A coalition of national and state pro-life activists brought thousands of people together on Saturday at over 200 locations around the country to protest Planned Parenthood facilities.
In Boston, Rev. Eugene Rivers said to pro-life demonstrators in front of a Hub Planned Parenthood clinic on Commonwealth Avenue, “I believe every baby is worthy of protection. We’re talking about justice for the unborn.”
Pro-life activists attempted to speak to women entering the clinic, who were taken inside by Planned Parenthood volunteers, reports the Boston Herald. One Planned Parenthood supporter yelled at the protesters, saying: “Tell me what to do with my body one more time.”
Bob Joyce of the Pro Life Legal Defense Fund said, quoting abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, “I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard.”
Joyce told the crowd there are some fights that must continue.
“Slavery was one of them,” Joyce said. “The protection of innocent, unborn life is another.”
At Planned Parenthood on Hamilton Street in Richmond, Virginia, protest organizer Leslie Blackwell said, “I used to be pro-choice. I used to be the one out there, ‘Don’t you ever take my choice away,’ and it’s because I was not being honest.”
“If you’re really pro-choice, you’re pro what? Pro killing babies? Let’s say what it is,” she asserted, reports NBC12.
#ProtestPP began organizing protests last year following the release of investigative videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies and altering the position of babies during abortion in order to harvest the most intact organs.
States are now defunding the nation’s largest abortion business, and a special congressional panel investigating fetal tissue practices now says evidence indicates Planned Parenthood likely profited illegally from its sales of aborted baby body parts. The Obama administration, however, has threatened states that have eliminated the abortion business’ Medicaid funding.
Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League and national organizer of the protests, said in a statement, “The public was appalled at Kermit Gosnell’s ‘House of Horrors,’” referring to the Philadelphia abortionist convicted for his barbaric practices in 2013.
“Last year’s videos exposed Planned Parenthood’s crude and mercenary treatment of the babies they abort, and destroyed any illusion that that they are any more humane than the ‘back-alley’ abortionists they claim to abhor,” he added.
Planned Parenthood, reeling from the video exposé, has now endorsed Hillary Clinton – the first time it has endorsed a candidate in a primary. Scheidler hopes that the nationwide protests will put the focus on the abortion business’ exploitation of unborn children and put pressure on more states and members of Congress to eliminate its government funding.
Scheidler has been highly critical of what he refers to as “abortion exceptionalism,” the notion that abortion providers and their supporters receive protections not granted to any other business — and are often exempt from the health and safety standards other outpatient surgical facilities must comply with despite the invasive procedures they perform.
“There is a glaring prejudice against the sanctity of human life in America’s legal system,” Scheidler stated, citing the example of California Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris. Harris – who received thousands of dollars in donations to her re-election campaign from Planned Parenthood – is seeking criminal charges against undercover journalist David Daleiden, the project lead of Center for Medical Progress, which produced the videos exposing the Planned Parenthood baby parts scandal.
Harris, however, staunchly defended animal rights activists using the same methods as Daleiden.
Planned Parenthood continues to maintain that it provides “women’s healthcare” that cannot be provided elsewhere, despite the fact that there are many more federally qualified health centers that provide more comprehensive medical care without performing abortions.
The abortion business dismissed the protests as being “designed to shame the patients who seek basic health care from Planned Parenthood and to intimidate the health care professionals who work here.”
“Since July, politicians in at least 24 states have been doing everything in their power to end access to care at Planned Parenthood through Medicaid, Title X, and other programs, putting more than half a million people at risk of losing their basic health care,” the abortion business said in a statement.
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