Over 200 Protest Planned Parenthood Rallies Set: It's Time to Defund Abortion Giant
A pro-life activist helping to organize a nationwide protest against Planned Parenthood on Saturday wants to set the record straight on the abortion provider.
"The rallies … aim to educate the media and the public about Planned Parenthood's central role in the abortion industry and set the record straight about how limited their healthcare services really are," Eric Scheidler, national organizer of #ProtestPP and executive director for the Pro-Life Action League, told The Christian Post. "For example, while Planned Parenthood provides less than 1% of annual pap tests, they provide 35% of annual abortions in the U.S."
According to Scheidler, 215 rallies are scheduled for Saturday at Planned Parenthood clinics in 44 states and the District of Columbia. Another rally will be held at the London headquarters of the International Parenthood Federation, which was defunded by President Donald Trump's executive order last month.
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"The time has come to defund America's abortion giant!" protest organizers declare.
Scheilder helped organized similar protests in 2015, with demonstrations held at around 300 clinics in response to the release of a series of undercover videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials violating federal law.
"The massive media coverage of the undercover videos back in 2015 helped to make those protests especially large and numerous," noted Scheilder.
But there's less brouhaha this year.
"We're not riding that kind of wave of publicity right now, so we've had to rise to the challenge of getting the word out through our own communications channels," he said.
Still, an undercover video was released by pro-life group Live Action in recent weeks revealing that Planned Parenthood doesn't actually provide healthcare services to pregnant women.
One clinic worker admitted that the business' name is "deceptive" because many of them don't have an OB/GYN doctor on staff and they only use their ultrasound equipment on women seeking an abortion. Prenatal services for women who want to carry their unborn baby to term are not provided.
Another Live Action undercover video revealed that Planned Parenthood offers incentives to meet abortion quotas.
"I felt like I was more of a salesman sometimes to sell abortions," said Marianne Anderson, who served as a nurse for over two years at a Planned Parenthood in Indianapolis. "We were told on a regular basis that we had a quota to meet to keep this clinic open."
The #ProtestPP organizers are praying to put an end to "Planned Parenthood's massive government subsidy" and to abortion in the U.S.
"Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest abortion chain, killing over 300,000 babies each year, and nearly half of their billion dollar budget comes from our tax dollars. But now the new 115th Congress is moving to strip Planned Parenthood of that money," explained the event's website.
The nationwide protests are coming at a time when the pro-life movement appears to riding a wave of momentum since the election of President Donald Trump.
One of President Trump's first executive orders was to reinstitute the "Mexico City Policy," which prohibited federal funding for overseas NGOs that promote abortion.
"For the first time in eight years, ... anti-abortion advocates are on the offensive and hoping their electoral work will pay off," reported Time magazine last month.
House Speaker Paul Ryan said last month that Republicans will move to defund Planned Parenthood by including it in legislation to repeal Obamacare.
