As pro-life activists watched from across the street, a woman exited the Planned Parenthood facility crying, vomiting, and having difficulty walking.
With police officers helping her, she was placed in an ambulance and rushed to a local hospital.
But this is a familiar scene at Planned Parenthood’s Manhattan Health Center, which pro-life activists say routinely places women “in grave danger.”
The latest emergency on Oct. 13 represents the 36th known medical emergency at the facility formerly known as the Margaret Sanger Health Center.
According to Operation Rescue, which routinely monitors the Manhattan facility, women were transported to local hospitals 13 times in 2019 after suffering injuries or having abortion-related complications, including five in seven weeks during the spring.
According to witnesses, women were seen vomiting and having difficulty breathing as they were escorted to an ambulance. In one instance, an emotionally distraught women was helped to an ambulance by two police officers.
The Oct. 13 incident was the third in 2020 – but the decline is not attributed to improved conditions but to the strict coronavirus lockdowns in New York City.
“The decrease in the number of ambulances summoned to the Manhattan Planned Parenthood this year does not mean it is safer,” Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, said.
“It just means that due to the China Virus shutdowns, fewer women had an opportunity to suffer botched abortions, and fewer pro-life supporters were allowed on the street to observe emergencies that may have occurred.”
The high-volume abortion facility used to be named after Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, but was forced to change its name after it was accused of “systemic racism, pay inequity, and lack of upward mobility for Black staff,” as well as abusive behavior and financial malfeasance in June.
CEO Laura McQuade was also forced to resign and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York acknowledged in a statement that the name change was due to Sanger’s “racist legacy.”
In July, USA Today published an op-ed that said that in promoting birth control, Sanger “advanced a controversial “Negro Project,” wrote in her autobiography about speaking to a Klu Klux Klan group and advocated for a eugenics approach to breeding for “the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks — those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”
Sen. Ben Sasse, a pro-life supporter, says the name change to the Manhattan facility meant nothing as long as it continued to perform dangerous abortions.
“Planned Parenthood can rename a building, but it can’t whitewash its eugenics roots,” Sasse said.
“Planned Parenthood can try to forget its founder’s racist screeds, but it cannot escape the undeniable fact that it makes hundreds of millions of dollars each year by telling an ugly lie that certain lives are disposable, and then disposing of them.”
“Big abortion has always been, and will always be, in the business of violence and dehumanization.”
And Newman says little has changed at the facility since the scandal.
“Outwardly, Planned Parenthood had to drop the Margaret Sanger name in order to appease the mob, but unfortunately, it still practices Sanger’s racist eugenics philosophy by continuing to disproportionately target minority communities for abortion,” he said.
Newman noted that each of the five incidents last spring involved African-American women, which he said shows that Planned Parenthood targets women of color for abortions.
“[That] … is not a good look for a Planned Parenthood abortion facility named after its founder, Margaret Sanger, a notorious eugenicist,” he said.
“It is well documented that Planned Parenthood facilities primarily target poor urban women of color for abortions.”
Operation Rescue and other pro-life organizations have also cited the Manhattan facility for “serious safety concerns,” including not having a safe exit or elevator. They say the facility must use wheelchairs instead of gurneys to transport patients to an ambulance in case of an emergency.
“There is something very wrong at this Planned Parenthood abortion clinic,” Newman said.
“The increased frequency of medical emergencies and women who are discharged before being stabilized is worrisome and is a symptom of a larger problem.”
Operation Rescue plans to file a complaint with the Department of Health, but Newman says he is not optimistic that New York authorities will properly police the facility because of a political climate that “favors the liberalization of abortion until birth.”
“That places women in grave danger, as we have already seen,” he said.
The recent incidents at the New York facility is just the latest evidence of unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Planned Parenthood facilities.
Abby Johnson, who used to be a director at Planned Parenthood, is the founder of And Then There Were None, a non-profit organization that helps abortion workers leave the industry.
In a recent letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Johnson said she witnessed abortion clinics that had “blood stains on tables, rusty equipment, and a whole host of other terrible infractions that you wouldn’t want your wife, your daughter, or your sister to ever encounter.”
“This is a tragedy for women, their children, and their families,” said Johnson, whose organization represents more than 550 former abortion workers.
“The things we have personally witnessed inside of abortion clinics we would never wish on our worst enemies,” she wrote in her letter to Congress.
“It’s not just the messiness of abortion that haunts us and putting together pieces of aborted babies. No, it’s the complete and utter disregard for the women.”
Johnson says that abortions are “solely means of increasing revenue” for Planned Parenthood.
“That’s something that is missing from the conversation on abortion which we can personally attest to during our time working in abortion clinics,” she said.
According to And Then There Were None, there are more than 2,300 abortions performed in the United States each day at an average costs of about $500 each, with the costs rising to almost $1,000 for abortions performed in the second and third trimester.
Johnson used to believe that abortion was a woman’s right. But she says her work at Planned Parenthood changed her opinion and turned her into a pro-life advocate.
“Initially, our clients also thought that abortions helped women,” she said. “We, too, thought that it was her ‘right’ to do what she wanted with her body and that the decision was between her and her doctor.”
“But, after years in the abortion industry, our clients witnessed how inhumane abortion actually is.”
