parenthood’s so-called “mega-clinics” put smaller facilities out of business. One abortion facility owner told the Wall Street Journal, “We would not be closing today if Planned Parenthood had not started providing abortion services in the same town.”
Amy Hagstrom Miller, another abortion facility owner, likewise said, “This is not the Planned Parenthood we all grew up with… they now have more of a business approach, much more aggressive.” Planned Parenthood also spends more money than all other abortion groups on lobbying. Unsurprisingly, even in years where abortion numbers overall have fallen, Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers have risen.
As for the regulations Espinoza blames? They are necessary in Pennsylvania, where complications from abortion were found to have tripled over the last five years.
