Planned Parenthood Affiliates Grab Covid-19 Paycheck Funds
One of the provisions of Congress’s huge CARES act for Covid-19 relief was a Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses and non-profits with under 500 employees. It’s a loan, to be forgiven later if certain conditions are met. Since Planned Parenthood (PP) is a large corporation with thousands of employees, it was understood to be ineligible. However, individual regional affiliates reasoned that they were small, applied for loans, and got them –in the range of $80 million between all of them. (PP lost about $60 million when it gave up Title X funds last year.) The Small Business Administration, which administers the loans, has informed the affiliates they’re ineligible and instructed them to return them; several U.S. Senators are calling for an investigation.
We’re keeping track of the impact on our website, Grassroots Defunding: Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood. Because of an upsurge due to Covid-19, we’ve added a page on Temporary Closings, which also includes permanent closings and other impacts during the Covid-19 crisis. We’ve also just added a new list to our Kinds of Facilities page: the PP locations that have state health code violation documents. There are 79 such centers, or about a fifth of those doing abortions (which were the only ones researched).
Democrats for Life Needs Signatories for Open Letter Democrats for Life of America, a member group of the Consistent Life Network, is inviting pro-life clergy and theologians concerned about abortion extremism to sign an open letter to the Democratic Party Platform Committee. You can read a draft here. Current signatories include clergy and bishops from several denominations: Baptist, Catholic, the Church of God in Christ, Nazarene, Lutheran, Methodist, and non-denominational. DFLA is looking for signers of all political affiliations but especially those who are sympathetic to Democratic values or involved in faith-based social justice work. The letter does not identify its signers as Democrats, nor is it intended to do so. The letter and a full list of signatories will be circulated for approval prior to publication. You can sign up directly here or contact Kristen Day at kday@democratsforlife.org with questions or suggestions.
Speakers Bureau - Updated While inviting speakers to live crowds isn’t uppermost in our minds right now, it will hopefully be eventually. Meanwhile, virtual meetings might benefit from our speakers. We’ve recently done a thorough update of our Speakers Bureau page. We encourage you to take a look. Does it give you ideas for good programs?
Our Latest Blog Post
Sarah Terzo tells the tale of Dr. Patti Giebink, who used to do abortions at Planned Parenthood and has now become pro-life: “But I was Empty”: The Story of a Doctor Who Left Planned Parenthood.
U.S. Senator Alan Cranston Rockefeller Commission Report on Population Growth and the American Future, 1972 Section: Separate Statements (where commission participants add their own personal comments) Ours has become an incredibly violent time. Our people are involved in acts of violence both in our streets and in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, all mankind exists under the dark shadow of the strategy of nuclear terror with its threat of sudden death for all of us. Has life ever been held more cheaply? Has there ever been greater indifference to the taking of life? Are we really aware of just how hardened we have become? I wonder if, in this atmosphere, we are capable of making a wise decision on this issue [of abortion] involving our very attitude toward human life. Perhaps we should wait for a more compassionate and less callous time.
Responses/News Tips/Questions to share are all welcome.
Send to weekly@consistent-life.org.
