Students for Life Releases Report Featuring Catholic Schools With Ties to Planned Parenthood
When Catholic institutions of higher learning publicly associate with Planned Parenthood despite the Church’s clear teaching on the grave evil of abortion, faithful students and alumni should take note. A recent report from Students for Life can help them do just that. The group investigated 784 Christian institutions, including 237 Catholic schools, and initially found that 103 Christian schools, including 22 Catholic schools, were connected with Planned Parenthood.
After Students for Life reached out to schools with links to the abortion giant, a third of them cut those ties, and the number dropped to 69 schools total, including eight Catholic institutions.
The report, released in December, investigated the websites of Christian schools over the fall of 2021 and identified relationships to Planned Parenthood that included promoting the organization as an internship opportunity for credit, promoting it as a student resource, advertising or partnering on a Planned Parenthood event from 2019 onward, and promoting the group as a volunteer or career opportunity. Schools with these ties to Planned Parenthood were emailed and called in September and October of 2021, prior to the report’s release, giving them a chance to remove the references to the organization.
Lauren Enriquez, deputy media strategist with Students for Life, told the Register that the report was meant to hold these schools accountable to “the students that go there, the alumni, especially if they’re donors, and parents who are going to be paying their kids’ tuition to go to these schools.” According to their latest annual report, Planned Parenthood performed 354,871 abortions in the past year.
Enriquez said that pro-life stakeholders in Christian and Catholic schools “need to be aware” when an institution is connected with the abortion giant.
Catholic Schools Graded on Planned Parenthood Ties
The seven Catholic schools that the Register found still had links to the abortion provider on their websites were St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Sacred Heart University of Connecticut, The College of St. John Fisher in New York, Marymount University in Virginia, The College of St. Rose in New York, St. Joseph’s University of Pennsylvania, and Felician University in New Jersey. None of the schools returned the Register’s request for comments on the report’s findings.