Planned Parenthood Los Angeles to manage affiliate in southern states

Planned Parenthood Southeast (PPSE), which currently oversees facilities in the largely pro-life states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi will now be managed by Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, an affiliate based in pro-abortion California that was recently awarded $90M from Governor Gavin Newsom.

Key Takeaways:

• Planned Parenthood Los Angeles will step in to oversee the facilities of Planned Parenthood Southeast following complaints of discrimination against PPSE's interim CEO, Mairo Akposé.

• Akposé is accused of not aligning with the Planned Parenthood "pro-LGBTQIA+ and abortion rights mission."

• She is also accused of discrimination against staff for not referring to the former CEO as "they/them" and using the birth name of a former employee who was secretly transgender.

• The PPSE Board hired a law firm to conduct an independent review, which reportedly found no evidence supporting the claims.

The Backstory:

The story begins when, in early 2026, staffers filed complaints of discrimination against PPSE's interim CEO, Mairo Akposé. Prism Reports identified "a worker-led campaign called Save PPSE," which alleged that PPSE was "under a hostile corporate takeover by leaders [Interim CEO Mairo Akposé] who do not align with the organization’s pro-LGBTQIA+ and abortion rights mission."

TN Repro News reported:

Those sources describe centralized decision-making, sidelined checks, and pressure that they characterize as unsafe and off-mission. They point to Sept. 30, 2025, when PPSE eliminated every Public Policy and Organizing role across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, as the clearest inflection point, capping months of restructuring that thinned education, disrupted grants, and replaced IT/Security leadership...

...An internal email shows a senior vice president asking a PPSE program director whether the affiliate had ever partnered with Students for Life...

A separate report seemed to imply that PPSE’s Executive Director, Karen Rene, held "anti-abortion" sentiments. It stated, "In prior public statements, Rene has described herself as both “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” framing her work around protecting women from coercion — a narrative that anti-abortion politicians and activists have increasingly advanced in recent years.

This led some to speculate that PPSE had been "overthrown by Conservative Leadership."

katie🔮

@katiewampus_

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Replying to @bluestein

Have you seen Planned Parenthood there? Apparently PPSE has been overthrown by conservative leadership? Do you know anything about this?

6:04 PM · Oct 12, 2025

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Pro-life watchdog group Operation Rescue looked into the claims and wrote:

According to former and current PPSE employees, Akposé was considered a disconcerting choice from the start. She reportedly had little to no experience in the abortion industry and — maybe even more alarming to the abortion radicals working at Planned Parenthood — she maintains a social media presence as "The Working Wife," stating she is "a Wife and Mother who happens to work."

It seems serving on the Board of Trustees for Berry College — a school Mother Jones described as “one of the country’s most conservative” — was another strike against her.

Operation Rescue also explained that prior to her promotion to CEO, Akposé was the Human Resources Director, and during that time, PPSE staff member Jessica Swanson said she complained about Akposé's alleged failure to refer to the then-CEO as "they/them" during a meeting, and continually referred to a former employee as their birth name, "out[ing] them as transgender without their consent."

An independent review opened by PPSE and conducted by “a nationally recognized law firm” did not support the accusations, Prism Reports claimed.

A November 2025 Planned Parenthood press release stated in part:

Last month, in response to allegations and political accusations, the PPSE Board quickly retained a nationally recognized law firm to conduct an independent review and formed a special committee of current and former Board members. The investigators interviewed staff and reviewed e-mails, internal memos, strategic plans, accreditation findings, financial statements, patient-volume data, and meeting notes.

The Special Committee invited the individuals who raised the allegations for a conversation, but they declined. The independent investigators found no evidence supporting the claims and determined there was no political infiltration of any kind at PPSE. 

Ahead of that review, in September 2025, Swanson filed a complaint with the EEOC alleging that she "was terminated along with several other members of the policy team, all of whom had challenged what we viewed as the subversion of the Planned Parenthood mission. The stated rationale was 'restructuring' for budgetary reasons: this was false, as PPSE had just hired several new executive positions at a higher salary point than my role..."

In December 2025, Akposé reportedly resigned from the position as CEO, but according to Operation Rescue, "Not all the changes in staffing were reportedly made public."

Operation Rescue added:

Instead, a source told TN Repro News that all staff were asked to sign an Employee Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreement by Monday, January 5. Aside from forcing employees to remain silent on protected information, “whether true or false,” the NDA also “extends confidentiality obligations indefinitely beyond employment.” 

Since that time, all evidence of the “Save PPSE” campaign has been scrubbed from the internet. All posts from its Instagram account have been removed and a petition the campaign circulated on Google Docs is no longer accessible.

What's Happening Now:

In spite of the fact that PPSE oversees Planned Parenthood facilities in the south, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA) allegedly agreed to step in to serve in an “interim leadership capacity” to support PPSE. The goal of PPLA will be to ensure patients have access to birth control, STD testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and abortion.

PPLA is among the Planned Parenthood affiliates in California that was recently granted $90M in state funding after the abortion organization lost its federal Medicaid funding for one year under President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill."

According to the Georgia Recorder:

... Sue Dunlap, who serves as president and CEO of the Los Angeles affiliate, said the organization was proud to work alongside the southeast counterpart, citing a 20-year history of collaboration between the two affiliates.

... [T]he board also announced that the national Planned Parenthood Action Fund would be taking a more active role in the advocacy arm of the organization, which included hiring a Georgia state director who would report to the national organization. 

Although not entirely unique, it is unusual for a PP affiliate to govern in states that are not geographically close.

"It is also not unheard of for Planned Parenthood to combine affiliates across a wide range of states not geographically close to one another. The affiliate Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK) can attest to that," wrote Operation Rescue.

It added, "PPSE is a shrinking affiliate with few locations. In Alabama, there is now only one PPSE location — and it cannot perform abortions. In Mississippi, there are none. Georgia, where PPSE is headquartered, remains the only state where the affiliate can profit from abortion, and only at four locations."

According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, abortion is "banned" or limited in the state facilities that PPSE oversees:

• In Alabama, most preborn children are protected from abortion with few exceptions.

• In Georgia, preborn children are protected from abortion after six weeks.

• In Mississippi, most preborn children are protected from abortion with few exceptions.

The Bottom Line:

PPLA began as a fake church, created by pro-abortion philanthropist Warren Buffett and his partner Charles Munger as a ruse to hide the fact that they wanted to funnel women for illegal abortions before the decriminalization of abortion under Roe v. Wade.

The affiliate has had its own share of scandals, including having to pay out a $6M settlement for a data breach affecting half a million patients, training residents for the Ryan Residency Abortion Training Program, allegations of discrimination, and allegations of a toxic work environment and staff "bullies," among other claims.

In its 2023-24 annual report, PPLA boasted of committing nearly 24,000 abortions that year. It would be naive to expect that with that kind of abortion record, PPLA would not invest in abortion access in the more pro-life states where PPSE operates.