The protests by local pro-life advocates against Planned Parenthood’s attempt to open a new facility in Redwood City, California have been successful so far in preventing the abortion business form starting up.
The new center will not do surgical abortions but will do abortions with the dangerous abortion drug that has killed dozens of women worldwide, 14 in the United States (including one woman in San Francisco), and has injured at least 2,200 women in the United Sates alone as of April 2011 FDA figures. Pro-life advocates in the Bay Area area are working to stop the Planned Parenthood abortion business from opening up a new center and a dispute over parking is working so far.
Redwood City officials have already signed off on the new center, but the city’s planning department sent a letter in July saying it has amended the permit issued allowing it to open the abortion business at 2890 El Camino Real. Planned Parenthood had initially obtained an agreement from the Enterprise Rent-A-Car company across the street for it to provide the center with the additional parking necessary to meet city requirements as the location only has 18 of the 27 spaces the city requires for the facility.
However, Enterprise is backing down thanks to a local protest organized by pro-life advocate Ross Foti, who says he and other pro-life residents informed Enterprise they would picket the company if it provided the spaces to Planned Parenthood.
With Enterprise backing out, Planned Parenthood is still having problems getting the last 9 spaces it needs to qualify for the permit and Foti tells the San Jose Mercury News that he and other local pro-life advocates will keep up the pressure on neighboring businesses to prevent Planned Parenthood from using their parking lots to open the abortion business.
“No other business will even think about it, they know we’ll protest,” Foti said. “I know I will be there.”
Planned Parenthood may have no other option than to force Enterprise to honor the agreement it signed and its lawyer, W. Russell Davis, said Planned Parenthood “believes the license agreement with Enterprise is enforceable.” If it can’t get Enterprise to honor the agreement — that its officials say was only signed by one person and not the two that it requires on all such agreements to make it binding under company policy — Davis tells the newspaper that Planned Parenthood “is attempting to locate an alternate site for off-site parking that would satisfy the city’s requirements.”
Any parking spaces Planned Parenthood uses must be within 300 yards of the clinic — three football fields away.
Meanwhile, City Zoning Administrator Blake Lyon could not provide a timeline for when Planned Parenthood would have to secure the spaces needed to open up shop and pro-life advocates have, along with some local residents and business owners, appeared the approval of Planned Parenthood’s use permit — making it so a court battle is a potential.
The opening of the new center follows the closing of a San Francisco area chain of abortion centers that lost its Planned Parenthood affiliation after the disclosure of massive financial problems.
Planned Parenthood Golden Gate was dropped as an affiliate of the national abortion business following allegedly massive financial mismanagement. Responding to the decision, the California abortion business changed its name to Golden Gate Community Health and fired CEO Dian Harrison.
Harrison filed a lawsuit for more than $180,000 in severance in December which came as the abortion business was struggling to stay open.
Satellite centers in San Rafael, Oakland, Hayward and San Mateo closed as well as San Francisco locations.
Golden Gate Community Health had been in operating since 1923 and did thousands of abortions annually until, in 2008-2009, it lost more than $2.8 million and lost $536,000 in 2010.
The problems were so pervasive at GGCH that it faces an audit from the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service. The New York Times released a new report in September detailing how an unnamed former employee interviewed with the Oakland field office of the IRS.
ACTION: Contact Enteprise in Redwood City at (650) 261-9308 and tell them to not allow Planned Parenthood to use its parking spaces.
