Planned Parenthood leaves Red Oak
A sign posted on the door states Planned Parenthood will be closing in Red Oak Wednesday.
And it all started with a letter to the Red Oak Express editor published just more than two years earlier.
Rod Goodemote was living in Florida at the time, planning to return home to Montgomery County with his wife and children. Wanting to learn a little more about the community where he was raised as a child, Goodemote subscribed online to the Red Oak Express.
Then on June 12, 2012, he read a letter to the editor written by Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood Director in Storm Lake. In that letter, she described a procedure offered at the Red Oak Planned Parenthood called webcam or telemed abortions, in which a doctor via the Internet prescribes and dispenses pregnancy-ending medications.
“I kept looking at the paper to see who would reply to this letter, but nobody said anything so I kept thinking ‘Who is going to stand up and when they stand up, I will join them,’” Rod said. “Then no one stood up, so I stood up and others joined me.”
The Goodemotes moved to Villisca in August of 2012 and with contacts in place before the first moving van arrived, Rod was able to quickly organize a 40 Days for Life prayer vigil outside of the Red Oak office.
Originated in 2007 outside a Texas Planned Parenthood, 40 Days for Life campaigns provide pro-life supporters an opportunity to gather and pray for an end to abortions.
Goodemote said he learned a lot about the national movement from a book called “Unplanned,” written by a Texas Planned Parenthood Director where a 40 Days for Life event took place.
With the first vigil-taking place in October 2012, members of eight local churches stood outside the local Planned Parenthood for 40 consecutive days, quietly praying. They organized a second vigil in the spring of 2013 and a third followed in the fall.
The fourth, and apparently final 40 Days for Life cam GREGORY OREAR
General Manager/Editor
A sign posted on the door states Planned Parenthood will be closing in Red Oak Wednesday.
And it all started with a letter to the Red Oak Express editor published just more than two years earlier.
Rod Goodemote was living in Florida at the time, planning to return home to Montgomery County with his wife and children.
Wanting to learn a little more about the community where he was raised as a child, Goodemote subscribed online to the Red Oak Express.
Then on June 12, 2012, he read a letter to the editor written by Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood Director in Storm Lake. In that letter, she described a procedure offered at the Red Oak Planned Parenthood called webcam or telemed abortions, in which a doctor via the Internet prescribes and dispenses pregnancy-ending medications.
“I kept looking at the paper to see who would reply to this letter, but nobody said anything so I kept thinking “Who is going to stand up and when they stand up, I will join them,” Rod said. “Then no one stood up so I stood up and others joined me.”
The Goodemotes moved to Villisca in August of 2012 and with contacts in place before the first moving van arrived, Rod was able to quickly organize a 40 Days for Life prayer vigil outside of the Red Oak office.
Originated in 2007 outside a Texas Planned Parenthood, 40 Days for Life campaigns provide pro-life supporters an opportunity to gather and pray for an end to abortions.
Goodemote said he learned a lot about the national movement from a book called “Unplanned,” written by a Texas Planned Parenthood Director where a 40 Days for Life event took place.
With the first vigil-taking place in October 2012, members of eight local churches stood outside the local Planned Parenthood for 40 consecutive days, quietly praying. They organized a second vigil in the spring of 2013 and a third followed in the fall.
The fourth, and apparently final 40 Days for Life campaign in Montgomery County, took place in the spring of 2014.
Planned Parenthood had been reducing its local services since the first 40 Days for Life, when the center was open 17 hours a week. The number of hours then dropped to 11 a week and then by appointment only before it officially closed Wednesday.
Goodemote believes the prayer vigils had an affect on more than one level.
“A lot of our work was to inform the public webcam abortions were being done in Red Oak,” Goodemote said. “It had been going on a year and a half before it was mentioned in the paper. We had people stop in the street and say they don’t do abortions here so a lot of it was public awareness.”
Abortions were only a part of the services offered by Planned Parenthood. Family planning, health screening, and sexual education in the public schools was also coordinated locally.
However, as Goodemote’s wife, Tricia, a family practioner who works at the Atlantic hospital explained, there are other places to receive all but the abortion services.
“They don’t provide abortion services but they provide all the other medical services Planned Parenthood was providing,” Dr. Goodemote said “The way Planned Parenthood would get paid for services is they would get people signed up for these things. Planned Parenthood provided services by either charging your insurance company or finding a program you fit into.”
Dr. Goodemote said the Iowa Family Planning Network provides birth control exams and supplies (pills, condoms) pap smears, pregnancy testing and sterilization. To qualify for the services, applicants have to be uninsured or underinsured and make less than 300 percent below the poverty level, which would be about $3,000 a month for a single person or $5,000 a month for a mother with two children.
The Iowa Care for Yourself program offers free cancer screenings for women with similar income requirements.
Goodemote and his 40 Day for Life co-chairs, Alan Dean and Jeff Grebin, are organizing and hosting a public event Thursday night starting at 7 p.m. at the Catholic Church to celebrate and commemorate the closing of Planned Parenthood’s center not only in Red Oak but Creston as well.
“This is a great victory for women and for Red Oak and Creston,” Rod said. “But the closing of two webcams sites in Iowa will have national impact. Planned Parenthood was using Iowa as a test bed to roll out other webcam sites “If we can do it in Iowa, we can do it anywhere.”