EVANSVILLE — Right to Life of Southwest Indiana responded to Wednesday’s news that Planned Parenthood will close its Evansville location Sept. 4 with more of a forward-looking fundraising appeal than a celebration.
Jeff Ferguson, Right to Life’s executive director, posted a short video on the local anti-abortion group’s website calling the news an answer to prayer and asking supporters to continue funding its work. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood vowed to continue its work by transitioning care to telehealth where possible.
Right to Life annually attracts 2,000 or more supporters to Evansville to attend its annual spring banquet at Old National Events Plaza.
Ferguson thanked Right to Life supporters who have “prayed right outside of Planned Parenthood’s doors.”
“I believe that it is the power of prayer that we are seeing this news become a reality,” he said. “This is a spiritual battle.”
Planned Parenthood does not provide abortions in Evansville or elsewhere in the state. The organization said Wednesday that Evansville residents may still do video visits, as well as access to the Planned Parenthood app to communicate via chat.
According to Planned Parenthood, with video visits patients can still access birth control, emergency contraception, gender-affirming hormone care, HIV services, and pregnancy options counseling through video visits with a doctor.
Explaining the decision to permanently close its Evansville clinic at 125 N. Weinbach Ave. to in-person appointments, Planned Parenthood cited a need to consolidate resources as it faces continued challenges.
Those include “rising costs, low reimbursement rates, the lasting effects of COVID-19, the aftermath of the Dobbs decision and targeted attacks on reproductive health care,” the organization stated.
The Dobbs decision removed access to abortion as a constitutionally protected right. Abortion is mostly illegal in Indiana since an Indiana General Assembly near-ban went into effect in August 2023.
The law prohibits all abortions except in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormalities or where the mother’s life is at risk. In the cases of rape or incest, abortion is allowed up to 10 weeks.
Right to Life’s Ferguson thanked donors Wednesday for funding the anti-abortion group’s work, saying its Go Mobile pregnancy clinic has seen a one-year boost of 23% more patients and a 29% boost in free ultrasounds offered.
“It is more important than ever that we continue to provide life-affirming care to pregnant women in the Tri-State through our Go Mobile clinic,” Ferguson said. “That we continue to provide more resources that educate our students and parents, our families, on the myriad of life issues that they encounter every day — that we continue to increase our financial capacity to make adoption a reality for more Tri-State families through our adoption assistance fund.”
Ferguson pointed out that Planned Parenthood had cited the Dobbs decision, and he celebrated the intent of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to defund Planned Parenthood.
But a judge on Monday temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from stripping Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood after Congress and the president agreed to partially defund the organization through passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Planned Parenthood in Indiana isn’t going anywhere, said Rebecca Gibron, the president and CEO at Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky.
“We are fiercely, fiercely committed to our patients and to our presence in the state of Indiana,” Gibron told Louisville Public Media. “We are working very hard to ensure that we meet the moment of these political attacks, these defunding attacks, because nothing is more important to us than our patients and the care that they need.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Right to Life cites ‘power of prayer’ for Evansville Planned Parenthood closing
Reporting by Thomas B. Langhorne, Evansville Courier & Press / Evansville Courier & Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
