Shawn Carney, CEO and founder of 40 Days for Life, stated the closure of more Planned Parenthood facilities is a "huge victory" for the pro-life movement. (Fox News Digital/Landon Mion)
Planned Parenthood previously announced the closure of the Prevention Park and Southwest centers in the Houston area, one of which was the largest abortion facility in the Western Hemisphere. The remaining Houston facilities will be acquired by the organization's largest Texas affiliate.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President Melaney Linton said in a statement that the closures in Louisiana are a "direct result of relentless political assaults."
"This is not a decision we wanted to make; it is one we were forced into by political warfare," she wrote. "Anti-reproductive health lawmakers obsessed with power and control have spent decades fighting the concept that people deserve to control their own bodies."
Linton said "extremist" Republican lawmakers have done everything in their power to defund Planned Parenthood, adding: "Every health center closure, every patient who goes without care, every undetected cancer and untreated infection is on those lawmakers’ hands."
Facilities in GOP-led states with abortion restrictions, including Louisiana and Texas, have also been forced to cease the procedures following the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe V. Wade and returned the power to make laws regarding abortion back to the states.
GOP officials in recent years have made repeated attempts to shut down Planned Parenthood, even after nearly all abortions were banned under state law in Louisiana and Texas, as well as other Republican-controlled states.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast announced it will close its Baton Rouge and New Orleans clinics on Sept. 30. (Getty Images)
The Trump administration has sought to impose funding cuts to Planned Parenthood that could lead to the closure of additional facilities. A provision in a GOP-backed spending bill would end Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from the program in 2023, although that provision is facing legal challenges and has been blocked, at least for now, by a federal judge.
"Planned Parenthood is in the worst shape in their entire history, and they were before the fall of Roe V. Wade and before their defunding," Carney said.
Carney predicted that Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country will continue to merge, just as Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is set to do. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson recently made a similar prediction in an interview with Fox News Digital.
"The suffering ones, like Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, will end up merging with some of these other affiliates that they used to just compete against for abortion numbers," Carney said. "I think you'll see these closures lead to them not rebuilding, but just going away in some parts of the country and merging with other affiliates throughout the rest of America."
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President Melaney Linton said the closures in Louisiana are a "direct result of relentless political assaults." (Getty Images)
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"If they're a nonprofit, they can go out and do what all nonprofits do, what we do and churches do, and that's go out and raise money," he continued. "And if people want to support your mission, they will. You shouldn't be dependent on the federal government, and this just highlighted how dependent they were."
Carney also noted that Planned Parenthood lost 78,000 individual donors last year, emphasizing that the organization is not only at risk of potentially losing public funding.
Addressing Planned Parenthood's claim that abortions make up only 3% of its services, Carney said that is "complete garbage" and pointed to the shuttering of facilities in Republican-controlled states with abortion bans.
"It's like McDonald's saying that only 3% of their business is selling french fries," he said. "If that were true, they wouldn't be closing all these facilities in pro-life states where you can't do abortions. So that's hardly believable anymore in 2025."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pro-life-group-celebrates-planned-parenthoods-closing-remaining-louisiana-facilities-huge-success