Officials with the far-left, pro-abortion organization Planned Parenthood have announced that the national office will be firing dozens of employees and restructuring their operations, one year after a Supreme Court ruling forever changed abortion policy in the United States.
According to NPR, union officials speaking on behalf of Planned Parenthood staffers say that they have been told to prepare for layoffs of anywhere between 10 and 20 percent of the national organization, which amounts to roughly 80 people. In a statement by Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization claimed that it would simply “reimagine” its national operations, including an investment of $70 million in various affiliates.
Union representatives from Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco, however, released a joint letter condemning the decision, claiming that the move would be “pushing out some of our movement’s brightest minds.”
“This comes at a time where reproductive freedom is in jeopardy and when our members are struggling under difficult economic conditions,” the letter added.
For decades, Planned Parenthood was widely seen as the top abortion provider in the United States, with employees and activists turning it into a symbol of the pro-abortion movement. In June of last year, the Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ultimately ended the precedent of abortion being a nationwide “right” and instead referred the matter back to the states to be decided on an individual basis. The ruling overturned two previous cases that had set the initial precedent claiming there was a constitutional “right” to have an abortion: 1973’s Roe v. Wade and 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
“Without question, the world we are living in right now — the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the loss of abortion access, the weaponization of our courts and attacks on our democracy, the criminalization of providers and patients, and rampant misinformation — is vastly different than just a decade ago,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, in a statement. “Planned Parenthood must change too.”