Birmingham, Alabama Abortion-Free for Now as Planned Parenthood Closes

Birmingham, Alabama is abortion free for now, as the sole abortion clinic there, run by Planned Parenthood, has temporarily closed. If it stays closed this is the second closure of an abortion clinic in 2014.

Local pro-life activist Fr. Terry Gensemer of CEC For Life tells LifeNews that sidewalk counselors report that the facility does not appear to have performed abortions since before Christmas. One counselor confirms that she has only seen a handful of patients show up in the past four weeks, none of which stayed long enough to have an abortion.

“But that’s just the start. On December 30th, after the facility was closed for several days, pro-lifers on the sidewalk witnessed the facility’s director being escorted from the building, followed by a repairman changing all of the locks. Three days later, a sign from Planned Parenthood Southeast (PPS) appeared stating that the facility would be closed until January 6th, 2014. After the 6th, sidewalk counselors say the facility did reopen, but only briefly,” Gensemer explained.

As of Tuesday, PPS posted yet another sign, now reading: “We apologize for the inconvenience, but this facility is temporarily closed.” The PPS website also removed the facility’s hours of operation schedule, as well as adding a note that reads: “Services at our Birmingham health center are temporarily slowed.”Gensemer hopes the closure will be permanent.

He told LifeNews, “This Planned Parenthood should have been closed long before today. It already has a lawsuit pending from a woman left infertile after the abortionist ignored her ectopic pregnancy and performed an abortion on her empty womb. Before that, the facility was caught in a round of scandal for allegedly covering up cases of statutory rape. For the sake of everyone this facility continues to harm, we are praying it remains closed.”

He said if the facility does remain closed, Birmingham will be the largest metropolitan area in the country free of abortion clinics – a prayer that many in the city have waited decades to see answered.

Ed Carrick, Director of Birmingham 40 Days for Life, comments, “We’ve done numerous prayer campaigns outside of this facility. The goal of any 40 Days campaign is to arrive at the start date and have no abortion facility at which to hold your campaign. A final shutdown would not only be an answer to many years of dedicated prayer, it would be a miracle for the city. We give God the glory for every day Birmingham remains free of these clinics.”

The Planned Parenthood website has removed all operating house for the Birmingham abortion facility and has noted the following:

Services at our Birmingham health center are temporarily slowed. Please call (205) 322-2121 for more information about our other locations.

“The term ‘slowed’ to them means ‘stopped’ to everyone else. In typical Planned Parenthood ‘new-speak,’ they just can’t admit they are closed and that their facility director was given the ‘perp walk.’ Obviously there are serious issues at the Birmingham Planned Parenthood and we are grateful for the respite in their grisly abortion business,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “Planned Parenthood organizations around the country have a history of financial malfeasance, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case in Birmingham, given the way the facility director was removed from the building.”

Other troubles have plagued the Birmingham Planned Parenthood abortion business. An incompetent abortion that left a patient unable to bear children and a series of deficiency reports noting conditions and practices that endangered the public prompted Life Legal Defense to file a complaint with the Alabama Department of Public Health in September 2012, on behalf of the CEC for Life, Operation Rescue, and Alabama Physicians for Life.

Operation Rescue also filed a formal complaint against the Birmingham Planned Parenthood’s abortionist, Aqua Don E. Umoren, for incompetence and negligence related to the incompetent abortion, which was done on a woman suffering an ectopic pregnancy that Umoren failed to diagnose with disastrous consequences to the patient. That case remains open.

“We join the CEC for Life and other local groups in praying that the Birmingham Planned Parenthood abortion clinic never reopens,” said Newman. “Its permanent closure would protect the public from suffering further abortion abuses there.”

The Planned Parenthood facility is the second abortion clinic closure in 2014. Earlier this month, the Ft. Wayne Women’s Health Center in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, was the first surgical abortion clinic to officially shut down in 2014, following a record-breaking year where 87 surgical abortion clinics permanently closed.