CHARLOTTE — Several hundred people came to protest outside the four Planned Parenthood facilities located in western North Carolina Aug. 22 – part of a nationwide "Protest Planned Parenthood" rally calling for an end to support for the nation's largest abortion provider.
Anti-abortion protesters prayed, gave speeches and held signs Saturday outside Raleigh-based Planned Parenthood South Atlantic's branches in Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro and Winston-Salem. Nationwide, more than 300 protests were scheduled that day.
Planned Parenthood has come under fire recently with the release of undercover videos showing their officials describing the harvesting and sale at their clinics of body parts from aborted babies – some purportedly born alive. Seven videos released so far by the California-based Center for Medical Progress have provoked scrutiny from state and federal leaders, and five states to date have moved to withdraw Medicaid funding from their local Planned Parenthood branches.
South Carolina has announced an investigation of its Planned Parenthood locations, but North Carolina has not.
Planned Parenthood performed 327,653 abortions in 2013 – one-third of all abortions in the U.S. that year – according to its latest annual report. At Planned Parenthood South Atlantic's nine North Carolina locations, six including Charlotte do abortion referrals and three – Asheville, Wilmington and Winston-Salem – perform abortions. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic bills itself as "one of the region's largest Planned Parenthood affiliates," with 15 locations spanning North and South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
In Asheville – Planned Parenthood's newest North Carolina location – more than 200 anti-abortion protestors and a handful of Planned Parenthood supporters staged opposing rallies along McDowell Street on Saturday. More than two dozen anti-abortion protestors also held a "Honk for Life" rally on Friday.
"The event was peaceful, but not necessarily quiet," said Meredith Hunt, one of the organizers. Hunt and others have kept up a steady prayer vigil outside the Planned Parenthood facility since it was first under construction last year. The location opened in January, and in April it began performing abortions.
In Greensboro, organizers counted more than 185 people at their rally outside Planned Parenthood's Battleground Avenue location on Saturday.
"The protest went well, and I was amazed at the turnout," said one of the organizers, Robert Bauer, in an email afterwards. "This from less than a week's notice. Many only heard about it in the last two days. Praise God!"
About 300 people came out to the Winston-Salem rally, organizers reported.
The largest turnout of all of Saturday's rallies was at Planned Parenthood's Charlotte Health Center, where Cities4Life organizers said they counted more than 1,000 protestors. Following the two-hour protest, approximately 100 people went to pray and protest outside Charlotte's busiest abortion mill, A Preferred Women's Health Center on Latrobe Drive.
Protestors called for people to sign petitions to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood and to spur investigations of its fetal tissue harvesting practices. They also encouraged more participation in regular prayer vigils held nearly every day outside the abortion facilities in each city, and for more support of crisis pregnancy services to help abortion-minded women be able to choose life.
The Aug. 22 protests were coordinated nationally by the Columbus, Ohio-based group "Created Equal," as well as the Pro-Life Action League, Citizens for a Pro-life Society and 40 Days for Life.
A week earlier, an estimated 400 people also packed the sidewalk along Albemarle Road in front of Planned Parenthood's Charlotte location. That rally was organized by a new network of pro-life groups in the Charlotte area – the Catholic Pro-Life Action Network of Charlotte.
— Catholic News Herald. Photos provided.