Above: Planned Parenthood’s new abortion facility in Southeast Kansas, less than 30 minutes from Missouri and 90 minutes from Arkansas. The center presumably will promote abortion to women from out-of-state.
News reports indicate Planned Parenthood is consolidating its facilities in Missouri.
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, and its regional affiliate Planned Parenthood Great Plains is responsible for its facilities in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas. Now that Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma have generally prohibited abortion except to save the life of the mother, the organization has opened a new abortion facility in southeast Kansas, and it intends to close its facility in Joplin, Missouri — just north of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
The St. Louis Business Journal reports the Joplin facility will close January 1. Planned Parenthood also intends to shutter two facilities in the St. Louis area in November. The organization reportedly will focus on “telehealth services,” and it will refer women to its new abortion facility in southeast Kansas.
Planned Parenthood also maintains abortion facilities in Illinois that can target the St. Louis area. So while the organization may be closing and consolidating facilities in Missouri, it appears Planned Parenthood will continue promoting abortion throughout the region.
All of this underscores what we have said for years: It’s important to prohibit abortion through legislation, but we need to eliminate the demand for abortion as well.
One way Arkansans can do that is by supporting pro-life organizations that empower women with real options besides abortion.
Arkansas is home to more than 60 organizations that assist pregnant women — including some 45 pregnancy resource centers that help women with unplanned pregnancies.
The State of Arkansas recently voted to award $2 million in grants to pregnancy-help organizations for the 2024-2025 budget cycle. That money is going to help a lot of women and children in the coming months — and hopefully it will encourage women not to travel across state lines for abortions.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
Above: Eva Edl was arrested for criminal trespassing during a protest at a surgical abortion facility in Little Rock in 2021. She has since been charged federally for blocking an abortion facility entrance in Michigan (Photo Credit: via Facebook).
89-year-old death camp survivor faces prison time under DOJ’s criminalization of pro-life advocates.
Last month, seven pro-life protestors were convicted of engaging in “civil rights conspiracy” and violating the Clinton-era Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The protesters were arrested in August 2020 after standing in front of an abortion clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Combined, the seven face up to 11 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
One of those who were found guilty is Eva Edl, an 89-year-old widow from South Carolina who survived a death camp in her youth. She first came to the U.S. in 1955 at the age of 20 after fleeing a government-led ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. The target was the Danube Swabians, a German-speaking ethnic group to which her family belonged. As she recounted to the the Daily Signal, Eva’s mom decried the injustice, “We haven’t done anything wrong! Who would harm us?”
When Eva was nine, she, her parents, sister, and brother were rounded up by soldiers, loaded on a cattle car, and taken to an extermination camp. The prisoners were forced to share the same living quarters and one outhouse. Adults were forced to work but also kept on the brink of starvation. One day, while working in the fields, Eva’s mother escaped on a wagon under a pile of grain. She would later come back and help rescue her family.
It was in 1968, after moving to America, that Eva was introduced to the atrocity of abortion. During a discussion in English class, a fellow student declared it should be legalized (this was before Roe v. Wade ruled a constitutional right to abortion). “[A]fter that,” Eva said, “I just brought up the subject all the time because it bothered me that people would actually think of killing their own children.”
In the fall of 1988, 400 protesters were arrested outside of abortion clinics after two months of pro-life protests following the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Eva was shocked by this, but also compelled to do something. Likening abortion clinics to her experience in the death camp, Eva recalled:
When we were rounded up to be killed, we were placed in cattle cars, and our train was headed toward the extermination camp. What if citizens of my country would have overcome their fear, and a number of them stood on those railroad tracks between the gate of the entrance to the death camp and the train? The train would have to stop. And while the guards on those trains would be busy rounding up the ones that were in front of the train, another group could have come in, pried open our cattle car and possibly set us free, but nobody did.
Later that year, Eva joined a peaceful protest in Atlanta and was arrested for the first time. She has now been part of more than 50 “rescues” (what she calls the protests) and has been arrested about as many times.
Having emigrated from the tyranny of post-war, Communist-controlled Yugoslavia, Eva said she never imagined she would be imprisoned for protecting innocent lives here:
America, in my eyes, was this country of justice and opportunity and everything that is good. A beacon for us, over there, that didn’t know what all that meant, because we had nothing but oppression from whoever was ruling us at the time. … [H]uman life is sacred. Government does not have the authority to permit what God forbids. And murder is forbidden by God.
Since Roe was overturned a few years ago, the Department of Justice has indicted 40 pro-life advocates with FACE-related charges. Pray for Eva and protesters across the country who are being persecuted for standing for life.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Hayden. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
Copyright 2024 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.
Above: A Little Rock police officer arrests a pro-lifer for trespassing outside Little Rock Family Planning Services on January 15, 2021.
Last week authorities in Little Rock officially dropped charges against at least four pro-lifers accused of criminal trespassing at a surgical abortion facility in 2021.
On January 15, 2021, Eva Edl of South Carolina; Chet Gallagher of Tennessee; Dennis Green of Virginia; Calvin Zastrow of Michigan; Emily Nurnberg of Kansas; and Heather Iddoni of Michigan were arrested on misdemeanor criminal trespassing for allegedly blocking the entrance to Little Rock Family Planning Services — a now-shuttered surgical abortion facility in Little Rock.
Court records show the pro-lifers were convicted in February of 2022, and each was ordered to pay a $350 fine. However, their attorney appealed the convictions, and the case has languished in court ever since.
On August 20 a federal jury in Michigan found Edl, Gallagher, Iddoni, and Zastrow guilty of Clinic Access Obstruction.
Emily Nurnberg and Dennis Green were not part of that federal case, and court documents in Little Rock show the State of Arkansas may continue prosecuting the two of them for criminal trespassing in Little Rock.
Family Council will continue monitoring and reporting on this case.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
