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Exclusive: Former Planning Parent-Child Clinic Director and pro-life activist Abby Johnson said the organization’s announcement that two Houston, Texas facilities will be closed this fall represents a “symbolic victory” of the pro-life movement.
Johnson, who resigned in 2009, told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview that he believes the pro-life movement has secured a significant victory in the closure of the facility.
“I think it’s a victory. Above all, I think it’s certainly based on the pro-life movement,” Johnson said. “As long as it’s a victory to save a baby, it’s like that symbolic victory because women aren’t stepping into that building to get an abortion anymore. Abortions in Texas are happening online.”
Plan’s Parent-Child Gulf Coast, which operates six clinics in the Houston area and two in Louisiana, closed its Prevention Park and Southwest Center on September 30, with other Houston facilities being acquired by the organization’s largest Texas affiliate.
“ELATED” after the PRO-LIFE GROUP PLANNED PARRENTHOOD SHOTTERS HOUSTON facility: “An incredible victory”
Pro-life activist Abby Johnson said the planned parent-child relationship, which closes two Houston facilities, represents a “symbolic victory” for the life movement. (Reuters/Lewis Cortez)
GOP-led facilities with abortion restrictions, including Texas, are forced to suspend proceedings following a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe V. Wade and returned the power to enact abortion laws.
After eight years at a clinic in Brian, Texas, Johnson, run by Plannard Tourhood Bay, resigned from the organization before it opened in 2010, but recalled the celebration among former colleagues when plans for the Houston mega facility were announced.
“I was in the room the day they announced their plans, and the day they announced the model for the building, and everyone was excited to have this 78,000-square-foot abortion facility,” Johnson said. “I remember the excitement of being able to see, the ability of the patients and the ability to carry out 75 abortions six days a week.”
“The fact that this facility is no longer an option means that even if surgical abortion revived here in Texas, the facility will no longer be operational,” she continued. “It can no longer be used as an abortion facility. That’s a victory in itself.”
The company cited rising costs, shortages and low reimbursement rates as reasons for closing two Houston facilities. State GOP officials in recent years have repeatedly attempted to shut down parent-child relationships for planned parents, even after almost all abortions were banned under Texas law.
The Houston closure is the organization selling its only Manhattan Health Center building for $39 million amid the closure of several planned parent-child facilities in various states, including New York.
Johnson, who now runs the ministry of life, said the merger was already happening when she worked at Planned Parenthood, including the facilities she worked for, and she hopes more facilities across the country will continue with more facilities.
“When I first started working at Planned Parenthood, there were nearly 100 affiliates. That number has been in half since I left Planned Parenthood. Affiliates are merged. The clinics are closed and we are losing staff. We need to fire staff due to clinical closures and mergers,” she said, “The morale is low, and the work environment is not happy.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast will close its Prevention Park and Southwest Centre on September 30th.
She said Planned Parenthood wanted to be a “Big Guy” and created an exclusive exclusive by essentially closing independent abortion providers.
“Many independent providers are also closed, and planned parent-child relationships are closing very rapidly,” she said.
Johnson also said he considers the facility’s closure “incredibly de-morale” and “humiliation” for planned parent-child relationships and choice lobby.
“It was a trophy to run the largest planned parent of a planned parent into the largest planned parent in the country,” she said. “And I think it’s incredibly moraleful and perhaps humiliating for the greatest planned parent-child relationship to have to close.”
He said it addresses the planner’s claim that abortions constitutes only 3% of its services, given that facilities in states with abortion bans must close.
“Now, we’re proven right because all these facilities that don’t offer abortions are forced to close,” Johnson said. “Abortion is an overwhelming part of what they’re doing, and all of these clinics that don’t have an abortion are forced to close.”
She said she was not shocked to see the megafacility being closed as it no longer brings money from doing abortions and can now only provide other services.
“We have a seven-storey 78,000-square-foot building that only offers birth control and STD testing. It’s not shocking that it was closed because the facility lacks significant revenue. That’s their main source of income,” she said.
Some Democratic-led states’ large facilities have not experienced the same set-off as they can continue to have abortions and flow money for it, Johnson said.
Federal judges stop the Trump administration from reimbursing several planned custody facilities
The company cited rising costs, understaffing and low reimbursement rates as the basis for the closure of the two facilities. (Getty Images)
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“I think it’s Texas, Louisiana, the Southern states. There’s no abortion so I think there’s a unique opportunity here,” she said. “We don’t have legal abortions in our states, and we don’t have state and federal money poured into these facilities.”
She also said places like California that allow access to surgical abortions are banned in GOP-led states, and are completely overrun with patients traveling for procedures.
Johnson emphasizes that despite his victory in Houston, there is still much work to do in the pro-life movement, pointing to data showing that Texas abortion numbers remain roughly the same since Texas abortion numbers banned surgical abortions.
“Abortions are technically illegal in Texas, but women are doing abortions at the same exact speed as when they were legal,” she said. “These women are now online and have been receiving abortions from online abortion providers.”
Abortion medications are “very easily available,” she emphasized.
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