In This Issue

• STOPP Releases Report on Planned Parenthood Racism
• Planned Parenthood dealing with Racism Charges
• The future of the fight against Planned Parenthood

By Jim Sedlak

Planned Parenthood is racist. Pro-lifers have spoken those words about Planned Parenthood for decades. The claim is usually followed by a description of actions or statements by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. All too frequently, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s supporters have dismissed those claims. 

All that changed in June 2020.

This past June, employees of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) made public an open letter to their board of directors documenting the internal racism of their Planned Parenthood affiliate and their president/CEO, Laura McQuade. This was followed by a supporting statement from employees of Planned Parenthood Great Plains (PPGP) documenting similar internal racism in their own affiliate under the same president/CEO. Following employee complaints, McQuade was removed from that affiliate and given the same job at PPGNY. Her compensation went from $226,499 in 2017 at PPGP to $428,321 in 2018 at PPGNY. 

National impact 

Although the happenings at PPGNY seemed originally to be a local matter, it suddenly exploded into a nationwide admission by Planned Parenthood affiliates of being racist organizations. So far, 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates have issued public statements (see pages 7-9) admitting to being racist today. In making these statements, the affiliates referred to their organizations as being guilty of “white supremacy” (12 times), “structural racism” (10 times), “implicit bias” (six times), and “systemic racism” (five times).

The 19 affiliates operate in all or part of 33 different states, including seven of the 10 most populated states. Every one of the affiliates commits surgical or medical abortions. The 19 affiliates include the largest in the Planned Parenthood empire: Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, and Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest and Hawaiian Islands, which also manages Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.

With all of these documented admissions of racism by Planned Parenthood itself, it is no longer just pro-lifers accusing Planned Parenthood of racism. It is Planned Parenthood, itself, admitting it is racist. With that admission, it is clear that any individual, corporation, or organization that supports Planned Parenthood is also racist. Let us not be afraid to say so.

Finally, Planned Parenthood Federation of America conducted a study of racism within the national office. The resultsshow the national office is filled with internal racism. The organization is filled with racism and white supremacy from top to bottom. Yet, it claims to be friends of the minority communities.

Planned Parenthood executives responded to all these revelations by promising to make changes. However, as documented in our report, Planned Parenthood employees are not buying it—they don’t think anything will change.

Below are some relevant quotes (emphasis added):

An employee at the PPFA national office observed: “This assessment was great but, what’s next? This assessment took three years to do. Are we gonna have to wait another three years before they implement any policies?” 

Another PPFA employee stated: “I don’t trust them to make these changes, because Planned Parenthood is filled with people who, because they do work in reproductive rights, think they can’t be racist or prejudice [sic], but keep saying and doing racist things, and nothing is being done about it.”

A PPGNY employee was even more pessimistic: “After years of complaints from staff about issues of systemic racism, pay inequity, and lack of upward mobility for Black staff, highly paid consultants were brought in three separate times to assess the situation. Each time, employees of color were brutally honest about their experiences, but nothing changed.”

Bottom line—104-year-old Planned Parenthood is now, and always has been, a racist organization. Despite all the admissions of Planned Parenthood’s racist and white supremacist operations across the country in the last five months, the Black president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America had the temerity to write her supporters in November and bemoan that “Racism plagues our country in ways that keep Black and Latino communities from living full, healthy lives.” 

Step number one in eradicating reproductive racism among communities of color is to close down every Planned Parenthood facility in the country.

With all admissions of racism documented in our latest report, it is clear that any individual, corporation, politician, or organization that supports Planned Parenthood is guilty of racism. Let us not be afraid to say so.

Jim Sedlak is executive director of American Life League, founder of STOPP International, and host of a weekly talk show on the Radio Maria Network. He has been successfully fighting Planned Parenthood since 1985.

By Jim Sedlak

With all the revelations about the racism at Planned Parenthood, Harper’s Bazaar printed a 3,000-word feature article that originally appeared in the December 2020/January 2021 issue of Harper's Bazaar, available on newsstands December 1, 2020. The article was written by Dani McClain and is titled The Racial Reckoning Inside Planned Parenthood.  McClain’s bio reveals that her work had previously been recognized by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Two quick notes:

1. The article deals exclusively with racism charges and organizational reactions at just two Planned Parenthood entities—the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY). It never mentions the admitted racism at 18 other Planned Parenthood affiliates that operate in 33 different states.
2. The author, Dani McClain, spent almost 40 percent of the article talking about Margaret Sanger and how she was misunderstood and how pro-lifers are irresponsible in their treatment of Sanger and for using her to argue against present-day Planned Parenthood. Clearly, this appears to have been a diversionary tactic to get the reader thinking about Sanger and not the documented racism of Planned Parenthood today.

The first take-away from this article is that PPFA’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, confirmed the premise of our own report that Planned Parenthood is, today, a racist organization. She is quoted saying: “Right now our country is in the middle of a racial justice reckoning—one that includes Planned Parenthood. We know we cannot address structural racism or white supremacy in this country without addressing our own.”

McClain uses a lot of the already published statements by Planned Parenthood execs and staff concerning the bad treatment of employees of the organization and also describes an internal PPGNY effort focusing on its customers. She writes: “ (Nia) Martin-Robinson (director of Black leadership and engagement at PPFA) supported the staff of Planned Parenthood in New York as they planned Reviving Radical, an ongoing series of events started in late 2019 and early 2020 designed to help the local affiliate begin to repair its relationship with the communities of color it primarily serves. At each meeting, dozens of people from around New York City—mostly Black and Latina women—gathered at carefully selected locations (a YMCA in Downtown Brooklyn, the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center in Washington Heights, Hostos Community College in the South Bronx) to share stories of being mistreated by health-care providers at Planned Parenthood clinics.” (Emphasis added)

The author makes a big deal of the fact that the new PPFA president/CEO, as well as the new CEO of PPGNY, are Black. She quotes Fiona Kanagasingam, the PPGNY affiliate’s chief equity and learning officer, saying, “It is a radically transformed leadership team from when I joined a year ago. We have a senior leadership team now that is majority people of color. The majority of people of color are Black. That did not happen by chance.” 

This statement, as well as the tone of the article, implies that putting people of color in charge of the organization will correct the organization’s racial problems. McClain reinforces this premise at the end of her article by quoting Merle McGee, architect of Reviving Radical and the affiliate’s chief equity and engagement officer, saying, “Planned Parenthood’s more recent commitment to valuing the leadership and expertise of women of color—both staff and patients—is what’s significant.” McGee called the removal of Sanger’s name from the Manhattan health center “the shiny ball” that’s drawn attention and provoked debate. But it’s only one part of a larger shift happening in the organization. “We’re now in the deep waters,” McGee told me as she described the Reviving Radical meetings and internal changes at the New York affiliate. “That’s where the radical transformation happens, by looking at who we partner with and how.”

While all this sounds good, it ignores the fact that persons of color can also be racists. 

McClain gives us a brief look into the racist controversy between Black and white leaders of reproductive rights/justice organizations as she wrote: “In August 2014, there was an exchange of open letters between Monica Simpson, executive director of the Atlanta-based reproductive justice collective SisterSong, and Cecile Richards, then president and CEO of Planned Parenthood. In interviews with The New York Times and an op-ed placed in The Huffington Post, the national leadership at the time signaled their move away from the term “pro-choice” in favor of more expansive language about women’s health and economic security. In response, Simpson and dozens of individuals and organizations that signed her letter took Richards to task for what Simpson called ‘the co-optation and erasure of the tremendously hard work done by Indigenous women and women of color (WOC) for decades.’ After all, this broadening of the frame beyond abortion had long been the work of reproductive justice activists, but white women were being credited with the strategic shift in the paper of record.” (Emphasis added)

The fact that just putting women of color in management positions doesn’t, of itself, end racism, was discussed in a recent BuzzFeed article: “Two employees told BuzzFeed News that [Alexis McGill] Johnson has placed more Black women in Planned Parenthood’s executive leadership, but that the organization still wasn’t fixing the problem.

“Alexis has been pretty darn great, but it’s hard to tell if she understands the problems her staff of color continue to face under Black leadership, and that staff of color continue to leave all the time,” another employee said. “Just because you change the racial makeup of your leadership doesn’t mean that staff of color aren’t still experiencing the same problems.” 

Today’s racism at Planned Parenthood is management mistreating employees, as well as Planned Parenthood clinic personnel mistreating clients of color. Planned Parenthood management wants to give the appearance of trying to correct the situation, but it is not clear if they really want to or know how. Exchanging white racists for racist women of color is not the answer.

Racism is so ingrained throughout the organization that the only real solution may be to just close it all down. The estimated 148,000 Black babies who die in Planned Parenthood facilities each year would surely select that option.

Jim Sedlak is executive director of American Life League, founder of STOPP International, and host of a weekly talk show on the Radio Maria Network. He has been successfully fighting Planned Parenthood since 1985.

STOPP has begun work on our annual report on the number of Planned Parenthood facilities in the United States and how many of them do medical and/or surgical abortions. The data- gathering for the report is a lengthy process. At the present time, we have completed about 40 percent of the effort and will have the remainder done by the end of this month.

2020 has been a particularly volatile year for Planned Parenthood facilities, as the organization has temporarily closed down a number of them because of local effects of the COVID pandemic. These temporary closures range from small clinics in rural areas to larger facilities in places like the Bronx in New York City. Our initial data shows that many, but not all, of these facilities have reopened.

For the last 15 years, Planned Parenthood has closed more facilities than it opened each year. Its total number of centers in the United States has gone from 872 in 2005 to 587 at the end of 2019. It is always dangerous to make predictions based on incomplete information, but it appears at this point that Planned Parenthood will continue its unbroken string of years in which it closes more of its centers than it opens. With complete data from19 states, including California, Planned Parenthood has opened facilities in nine new communities and closed in 14. 

As we review the annual data over the last three decades, one thing is perfectly clear. The closing of local Planned Parenthood centers is more a matter of local people willing to take on the challenge and do the necessary work than which political party is in power. As we face the real possibility that Joe Biden may take office in January, we call your attention to the fact that Planned Parenthood closed more facilities during the Obama years than any other time in history.

Let’s look at the data:

Carter administration (1977 – 1980): Planned Parenthood had 700 centers every year

Reagan administration (1981 – 1988): Planned Parenthood gained 150 centers

George Bush administration (1989 – 1992): Planned Parenthood gained 72 centers 

Clinton administration (1993 – 2000): Planned Parenthood lost 47 centers

George W. Bush administration (2000 – 2008): Planned Parenthood lost 31 centers

Obama administration (2009 – 2016): Planned Parenthood lost 218 centers

Trump administration (2017 to present): Planned Parenthood lost 39 centers (not counting 2020)

There are a lot of details behind these numbers, not the least of which is the American public’s ignorance about Planned Parenthood until the mid-1990s. But one thing is perfectly clear—it is the dedication and hard work of pro-life groups and individuals that results in the closure of Planned Parenthood facilities, and not who is president of the United States. Presidents come and go, but groups like American Life League, Human Life International, Pro-Life Action League, STOPP International, Christian Action Council, Life Decisions International, Life Dynamics, Students for Life, Live Action, Center for Medical Progress, and many more, bring pressure on Planned Parenthood. In addition to the leaders of those groups, authors like Elasah Drogin, Mary Senander, George Grant, Charles Donovan, and Robert Marshall released dynamic slides and books that opened people’s eyes to the true nature of Planned Parenthood.

Whatever happens in the elections, YOU can continue Planned Parenthood’s decline and save God’s children by not only staying in the fight, but being even more active.