Harassment cited at other center not seen in Merrillville
Leader ‘angry’ about alleged intimidation that led to closure of Fort Wayne facility
A Planned Parenthood location in Merrillville hasn’t experienced the same level of harassment the organization cited for closing another Indiana branch this month, officials said.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, or PPINK , announced Monday it was “forced to close the Fort Wayne health center because of intimidation and harassment of
PPINK patients, providers and supporters led by Allen County Right to Life in the Fort Wayne community,” a news release states.
The Fort Wayne facility did not perform abortion procedures but was a provider for birth control options, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and early diagnosis of cervical, testicular and breast cancer, said Christie Gillespie, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.
Gillespi e said she ’s “pretty angry” about the alleged intimidation and harassment that led to the closure, which she said goes far beyond picketing outside the health care center.
“I am putting Allen County Right to Life, and all anti-women’s groups, on notice: You have intimidated and harassed us for the last time in this community,” Gillespie said in her statement. “We will be back, stronger than ever before.” The Merrillville center, which does provide abortion services, regularly has protesters outside but has not had the same level of issues as Fo r t Wayne, Gillespie said. Since the beginning of the year, the Merrillville Police Department has recorded two ambulance calls and five calls for domestic disturbances at the location, Chief Joseph Petruch said.
Planned Parenthood provided copies of a mailer it said was sent to Fort Wayne neighborhoods that included the name, photograph and home address of a Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner, with the message,“there are killers among us.”
The group responsible for the mailers, Created
Equal of Ohio, also sent the woman a letter saying it had “launched a campaign to expose the role you” play in enabling abortions, Planned Parenthood said. That letter said the nurse counsels women to get an abortion at larger Planned Parenthood facilities and said the campaign against her would stop if she quit her job.
Gillespie said the Fort Wayne health center, which had four employees, saw 1,500 unique patients during the past fiscal year — about half of the nearly 3,000 patients it had two years ago. She said the numbers have fallen due to the harassment of staff and the difficulty of recruiting providers to work there.
“This has nothing to do with demand or finances,” she told the Journal Gazette. “Our closing is solely because of intimidation and harassment of patients, supporters and providers.”
“We’ve had providers that have been told that their life would be unlivable in Fort Wayne if they worked for us,” Gillespie said. “This is not how decent and compassionate people behave.”
Cathie Humbarger, the executive director of Allen County Right to Life, told WANE-TV the group doesn’t “practice or condone intimidation.”
But Humbarger and Indiana Right to Life CEO and President Mike Fichter said in a joint statement that they were “pleased” by the center’s closure, attributing it to a dwindling customer base and what they called the center’s growing unpopularity in the Fort Wayne area.
“Planned Parenthood’s accusation that intimidation by Right to Life led to this closure is simply untrue and smacks of an attempt by Planned Parenthood to turn its business woes into a fundraiser,” Humbarger and Fichter said in their statement.
Al Raffin, president of Porter County Right to Life, said he’s participated in prayers outside the Merrillville center, and other people do sidewalk counseling to try to talk to people about other available options.
“Abortion is the taking of an innocent life, and we’re out there because it ’s wrong,” Raffin said. “We don’t believe in doing harm to anybody. We don’t believe that we should be intimidating anyone.”
Raffin hasn’t seen any of what was described in Fort Wayne but said, “People will continue to exercise their free speech rights as long as that clinic is open in hopes that one day that clinic, too, will close.”
Julie Storbeck, president of the Northwest Indiana chapter for the National Organization for Women, said she and others with NWI NOW are proud to be patient e s c o r t s wi t h Planned Parenthood.
“The closure of (the Fort Wayne Clinic) due to this harassment and intimidation by extremists just shows, first of all, that our current laws do not go far enough to protect patients and staff,” Storbeck said.
“And second, the fact that (the Fort Wayne clinic) did not even provide abortion services on-site just drives home the point that these people do not care about women’s health.”
Storbeck said she’s encouraged by Planned Parenthood’s commitment to provide health services, including helping women carry babies to term.
“Planned Parenthood stands for women. Planned Parenthood stands for men. Planned Parenthood stands for people who have nowhere else to go without question, without judgment,” Storbeck said.
Planned Parenthood trains its employees on how to deal with different situations to ensure safety and privacy of patients and staff, Gillespie said.
“We make sure that anything we can do to shield our patients from any interference of accessing our health care is done,” Gillespie said. That can be done through landscaping choices, parking space placement or with a portico, she said.
Petruch said his officers continue to work off-duty security jobs at the Merrillville location.
“I can say that law enforcement, Merrillville Police Department included, have always been responsive when we need them,” Gillespie said. “We have a good relationship with them. They respond just like they would to any other business.”
Gillespie assured Merrillville patients that “our doors stay open, no matter what.”
“We will be in Merrillville to provide high-quality health care to them,” Gillespie said.
The Associated Press contributed.