The Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center for Women abortion facility, which opened in 1975 as one of the first in Pennsylvania, closed this week because of financial troubles. Opened two years after the landmark Roe v. Wade court case legalized unlimited abortion, the Philadelphia facility was often at center-stage in the abortion v. Life debate.
In the end, the Center found that it no longer had a comfortable niche in a marketplace where demand for abortions is down. “The financial situation and the changes in the health-care landscape did what the anti-abortion protesters could never do to us – shut us down,” Jennifer Vriens, executive director of the abortion business, said yesterday.
The facility performed about 1,500 abortions last year.
“Praise the Lord, I can't believe it,” John Stanton, executive director of the Pro-Life Union of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said yesterday. “The fewer sources [of abortion] you have, the less women and babies will be victimized.”
Dorothy Mann, executive director of the Family Planning Council of Philadelphia, said that although there are several other such abortion businesses in the city, the closing of Blackwell “means one less choice, one less option for women. I am concerned that the other providers may or may not be able to pick up the slack. Time will tell.” The Blackwell abortion business catered to young poor women and area abortion advocates worry they won’t find other places to have abortions. “They have been known for years as a place where poor women could get [abortions],” said Tina Johnston, executive director of the Choice Hotline, which offers referrals for abortion. Already some women seeking abortions called the Blackwell facility and got a recording saying the center was closed. Johnston said the Choice Hotline received about 14 calls this week from women looking for referrals.
Dayle Steinberg, president of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, said yesterday that her abortion business was prepared to see additional people. “I am quite confident we will be able to fill the void,” she said.
The Blackwell Center was named for the first female physician in the United States. Ironically, according to Feminists for Life of America, Blackwell was pro-life and would have been devastated to learn her name was used in association with an abortion facility. Feminists for Life quotes Blackwell as saying, “The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation… …[T]hose women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.” Blackwell eventually founded the first all-women hospital in the United States. She exhorted women to understand and revere their bodies — including their ability to grow and nurture “the first faint gleam of life, the life of the embryo, the commencement of human existence.”
According to Vriens, business had been declining over the last several years, and they had built up a deficit of $300,000. The Center, which derived its largest share of revenue from abortions, Vriens said, felt the effects of a downward trend in abortions statewide and nationally. In 2000, there were 33,901 abortions performed in Pennsylvania – down from 47,750 in 1991, according to the state Department of Health. Recently, Planned Parenthood of Bucks County and Planned Parenthood of Chester County began doing abortions, which increased the competition. On Monday, the Blackwell Center's board of directors voted to close the Center and try to find a buyer. “It was medical economics, plain and simple,” Emily Lawrence, chair of the board, said yesterday.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)