Planned Parenthood shutters only facility in Manhattan after decades of pro-life prayers

 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 20, 2025 / 15:40 pm (CNA).

Amid an ongoing financial crisis for the organization, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) is selling the property of its only Manhattan facility, a location where New York pro-life Catholics have prayed outside for years.

Planned Parenthood announced the sale of the building in a statement on Wednesday, coming as the company said it was “fighting to overcome social and political obstacles and structural challenges within the country’s health system.”

PPGNY CEO Wendy Stark said funds from the sale of the Manhattan facility would be funneled toward “systemically underserved communities — the people who need us most.”

The PPGNY statement described the building as “outdated” and “not designed to support the health care needs of the future.”

‘A miracle’ and ‘an answer to prayer’

The 26 Bleeker St. location will debut on the market for $39 million. This comes as PPGNY works to recover from the $31 million deficit it incurred from last year, as reported by the Gothamist on Wednesday. The move is currently pending state approval.

“If you’ve spent time outside that Planned Parenthood, you know that they’re fulfilling our legacy,” Kathyrn Jean Lopez, a longtime pro-life advocate and senior fellow and editor at National Review, told CNA on Thursday.

“So many Black and Hispanic girls go in there for abortions. It’s just devastating,” she said. “That particular Planned Parenthood, it’s [a] flagship. It’s no small thing that it’s closing.”

Lopez described herself as having “spent way too much time outside that clinic.” Its closure, she said, “is definitely an answer to prayer and sacrifice, no question about it.”

Lopez spent over a year and a half attending prayer vigils and doing sidewalk counseling outside of the Manhattan clinic almost every day, she said.

While she acknowledged the closure of the building as a milestone for the pro-life movement after decades of prayer, Lopez said the landscape of the abortion industry has shifted, with most abortions taking place “in the shadows” via abortion pills like mifepristone.

The space for encounters between women experiencing crisis pregnancies and the pro-life movement are becoming less frequent, Lopez said. But, she added, “I actually think the challenge right now is an excellent one because it forces us in all human encounters to show what a dedication to the sanctity of human life looks like.”

“Ultimately, that’s what the pro-life movement is about,” she said. “It’s not about debating abortion. It’s about showing people that we love them and their lives are eternally valuable. And they were loved into existence by the creator of the universe, every single one of us.”

The Sisters of Life told CNA on Thursday that “the announcement of the closing of the Planned Parenthood in Manhattan is an incredible answer to prayer.”

The religious sisters in their statement thanked those who organized and participated in prayer vigils throughout the years, including the monthly Witness for Life — a Mass and rosary procession on first Saturdays that has taken place since 2008 — as well as efforts by the 40 Days for Life campaign of prayer and fasting, present in Manhattan since 2015.

“It is through prayer that the culture of death will be transformed into a culture of life, and we rejoice to see the fruit of this constant and faithful prayer,” the sisters said. “We also recognize God’s providence, as the announcement was made on the solemnity of St. Joseph and within a week of the 30th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s landmark encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).”

The closure “might seem like just another business decision, another casualty of financial strain to the outside world,” said Catholic photographer Jeffrey Bruno at the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, on Wednesday.

But “to those who’ve knelt on those sidewalks, who’ve poured out their hearts in prayer, it feels like something far more profound: a miracle — a moment when heaven touched earth and the countless prayers of the faithful were answered.”

Bruno, who has photographed pro-life prayer vigils outside the Manhattan clinic for decades, said at the Register that it “seemed especially fitting that the announcement came today, on the feast of St. Joseph,” whom he described as the “guardian of the Holy Family.”

“The battle for life is far from over; but, today, there’s cause to celebrate, because this reveals firsthand how God works in ways we cannot always see,” he wrote.

“And today, we’ve witnessed a glimpse — proof that, through prayer, trust, and love, miracles can … and do … happen. And sometimes, they happen on a quiet street in Manhattan.”

PPGNY, which recently shut down four clinics as it scales down operations across the state, has three remaining facilities in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

The abortion clinic, which has been around since the early 1990s, once bore the name of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. News of its closure comes just short of five years since the organization opted to remove her name from the facility over her “harmful connections to the eugenics movement.”

Sanger had a history of speaking to racist and extremist organizations in support of birth control — including the Ku Klux Klan — which Planned Parenthood acknowledged in 2016.