They Really Want Us to Quit This Work
A few weeks ago, Greater Columbus Right to Life was the first to share the shocking news that Ohio’s first abortion provider had permanently relinquished his medical license. The reasons behind the relinquishment were not clear beyond some vaguely worded content in the action from the Ohio Medical Board document, indicating that he had surrendered his license in lieu of additional investigation into irregularly providing certain drugs to male patients. Subsequent public records requests to the Ohio Medical Board gained no additional clarity beyond the agenda for a quickly-called meeting and the outcome of a vote.
The next day, we were able to share that subsequent to the relinquishment of Mr. Blank’s license, the clinic he co-founded, which has been mired in scandal for years, closed in June of 2018, and reopened in November, had surrendered its license to perform surgical abortions. The clinic is currently open 4-5 days per week providing the abortion pill, and seems to be referring women who are later than ten weeks in pregnancy to clinics in Cleveland or Dayton for surgical procedures.
We’ve continued to pursue the truth of what is going on at this and other clinics as part of our community education program and we regularly maintain information on this and other clinics, but a few days after we exposed Ohio’s first abortion clinic, we learned that someone (or a group of people) really wants us to quit this work.
For the last month, someone has been using the name (or a version of the name), the email, and the phone number of our ED to apply for large numbers of “contact requests” from career and technical schools, multi-level marketing sales opportunities, jobs, “adult novelty” catalogs, non-mainstream religions, and more. It resulted in a large number of phone calls, emails, and texts in an effort to disrupt our office activities. It appears that these folks really, really, really want us to be doing something different – anything different. It lead us to ask why it is that the response of abortion supporters, when confronted by the bad actions and bad actors of their industry, is to result to this kind of behavior rather than denounce the bad behavior of their cohort. While it was a minor inconvenience to us, it was also a disrespectful waste of the time of the people who reached out to us in response to their false request – some of whom worked on commission or with pay based on success/fail rates – people who were just trying to do their jobs. Not surprising, more than a few of them were happy to share with us the information (like ISP address from the original contact) gathered when the form was submitted, information that we could provide to law enforcement.
If anything, this activity has more firmly cemented our resolve to continue advocating for the unborn, the weak, and the infirm. We need to continue steadily proclaiming the dignity of the unborn while also peeling back the veil that enshrouds abortion as being good and necessary for the advancement of women.
So our resolution is that in 2019 we are not going to stop pressing forward in defense of human life, and we are going to continue from every angle we can.
But, we need a little help from you. Can you make a donation that is postmarked today or completed online tonight by midnight to help us end 2018 in a strong position? Or, can you make a donation in early 2019 to jump-start our efforts? Can you resolve to volunteer to pray outside a clinic with us for just one shift a month, or help us to lead the 40 Days for Life efforts at your church? Would you like to bring the Memorial of the Unborn display to your church or school? Can you pray for our leaders and volunteers? Because we can only be “all in” if you are!
Happy New Year, and may 2019 be blessed beyond measure.