© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com | Posted: October 2,
2007
The
mayor of Aurora, Ill., has concluded that there's no legal reason to keep a
new $7.5 million Planned Parenthood mega-clinic abortion facility closed,
after an investigation into deceptions by the abortion provider during the
permitting and construction process.
However, members of city's board of aldermen say they will raise the
issue again, because the corporation was not up-front in its dealings with
the city.
Aurora is where city officials ordered the Planned Parenthood abortion
mega-clinic to remain closed while they investigated the impacts of
deceptive statements Planned Parenthood provided to city officials during
its project process.
Mayor Tom Weisner said although the company was not "forthright," there
were no legal grounds on which to prevent the mega-clinic's ultimate
opening.
(Story continues below)
Alderman Rick Lawrence, however, said the mayor was making a unilateral
decision that was inappropriate, since the city council found out just as
the major was making the announcement what he had decided.
Lawrence said he and other aldermen are going to try to raise the issue
at their next city council meeting, even though it is not on the agenda.
"They need a total of three, and he thinks they can do that," reported
Jill Stanek, who also is a
columnist
for WND.
"Lawrence said they were supposed to have a discussion before a decision
was made, which did not happen. This is a matter that all the elected
officials were supposed to be involved in, not just one," she reported.
Her report also confirmed that a lawsuit is expected to be filed almost
immediately against the clinic's opening, based on the issue of the
building's permits.
The 22,000-square-foot facility was supposed to open in September, but
city officials delayed that when it was revealed that Planned Parenthood
willfully concealed its intentions for the building from local residents and
officials.
After admitting the project was sought under the corporate name of Gemini
Office Development in order to hide its identity from pro-life protesters,
Planned Parenthood officials said there was no intent to mislead or defraud.
"Over the last few weeks, the city of Aurora has been inundated with
thousands of phone calls, letters and requests from people who feel
passionately on both sides of the abortion issue," Weisner announced. "As
elected officials, we however are sworn to uphold the law regardless of our
personal, emotional or even religious beliefs."
As WND
reported earlier, any lawsuit over the clinic's opening would be the
second in the situation.
Officials earlier said they planned a libel action against Planned
Parenthood and its Chicago executive for publicly accusing peaceful pro-life
activists of having a record of advocating violence.
The lawsuit was announced by the
Thomas More Society of Chicago, whose chief counsel, Tom Brejcha,
told WND the action is on behalf of pro-life protesters who are opposing the
opening of a mega-clinic abortion facility in suburban Aurora.
Stanek's
blog said Aurora residents who took part in a 40-day prayer vigil
over Planned Parenthood's plans to open the mega-clinic will be listed as
plaintiffs.
Stanek reports that the lawsuit comes in response to a Sept. 4
letter by Chicago Planned Parenthood executive Steve Trombley to aldermen in
Aurora, a letter he also sent to the Aurora Beacon newspaper.
In that document, he said "those who oppose" the mega-clinic have a
"well-documented history of advocating violence against both persons and
property."
The letter was an attempt to persuade city officials to grant a permanent
certificate of occupancy for the mega-clinic, despite the fact Planned
Parenthood deceived city officials during the process of obtaining zoning
and building permits.
"Does it truly come as a surprise, then, that as we complied with all
legal and public disclosure requirements, we simultaneously sought to keep
this private while the construction was proceeding because the zealots who
have been opposing our new facility have a well-documented history of
violence and criminal activity?" the letter said.
"That's an outright smear," Brejcha told WND.
He said such claims apparently stemmed from an old court case against
pro-life activist Joseph Scheidler and the Pro-Life Action League, who were
targeted earlier in a lawsuit by the National Organization for Women on
behalf of abortion clinics nationwide.
But any accusation in that case later was turned into a "legal nullity,"
Brejcha said, by the Supreme Court's decisions to reject the claims on votes
of 8-1, and 8-0.
As WND
reported, Brejcha earlier demanded a retraction from Planned
Parenthood and Trombley. Instead Trombley repeated them.
"He stood up 5 feet away from me in the lobby of the federal building and
repeated these outrageous lies," Brejcha said.
Trombley had been citing conclusions from midway through the NOW case
brought against Joseph Scheidler and others. It essentially accused
pro-lifers of using organization crime tactics to attack abortion clinics.
But those are the decisions that the U.S. Supreme Court earlier rejected
– multiple times. Brejcha said Trombley followed up by making the same
claims in a full page ad in the newspaper.
Trombley's letter went to all 12 Aurora aldermen and Mayor Tom
Weisner.
After making the general accusation, it continued: "We think you will
understand the urgency of our concerns when you consider the following facts
about the Pro-Life Action League and its leader, Joe Scheidler."
Trombley's letter then listed the following:
- "Scheidler (along with a handful of other anti-abortion leaders)
formed PLAN – the Pro Life Action Network. Scheidler called PLAN the
'pro-life mafia' and proclaimed 'a year of pain and fear' for anyone
seeking or providing abortion.
- "After a six-week trial in 1998, a jury in Chicago unanimously found
that the Pro-Life Action League Network orchestrated 121 crimes
involving acts of threats of force or violence against women's health
facilities that offered abortion. These crimes proven at trial included
beating a post-operative ovarian surgery patient over the head with a
sign, knocking her unconscious and causing her to bleed from the sutures
in her abdomen; seizing a clinic administrator by the throat, choking
and bruising her; and slamming a clinic staff member and volunteer
against the stairs (sending them to a hospital and causing permanent
injuries) and destroying medications and equipment. Joe Scheidler
personally praised the individuals who carried out some of these
misdeeds, even taking credit for them...."
"Oh my, if that doesn't scream libel lawsuit, I don't know what does,"
Stanek wrote on her blog. "Here, Trombley unmistakably accused Scheidler and
PLAL of commandeering violence."
WND
reported in 2006 that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled for the third
time in favor of pro-life activists who were sued by NOW over their
aggressive demonstrations at abortion clinics under the federal RICO
organized crime statute.
In 2003,
WND reported NOW had lost its second round in the Supreme Court in a
decisive 8-1 ruling. The feminist group charged that protests organized by
Scheidler's Chicago-based
Pro-Life Action League amounted to extortion under RICO.
Brejcha's response was immediate: "We are writing you, on behalf of our
clients, to demand a prompt and public retraction of false, libelous and
malicious statements in your letter, dated September 4, 2007, to the mayor
and aldermen of the City of Aurora ('letter'), and also in recent newspaper
ads," he wrote.
"Specifically, you falsely stated in your letter that those 'opposing
[your] new facility [who] are headquartered in Aurora ... have a
well-documented history of advocating violence against both persons and
property as well as other related criminal activity' (letter, p. 1). You go
on to assert, also falsely, that 'the zealots who have been opposing our new
facility have a well-documented history of violence and criminal activity'
(id., p. 3)," the letter continued.
"Your Planned Parenthood clinics were part of NOW v. Scheidler, a
national class action suit, and you are bound by its final result in favor
of the League and Scheidler. The verdict your letter cites is a legal
nullity, as it was reversed by the United States Supreme Court, not just
once but twice. In 2003, the verdict was overturned, 8-1. Then in 2006, the
Justices again ruled for the League and Scheidler 8-0, 'unanimously' – as
you describe the verdict (letter, p. 1) while omitting any mention of its
reversal. Final judgment was just entered for the League and Scheidler, in
compliance with the mandate of the U.S. Supreme Court, in federal district
court here in Chicago."
"Trombley … unmistakably knows NOW lost that case – with an unprecedented
three U.S. Supreme Court rulings against it," noted Stanek. "He has
to know because Planned Parenthood was part of that case, since it was
brought on behalf of all U.S. abortion clinics."
AURORA,
August 22, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A huge new abortion clinic, said to be
the largest Planned Parenthood Center in the United States, has been
constructed near Chicago. In response Illinois pro-lifers have launched a
major grass-roots campaign to prevent it from opening on its scheduled date
this September.
