Wednesday, January 06, 2010
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
Pro-life activists and religious leaders plan a rally near a six-story building that formerly housed a bank. The cash-register-shaped building is being renovated into an abortion facility by Planned Parenthood. (Photo courtesy of The Call to Conscience.)
(CNSNews.com) – A coalition of pro-life advocates and religious leaders plan to gather in Houston on Jan. 18 to oppose what is expected to be the largest abortion clinic in the country.
Planned Parenthood is renovating a former bank, turning it into a 78,000 square foot facility that will include a surgical wing equipped to provide late-term abortions.
“It’s an abortion super center,” Lou Engle, founder of the pro-life group The Call to Conscience, which is organizing the rally, told CNSNews.com.
Joining Engle at the “prayer march” will be Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Religious leaders expected to attend include Bishop Harry Jackson, senior pastor of Hope Christian Church; Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Star Parker, president of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education; and Abby Johnson, the former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Engle compared the fight for the rights of the unborn to another critical movement in America. “As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘It is time to subpoena the conscience of America,’” he said.
Engle said he believes the clinic was strategically located in a part of Houston that is surrounded by black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
“We want to say that it’s not right to have an abortion super center that targets the minority community,” Engle said. He says Planned Parenthood actively markets its services, including abortion, to low-income, minority women.
Last month, Houston elected the first lesbian, Annise Parker, to hold the mayoral office in a major U.S. city. Until her inauguration this week, the director of Health and Environmental Policy for the mayor’s office was Elena Marks, chairwoman of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Attempts to reach Marks for comment on the clinic and the planned rally were unsuccessful.
