The tenacity of grassroots pro-life advocacy in Upstate New York resulted in a local group keeping a Planned Parenthood facility out of its community.
Brighton Residents Against Violence to Everyone (BRAVE) was successful in stopping the construction of a 6,500 sq. foot Planned Parenthood abortion center at a medical park in Brighton, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. With the support of Reprotection, a women’s advocacy organization served by legal non-profit Thomas More Society, BRAVE was victorious in preventing the construction of the abortion facility.
Carol Crossed is one of the dozens of BRAVE members who spoke in opposition to the abortion facility in one of many appearances before Brighton Planning Board and Brighton Town Board meetings over a seven-month period.
“Planned Parenthood miscalculated the people of Brighton, whose justice concerns are expansive,” Crossed said. “We will not lower ourselves to the standards of Planned Parenthood.”
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Missy Martinez-Stone, CEO of Reprotection, said, “The Reprotection team congratulates the activists in Brighton on their victory and we look forward to taking this precedent-setting lawsuit to other cities and towns across the country.”
BRAVE focused on the negative impact that a Planned Parenthood abortion facility would have on the community, noted Tom Olp, Thomas More Society vice president and senior counsel, and took these concerns to the town’s planning board, the existing medical facilities in Westfall Medical Park, and area residents. When the Planned Parenthood site plan approval was granted without consideration of those concerns, BRAVE filed suit.
“By tying these concerns together,” Olp said, “the group’s attorney filed a proceeding in late August 2021 against the Brighton Planning Board and the applicant, challenging the approval of the project. The lawsuit focused on the site plan approval process itself, including the lack of a meaningful review by the Planning Board of the many issues that an abortion clinic can bring to a neighborhood community.”
The Town of Brighton notified BRAVE via email on Jan. 10, 2022, that its attorneys had, “received confirmation that Planned Parenthood terminated its lease with Westfall Medical Realty and will not occupy the South Clinton Avenue, Brighton, premises.”
A Jan. 22 letter from the realty company confirmed abandonment of the site plan approval.
Planned Parenthood is now in a temporary location and will be moving elsewhere.
BRAVE’s suit against the site plan approval process inquired into whether surgical facilities are permitted according to local zoning laws, waste disposal plans, and the impact of an abortion facility on the character of the community. Because BRAVE had sued over the site plan approval and not the lease, the group’s legal counsel demanded proof that the site plan approval was being abandoned and declared a null before withdrawing the suit.
This was part of a larger, grassroots effort to make residents’ voices heard. In addition to the legal actions, residents attended various town council and planning board meetings to voice their objections.
Since June 2021 BRAVE members have participated in 14 Brighton Town Board and Planning Board meetings, comprising seven-plus months of consecutive meetings with none missed, totaling 127 presentations opposing the proposed Brighton Planned Parenthood, with an average of eight presenters at each meeting, and as many as 25 presenters at one meeting, with 62 pro-life presenters in all who spoke at the meetings.
Each presentation had crucial facts about Planned Parenthood as an organization, the harm of abortion, and Planned Parenthood is not desired in the Brighton community, according to BRAVE. Videos of the meetings are available on the BRAVE website.
Ben Chernjavsky of Students for Life was one of the 62 pro-life advocates who made a statement before the Planning Board.
“We can do a lot better than an abortion mill,” he said.
Chernjavsky reported that their group also participated in six weekends of neighborhood door-knocking campaigns in Brighton.
BRAVE also organized efforts to inform the over 80 doctors who had offices in Westfall Medical Park.
Among the physicians’ concerns were the environmental impact, traffic flow and on-going demonstrations from local pro-life groups, which triggers Planned Parenthood to call police, the lack of ambulance access, and the possible presence of sex traffickers in the neighborhood.
Details of some of the incidents when Planned Parenthood staff called police in response to pro-life advocates at the temporary abortion center location were part of an April 2021 legal claim local pro-life group Love Will End Abortion had filed against the city of Rochester.
“Planned Parenthood does not like their business disrupted, and so they frequently call the police,” said Ellen Duncan, a member of Love Will End Abortion. “It makes sense that other medical personnel in Westfall Medical Park do not want that kind of chaos.”
The lawsuit questioned the possible adverse effect on Brighton’s wastewater treatment systems. BRAVE highlighted this concern due to a newly adopted constitutional amendment guaranteeing every citizen the right to clean water.
Reprotection had provided information about Environmental Protection Agency regulations as they relate to Planned Parenthood’s increasing promotion of chemical abortion pills.
“If you are concerned about your water quality—are the sewer systems prepared for human remains?” Martinez-Stone told Pregnancy Help News.
“How are we treating this medical waste?” she asked. “If you have an abortion facility opening in your district and only doing chemical abortions, it effects your sewer system.”
“That is something that Reprotection has been wanting to address,” she added.
Martinez-Stone noted that Planned Parenthood has lacked oversight especially in states where the deregulation of these facilities has dropped standards below those of dental offices or even nail salons.
“Regulations for buildings apply to everybody,” she said. “We are asking the town and the county to have the conversation about the impact of chemical abortions on water and sewer systems.”
“The grassroots organization, BRAVE, was incredible,” said Martinez-Stone. “Since this was in a medical park, surrounded by other medical practices, they went to those doctors and asked questions like, ‘Do you want to be next to a medical facility not practicing standards of care that you follow?’”
Olp commended BRAVE’s holistic approach to the litigation, the extensive campaign of appearances before the Brighton Planning Board and other town meetings, the letters to the medical park’s doctors, studies on implications for the area’s law enforcement operations and traffic, and the six weekends of neighborhood door-knocking campaigns.
The BRAVE effort is the second time the group has stood up against a proposed abortion facility building project, proving that persistence pays off, as its previous resistance endeavor lasted from 1999 to 2002.
