‘Major win for pro-life movement’: Planned Parenthood set to shutter Louisiana clinics

Pro-lifers are celebrating a “major win” after Planned Parenthood announced it will shutter its Louisiana facilities and close up shop in the state next month.

The organization says it will close its clinics Sept. 30 in Baton Rouge and New Orleans – the only two in the state – amid the federal government’s move to stop fueling the abortion giant with taxpayer funds. 

“Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry are leaving Louisiana,” Louisiana Right to Life executive director Benjamin Clapper said in a statement. “But the pro-life movement is here to stay. We will always love and serve both mom and baby.” 

Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report notes it performed more than 400,000 abortions nationwide in the past year. It has spent more than $1 million transporting women from Texas and Louisiana, which have laws protecting unborn babies, to states that allow abortions. 

“Planned Parenthood is a national abortion business that has long sought to bring its abortion agenda to Louisiana,” Clapper said, adding that the group has always been about “abortion and their profit margins” rather than women’s healthcare. 

“Planned Parenthood could easily remain in Louisiana to provide healthcare to women if it just chose to stop performing abortions. But their focus is always more abortion.” 

Planned Parenthood claims the two closures 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,” the president of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melaney Linton, announced in a statement on social media. 

Linton said more clinics are likely to close across the country amid pushback from Congress and the Trump administration.  

“We are not the first Planned Parenthood affiliate to face this reality, and we will not be the last. As many as 200 health centers across the country are at risk of closure if the attempt to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood by the Trump administration and its backers in Congress is successful.”  

As Planned Parenthood is shutting down clinics, a wider dispute over abortion is underway nationally, as states are navigating varying abortion laws three years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

As some Democrat-led states have loosened abortion restrictions and are shielding healthcare providers who provide abortion drugs across state lines, Louisiana state officials are doubling down on protecting life. 

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called the Planned Parenthood closures in her state “welcome news.”  

“Planned Parenthood built its business around promoting death,” she said. “Louisiana chooses life. We will always protect women and babies.” 

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry also chimed in with a statement on X calling the clinic closures a “major win for the pro-life movement. … Abortion should NEVER be considered healthcare.”