Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar speaks during a news briefing on the administration’s response to the coronavirus at the White House in Washington, March 15, 2020. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

More than 50 leaders of national and local pro-life groups in the U.S. have written a letter to Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, asking him to prevent the abortion industry from “compounding one crisis with another.”

The letter focuses primarily on Planned Parenthood, calling it “the largest abortion chain in the nation.” That is correct — Planned Parenthood affiliates operate about 600 facilities across the country and provide about 340,000 abortions annually, somewhere between one-third and half of all the abortions performed in the United States each year.

“By ceasing both surgical and chemical abortions now, Planned Parenthood will free up much needed medical equipment and decrease the demand placed on [emergency rooms] due to complications from both medical and surgical abortion,” the letter states. “This will protect women who will, without doubt, need follow-up care, including infection treatment and transfusions, from the nation’s emergency care centers and hospitals.”

Here’s more from the letter:

While we are in a hectic race to save lives, Planned Parenthood and other powers in the abortion industry remain insistent on taking the lives of innocent unborn children. While surgery centers postpone elective and diagnostic procedures, abortion centers are churning out surgical and chemical abortions and putting women, especially the poor, at risk. Their continued operation depletes sorely needed personal protective equipment and leads to complications that will further overwhelm already overextended emergency rooms.

The letter also notes that, since the coronavirus crisis escalated in the U.S., abortion providers have been using social media to advertise and promote chemical abortions for women who are at home, which will put more women at risk of complications and severe side effects and possibly leave them without necessary follow-up care.

After outlining these facts, pro-life leaders ask Azar to take several steps to limit the damage that abortion providers can do until the crisis has passed, including “ensuring that emergency response funds are not diverted to the abortion industry” and “urging the abortion industry to cease operations and join healthcare providers in donating their [personal protective equipment] and other equipment to coronavirus response.”


Among the leaders who signed the letter are Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, Chuck Donovan of SBA List’s research arm the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Carol Tobias of the National Right to Life Committee, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Lila Rose of Live Action, and Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America.


Read the full letter here.