Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) has announced that, due to financial strains, it will be closing its Manhattan abortion facility, formerly known as the Margaret Sanger Center, which is known for being unsafe. PPGNY is looking to sell the building at 26 Bleecker Street for $39 million.
Planned Parenthood had been in the building since the early 1990s. Wendy Stark, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, said, “It is a building that requires more and more expensive maintenance, and it’s not designed to support the health care needs of the future.” Stark explained that the organization plans to “redirect” money from the sale to “health centers in historically underserved communities,” including the three remaining New York City facilities in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.
“Underserved” is Planned Parenthood’s euphemism for underprivileged women as well as women of color, whose children are often targeted for abortion. While Stark said there are currently no plans to reopen a facility in Manhattan, she did not rule it out.
Before the Manhattan Health Center can close, Planned Parenthood will have to apply for a “certificate of need” from the state and give its reasoning behind the decision to shut down and how it will affect patient access. Approval of the sale will then be up to the New York Public Health and Health Planning Council.
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, UNITED STATES – 2015/08/22: Planned Parenthood volunteers ensure access to clinic for patients with scheduled appointments during protest. A coalition of anti-abortion protesters protested on Mott Street in Manhattan in front of Planned Parenthood. (Photo by Andy Katz/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Pro-lifers react
“We are thrilled and elated that the Planned Parenthood on Bleecker Street is closing. The monthly Witness for Life has been praying at that location for the last 20 years and our prayers have been answered,” pro-life activist Bernadette Patel told Live Action News.
Patel recently faced New York Attorney General Letitia James in court and won. After James accused Red Rose Rescue and Patel of violating a court order, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Kara ruled in Patel’s favor, denying AG James’ request to hold pro-lifers in contempt.
Patel added, “Sadly, in the last four years, we have had aggressive pro-abortion protestors that have tried to stop us from exercising our First Amendment freedom of speech. There have been 20+ arrests, multiple assaults, and even legal challenges from the state and federal government over our right to pray. It is a great joy to see the forces of evil being defeated. We now turn our attention to the Planned Parenthood in Brooklyn and Queens. We are determined to keep on praying and sidewalk counseling until abortion is completely abolished in New York.”
Multiple pro-life activists have attempted to stop abortions from being carried out at the Manhattan facility, including Bevelyn Beatty Williams and Edmee Chavannes. The women were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, two years after their 2020 protest at the Manhattan Planned Parenthood, in what many called a politically motivated stunt to scare pro-lifers after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Financial struggles or misspending?
PPGNY is allegedly facing financial trouble despite the state’s strong pro-abortion laws and financial support for abortion. Last year, the state legislature voted against increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for facilities that commit abortions. PPGNY said that as a result, it had to issue pay cuts to its executives (Interim CEO Joy D Calloway’s 2022 salary is listed at $379,744), consolidate jobs, and close smaller facilities (four in all).
At the Manhattan facility, in August 2024, in an attempt to cut costs, deep sedation services for IUD patients were ceased — despite complaints about the pain of IUD placement. The facility also stopped committing abortions after 20 weeks. Stark blamed increased staff wages and increased supply prices for the financial struggles, as well as supposed inadequate reimbursement from Medicaid. From 2019 to 2021, PPGNY received nearly $10 million in federal funding. Apart from Medicaid reimbursements, PPGNY took in nearly $24 million in government grants in 2023.
Based on a recent article in The New York Times, the problem isn’t that Planned Parenthood doesn’t get enough funding, but how it spends its money is what’s a concern. It has put a large financial focus on abortion advocacy rather than patients.
The Times admits that after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, Planned Parenthood “enjoyed a fund-raising boom, with $498 million in donations that year” alone. Billionaire MacKenzie Scott (ex-wife of Jeff Bezos) gave the abortion corporation $275 million to use at the national office and 21 affiliates. And though, “[o]ver the last five years, the national office has distributed more than $899 million to affiliates to help them deliver care,” according to the Times, “none of it went directly to medical services” (emphasis added).
“Instead,” said the Times, “under the national bylaws, the majority of the money is spent on the legal and political fight to maintain abortion rights.”
This shouldn’t come as a shock, however, because the mission of Planned Parenthood is to “provide leadership, advocacy and education in the field of reproductive health care.”
Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Center New York 26 Bleecker St (Image: Google Street view 2019)
History of Injuries
The Manhattan center has a history of injuring patients and there are at least 41 known women who have been injured during abortions at the facility. According to reports, there were 15 women injured in just two years, and in 2019, five women suffered abortion injuries over the span of just seven weeks.
As is the case with many abortion facilities in the U.S., the building at 26 Bleecker Street has never met the standards of an ambulatory surgical center. Its elevators and hallways are unable to fit a gurney. This can cause time delays in an emergency as paramedics struggle to quickly get the patient into the ambulance. This is why pro-lifers advocate for common-sense laws dictating hallway width and elevator sizes, but these laws are opposed by the abortion industry.
As Live Action News reported, in an incident on November 7, 2020, eyewitnesses told Operation Rescue that a young woman was taken from the facility by paramedics; she was curled up on a gurney and appeared to be in severe pain. Planned Parenthood workers on the sidewalk allegedly ignored the gurney and the injured woman as they pumped fists with each other and cheered for Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
It hasn’t been the only PPGNY facility to have trouble, however. The New York Times shared the story of Nakara Alston, who underwent an abortion with a PPGNY facility in Albany — Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood. However, several weeks later, she was still heavily bleeding and experiencing severe cramps. An at-home pregnancy test came back positive. The abortion facility told her that she had nothing to worry about and that it was sure the entire baby had been expelled from her uterus. Alston went to the emergency room, where it was discovered that she was indeed still pregnant and her baby was still alive.
She went on to deliver her baby — at 20 weeks — and the baby died shortly after birth. She filed a lawsuit against the facility. Her complaint was just one of many, according to The Times.
Upgraded facilities
Despite all of its complaints about not having funding, PPGNY upgraded both the Bronx and Brooklyn facilities in 2022. As previously reported by Live Action News:
In a press release published on Yahoo!, the two new centers were touted as advancing health care for ‘historically underserved’ communities. Planned Parenthood of Greater New York’s (PPGNY) Bronx Health Center is now over 6,000 square feet, with nine new exam rooms designed to ‘dramatically [increase] access to sexual and reproductive health services in this center by more than 50%.’
In Brooklyn, the Joan Malin Brooklyn Health Center is spread out over two floors, featuring ‘sleek white spaces with bold color accents and integrated graphics’ in a facility overlooking the Brooklyn Borough Hall.
Given the eugenic history of Planned Parenthood, it’s unsurprising that the abortion giant would boast about expanding services — including abortion — by more than 50% in neighborhoods that have high minority populations. Historically, Planned Parenthood has intentionally placed facilities in minority neighborhoods — a move that many have considered to have racist motives.
Accusations of racism, specifically against former PPGNY CEO Laura McQuade, include “a revenue-driven, assembly-line approach to PPGNY clinics – one that put patients, and in particular Black and other patients of color, at potential risk.” Another former employee said PPGNY also tried to push “long-term contraceptives, like IUDs,” in primarily Black and Hispanic schools. “You’re talking about public schools where black and brown children are because they’re so hypersexual and need to be controlled?” the employee said. “It’s a direct link to the history of forced sterilization.”
