In the midst of an ongoing financial crisis, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) is selling the property of its only installation in Manhattan, a place before which Catholics providates from New York have prayed for years.
Planned Parenthood announced the sale of the building in A statement on Wednesdayexplaining that the organization was “struggling to overcome social and political obstacles, as well as structural challenges within the country’s health system.”
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
The executive director of PPGNY, Wendy Stark, declared that the funds for the sale of the installation in Manhattan will go to “communities systematically unattended, the people who need us most.”
The PPGNY statement described the building as “outdated” and “not designed to meet the medical care needs of the future.”
“A miracle” and “an answer to prayer”
The property located on Bleeker St. will be on the market for 39 million dollars. This occurs while PPGNy works to recover from the deficit of 31 million dollars suffered last year, according to the Gothamist media on Wednesday. The transaction is currently pending state approval.
“If you have spent time outside that Planned Parenthood, you know they are fulfilling our legacy,” he said Thursday to CNA – Ewtn News English Administration– Kathryn Jean López, a veteran provida defender and senior member of the National Review.
“So many black and Hispanic girls enter there to abort. It is simply devastating,” he said. “Planned Parenthood is a particular emblem. It is not a small thing that is closing.”
López commented that he had spent “too much time outside that clinic.” His closure, he said, “it is undoubtedly an answer to prayer and sacrifice, there is no doubt about it.”
For more than a year and a half, López attended almost daily prayer and counseling on the sidewalk of the Manhattan Clinic.
Although he recognized the closure of the building as a milestone for the Movement Provide after decades of prayer, López stressed that the panorama of the abortion industry has changed, with most of the abortions now occurring “in the shadows” through abortive pills such as the Mifepristone.
The meeting spaces between women in pregnancy crisis and the provida movement have become less frequent, said López. However, he added: “I think the current challenge is excellent because it forces us, in all human encounters, to demonstrate what it means to be dedicated to the holiness of human life.”
“Ultimately, that’s what the Movement is about.
Sisters of Life (sisters of life) They told CNA on Thursday that “the announcement of the closing of Planned Parenthood in Manhattan is an incredible response to prayer.”
In their statement, the religious thanked those who organized and participated in the prayer vigils over the years, including Witness for Life (Witnesses for life)a Mass and procession of the Rosary that takes place on the first Saturdays of the month since 2008, as well as the campaign 40 days for lifepresent in Manhattan since 2015.
“Through prayer, the culture of death will be transformed into a culture of life, and we rejoice when we see the fruit of this constant and faithful prayer,” said the sisters.
“We also recognize the providence of God, since the announcement was made in the solemnity of San José and less than a week of the 30th anniversary of the encyclical Life (The Gospel of Life) of San Juan Pablo II, ”they added.
The closure “might seem only one more commercial decision, another victim of the financial crisis in the eyes of the world,” Catholic photographer Joffrey Bruno Bruno in the National Catholic RegisterEwtn News.
But “for those who have kneel on those sidewalks, who have shed their hearts in prayer, this feels like something much deeper: a miracle, a moment when heaven touched the earth and the countless prayers of the faithful were answered.”
Bruno, who has photographed prayer vigils outside the Manhattan clinic for decades, said in the Register that “it seems especially significant that the announcement has been made today, on the feast of San José”, whom he described as the “Guardian of the Sagrada Familia”.
“The battle for life is far from ending; but today there is a reason to celebrate, because this reveals firsthand how God works in ways that we cannot always see,” he wrote.
“And today we have witnessed a flash of this, a proof that, through prayer, trust and love, miracles can … and in fact they occur. And sometimes, they happen in a quiet street in Manhattan.”
PPGNY, who recently closed four clinics while reducing operations throughout the state, maintains three facilities in Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx.
The aborted clinic, which has been in operation since the early 1990s, once brought the name of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. The news of its closure reaches almost five years since the organization decided to eliminate its name from the building due to its “harmful links with the eugenic movement.”
Sanger had a history of speeches in racist and extremist organizations in support of birth control, including the Ku Klux Klan, something that Planned Parenthood recognized in 2016.
Translated and adapted by ACI Press. Originally published in CNA.
Low Elhabbal
Madalaine Elhabbal is a CNA journalist based in the Washington DC office in EWTN. He has published articles in Catholicvote and has also worked as a foreign language assistant in France. She is a graduate of Benedictine College.