Planned Parenthood prepares to close its last two facilities in Louisiana

Louisiana is waving goodbye to abortion corporation Planned Parenthood at the end of September, as the organization is set to pull up stakes and shutter its last two brick-and-mortar facilities there, located in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Key Takeaways:

• Planned Parenthood is set to close its last two brick-and-mortar facilities in Louisiana at the end of September.

• Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's CEO claims this is the fault of "political warfare" by lawmakers who want to control women's bodies, and warned that "every undetected cancer and untreated infection" would be the lawmakers' fault.

• However, Planned Parenthood's health and prevention services have plummeted over the past decades as abortion took greater priority in the organization.

• Louisiana lawmakers have passed several laws to protect women and preborn babies; two recent ones address coerced/forced abortion and abortion pill trafficking.

The Details:

The Blame Game... and the Truth

In a caustic message posted to Instagram on August 5, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast CEO Melaney Linton claimed the coming Louisiana closures were a result of "relentless political assaults" and "political warfare" at the hands of "anti-reproductive health lawmakers obsessed with power and control...."

And she didn't stop there. Linton also claimed that "every undetected cancer and untreated infection is on those lawmakers' hands" because of their "cruelty and failed leadership...."

Linton is either unaware of the following facts, or trusts that the public remains unaware of them:

• An estimated 2% of women of reproductive age seek services from Planned Parenthood in the U.S.

• In just one year, from 2022-23 to 2023-24, Planned Parenthood's overall cancer screenings dropped by 8%. Breast screenings (which don't include mammograms) dropped 10%. Cervical cancer screenings (Pap tests) dropped 12%. STI testing and treatment dropped 11% over this same time frame at Planned Parenthood.

• Over 20 years, total cancer screenings plummeted an astounding 80%, breast care screenings dropped 82%, and cervical cancer screenings dropped 85%. Just 1% of women get Pap tests at Planned Parenthood.

So, while Linton may wish to blame power-hungry lawmakers for more cancer and more STIs, the fact of the matter is that Planned Parenthood made a conscious decision to use abortion as its business model (committing a record-breaking 402,000+ according to its latest annual report) — moving away from health and/or prevention.

As Live Action research fellow Carole Novielli has reported, Louisiana's closures, set to take place after September 30, are not the only ones; Planned Parenthood has been shuttering brick-and-mortar facilities across the country — but it's not doing so because it was defunded by the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" (after all, a judge has blocked Planned Parenthood's defunding from going into effect). These closures were already planned, and are part of the corporation's deliberate decision to focus on its virtual (online) business.

Abortion and Accountability

Louisiana lawmakers had long attempted to hold the abortion industry accountable. As Liberty Counsel stated in a press release:

[Planned Parenthood's] closures also follow sustained legal and financial pressures from the largely pro-life Louisiana executive and legislative branches. In more than 40 years of operation in the state, Planned Parenthood had never been licensed to perform abortions there.

Even though Louisiana legislators banned abortion in nearly all cases with a trigger law that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood still helped provide referrals and travel funding for women to obtain abortions across state lines.

And Planned Parenthood was proud of this.

In fact, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast's annual reports note that it had been paying for Texas and Louisiana women's abortion travel expenses and helping them to obtain abortions out of state beyond 2022.

It claims to have spent $750k on abortion travel for over 1,700 women in 2022-23; this reportedly increased to $1M and more than 3,000 women in 2023-24.

Liberty Counsel detailed Louisiana's efforts to protect pregnant women and their preborn children:

Recently, Louisiana took two more steps to protect pregnant women. After House Bill 575, known as “Justice for Victims of Abortion Drug Dealers Act,” took effect, residents can now sue out-of-state health care professionals who mail abortion-inducing drugs into the state. This can occur even if abortion is legal in the state from where the drugs were mailed.

Also recently taking effect is House Bill 425, which expands the definition of coerced abortion to include the “use or threatened use of force, control, or intimidation.” It is now illegal in Louisiana to compel a pregnant woman to undergo an abortion against her will, regardless of whether the procedure has been attempted or completed.

Reality Check:

These laws are necessary, not 'cruel.' Here's why.

• Coerced/forced abortion is a growing problem, and the abortion pill is playing a significant role. Several cases have come to light in recent years in which men administered easily-obtained abortion drugs to women without those women's knowledge or consent (forced abortions).

• "Shield laws" have also been passed by several pro-abortion states to prevent abortionists in those states from being prosecuted for sending abortion drugs into states where it is illegal. Some states, including Texas, Florida, and Arkansas, have sent cease-and-desist letters and/or added their voices to lawsuits to make it known that this kind of activity cannot continue, and that federal Comstock laws already cite this activity as illegal.

• Safety issues are also a serious consideration. One recent analysis found that nearly 11% of women suffer serious adverse events (such as hemorrhaging, incomplete abortion, sepsis, etc.) after taking the abortion pill; another, from Ireland, found that nearly 12% do.

The Bottom Line:

Imagine what the millions of dollars Planned Parenthood poured into funding abortion travel from Louisiana and Texas could have done to truly support women and their preborn children instead of paying for those children's deaths.

Planned Parenthood may be physically leaving Louisiana, but the abortion industry will stop at nothing to make sure the death toll continues to rise.