Pro-life group celebrates Planned Parenthood's closing of remaining Louisiana facilities: 'Huge success'
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, 40 Days for Life CEO and founder Shawn Carney said the closure of the clinics is a "huge victory" for the entire pro-life movement and his organization, which has prayed and held vigils outside Planned Parenthood facilities for roughly 20 years.
"The only remaining Planned Parenthoods in the state of Louisiana, in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, are closing because they can't do abortions there," Carney said. "Planned Parenthood survives financially on abortions, and they survive financially on the American taxpayer. This is a huge success for the pro-life movement."
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast — which runs six clinics in the Houston, Texas, area and two in Louisiana — announced it will close its Baton Rouge and New Orleans clinics on Sept. 30.
Planned Parenthood previously announced the closure of the Prevention Park and Southwest centers in the Houston area, one of which was the largest abortion facility in the Western Hemisphere. The remaining Houston facilities will be acquired by the organization's largest Texas affiliate.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President Melaney Linton said in a statement that the closures in Louisiana are a "direct result of relentless political assaults."
"This is not a decision we wanted to make; it is one we were forced into by political warfare," she wrote. "Anti-reproductive health lawmakers obsessed with power and control have spent decades fighting the concept that people deserve to control their own bodies."
Linton said "extremist" Republican lawmakers have done everything in their power to defund Planned Parenthood, adding: "Every health center closure, every patient who goes without care, every undetected cancer and untreated infection is on those lawmakers' hands."
Facilities in GOP-led states with abortion restrictions, including Louisiana and Texas, have also been forced to cease the procedures following the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe V. Wade and returned the power to make laws regarding abortion back to the states.
GOP officials in recent years have made repeated attempts to shut down Planned Parenthood, even after nearly all abortions were banned under state law in Louisiana and Texas, as well as other Republican-controlled states.
Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry wrote on X that the Planned Parenthood closures in his state mark a "major win for the pro-life movement" in his state, adding that he has fought to "rid our state of this failed organization" and that abortion "should NEVER be considered healthcare."
The state's Attorney General Liz Murrill, also a Republican, wrote that the Planned Parenthood clinic closures are "welcome news."
"Planned Parenthood built its business around promoting death. Louisiana chooses life. We will always protect women and babies," she wrote.
While Planned Parenthood is not allowed to provide abortion procedures in Louisiana, it has helped women access out-of-state abortions.
Planned Parenthood facilities have been shuttering in various states across the country, including California and New York, where the organization is selling its only Manhattan health center building for $39 million.
"This will be the 40th Planned Parenthood to close in 2025," Carney said. I suspect before September 30, which is the end of their fiscal year, that we will see about 25 to 30 more Planned Parenthoods close, maybe more."
The Trump administration has sought to impose funding cuts to Planned Parenthood that could lead to the closure of additional facilities. A provision in a GOP-backed spending bill would end Medicaid payments for one year to abortion providers that received more than $800,000 from the program in 2023, although that provision is facing legal challenges and has been blocked, at least for now, by a federal judge.
"Planned Parenthood is in the worst shape in their entire history, and they were before the fall of Roe V. Wade and before their defunding," Carney said.
Carney predicted that Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country will continue to merge, just as Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast is set to do. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson recently made a similar prediction in an interview with Fox News Digital.
"The suffering ones, like Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, will end up merging with some of these other affiliates that they used to just compete against for abortion numbers," Carney said. "I think you'll see these closures lead to them not rebuilding, but just going away in some parts of the country and merging with other affiliates throughout the rest of America."
"If they're a nonprofit, they can go out and do what all nonprofits do, what we do and churches do, and that's go out and raise money," he continued. "And if people want to support your mission, they will. You shouldn't be dependent on the federal government, and this just highlighted how dependent they were."
Carney also noted that Planned Parenthood lost 78,000 individual donors last year, emphasizing that the organization is not only at risk of potentially losing public funding.
Addressing Planned Parenthood's claim that abortions make up only 3% of its services, Carney said that is "complete garbage" and pointed to the shuttering of facilities in Republican-controlled states with abortion bans.
"It's like McDonald's saying that only 3% of their business is selling french fries," he said. "If that were true, they wouldn't be closing all these facilities in pro-life states where you can't do abortions. So that's hardly believable anymore in 2025."
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