Groundbreaking takes
place as pro-lifers protest

  PORTLAND — Although they hoped never to see Planned Parenthood’s building project in northeast Portland go so far as even a groundbreaking, opponents of the abortion facility say they are more resolved than ever to see it never open.
  “We’re still hoping that it won’t even be finished,” said Bill Diss, director of Precious Children of Portland, which protested the Oct. 22 groundbreaking at the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Beech Street.
   Diss said about 200 people showed up to hold signs of protest from behind police blockades at the end of the block. They were countered by those attending the ceremony who held up their own signs that proclaimed their support for legal abortion.
   As reported by The Oregonian, the protest stayed peaceful despite the strong feelings displayed by both sides.
   A primarily Christian group that also has support from some Muslims in that part of northeast Portland, Precious Children of Portland has been protesting Planned Parenthood’s project for about a year and a half.
The Portland Development Commis-sion, the city’s urban renewal agency, voted last year to approve Planned Parenthood’s relocation to the heart of the city’s African-American neighborhood. Commission members said the neighborhood needs the agency’s sex education programs, 140 new jobs and a new building with retail space in an otherwise blighted area.
But opponents have raised strong and sometimes emotional objections to the abortions that Planned Parenthood would perform at the new facility.
Diss, a Portland Public Schools teacher and Beaverton resident, charges Planned Parenthood with showing racism in placing an abortion facility in the heart of the city’s African-American neighborhood. He cites Planned Parenthood statistics that show an African-American woman is four to five times as likely as a white woman to have an abortion. He said Planned Parenthood is moving its headquarters from an area with about 1 percent African-American population to a neighborhood with about 43 percent.
He also notes the massive loss of life because of the agency — 300,000 abortions nationally last year at Planned Parenthood facilities — and also contends that the agency promotes casual sex and promiscuity among teens.
According to The Oregonian, the representatives of Planned Parenthood Columbia-Willamette at the ceremony defended their agency, saying it is bringing a variety of needed sexual and reproductive health care services to the neighborhood.
Beech Street Partners is the general contractor on the three-story, 40,000 square-foot building, which, according to The Oregonian, will include 5,000 square feet of retail space and 7,000 square feet of clinics and regional offices for Planned Parenthood.
Pressure from the abortion opponents caused the original builder, Walsh Construction Co., to pull out of the project earlier this year. Diss said B&G Builders Inc. of Portland is now set to do the construction.
Planned Parenthood announced last month that The Kresge Foundation has made a $750,000 challenge grant toward the capital campaign to build the new facility. With that pledge, the agency has now raised more than $9.4 million toward its $12.5 million goal.
Diss said his group will continue its weekly protests at the site and also will work hard to persuade other local construction companies not to work as subcontractors on the project.
“We will still obviously pray for the conversion of those involved,” he said. “We will keep up the prayers and will certainly inform people.”
The web site for Precious Children of Portland is www.pdxforlife.org.