"As an organization operating on more than 1,250 campuses in all 50 states, we will keep going back until we have built a culture of life on campuses nationwide." — Students for Life

Students for Life of America (SFLA) has succeeded in less than one year in convincing 34 of 103 Christian universities with ties to the abortion industry to sever those connections.

The national pro-life student organization launched its initial list of 25 schools last March and said it wanted to disrupt the "unholy partnership" between Planned Parenthood and Christian universities.

The Christian Schools Project identified 103 religious universities out of a total of 784 having some Christian affiliation, which in some way have promoted Planned Parenthood or the abortion industry. Students for Life contacted these 103 universities twice — once via email and once through a phone call — in order to give the universities an opportunity to remove their Planned Parenthood content before its report was issued in December (of 2021). (See below for details.)

The most frequent infraction, according to SFLA, is a university's listing of Planned Parenthood as a resource for students or encouraging internships at the nation's largest abortion vendor.

This encouragement tells students that abortion is a good option if they are pregnant, SFLA told The College Fix.

"When a Christian university is promoting the nation's largest abortion vendor to that vendor's target clientele, it is reinforcing the mistaken notion that women cannot finish school or succeed in life with a child while failing to provide the spiritual formation and tangible support," spokesperson Lauren Enriquez told The Fix via email.

"Planned Parenthood has spent a lot of money convincing women that they can't multitask a successful life," Enriquez said.

The next step is to convince the 69 schools that still maintain connections to the abortion industry to sever those relationships and stop the promotion of Planned Parenthood. "We are now enlisting the public's help to address the remaining 69 schools," Lauren Enriquez told The Fix. "As an organization on more than 1,250 campuses in all 50 states, we are going to keep going back until we have built a culture of life on campuses nationwide."

Comprehensive review includes if the university actively supports pregnant, parenting students

Students for Life ranked all 784 universities from A+ to F based on how many criteria fit each university, such as whether Planned Parenthood was provided as an internship opportunity, a student resource, or a career opportunity.

An A+ grade represents universities with no relationship to Planned Parenthood and making a deliberate attempt to help pregnant and parenting students.

The Fix reached out to two A+ universities, Abilene Christian and Liberty, but did not receive a response. On December 17 and 21, The Fix asked both schools respectively why it was important to them to not have ties to Planned Parenthood.

Three F-rated universities, which list Planned Parenthood as a student health resource, did not respond to requests for comment. The Fix asked the media relations team for Emory University, Macalester College, and Rhodes College if the schools plan to address their relationships with Planned Parenthood, if they see any conflict between Planned Parenthood and Christianity, and if they encourage students to have abortions. We received no response.

Catholic universities represented the largest proportion of the 34 universities to cut ties with Planned Parenthood. SFLA originally identified 22 problematic Catholic universities, but that number has since been reduced to eight.

Enriquez told The Fix that some of the colleges removed the Planned Parenthood content without notifying SFLA. "We learned that they had cut ties thanks to our ongoing research."

Note: The College Fix associate editor Matt Lamb worked on portions of this project while an employee of Students for Life of America and Students for Life Action.

This article appeared on the The College Fix website January 3, 2022. Reprinted by permission.

Christian Schools Tied to Planned Parenthood: Research Results

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion vendor. According to the organization’s own annual report, Planned Parenthood killed 354,871 pre-born children in abortion violence last year. Planned Parenthood targets the most vulnerable pregnant women, including college students, for abortion sales.

It’s no surprise, then, that Planned Parenthood has snaked its way onto college and university campuses all over the United States. But what may come as a surprise to some is that this includes schools that identify as Christian institutions, despite the fact that scripture and Christian tradition are soundly anti-abortion.

Students for Life of America’s (SFLA) Institute for Pro-Life Advancement investigated all 784 colleges and universities affiliated with Christian churches in the United States, including Catholic and Protestant schools, and found that 103, or one in eight Christian schools, maintained some type of relationship with Planned Parenthood.

The goal of SFLA’s Christian Schools Project is to raise public awareness of Christian schools maintaining relationships with Planned Parenthood in order to encourage infracting schools to restore their Christian values by cutting ties with the abortion giant. At the time of publication, the number of Christian schools maintaining relationships with Planned Parenthood has dropped to 69, or one in 11 schools, thanks to interventions and awareness facilitated by the Christian Schools Project.

Key Findings:

• More than 100 Christian colleges and universities were found to be in relationships with Planned Parenthood.
• At Christian schools, Planned Parenthood appears most frequently as a “student resource” or “internship opportunity.”
• Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist schools make up an outsized share of infracted schools.
• Victories: Over the course of SFLA’s Christian Schools Project, one in three infracted schools cut ties with Planned Parenthood.

Want to be notified of new Education Reporter content?
Your information will NOT be sold or shared and will ONLY be used to notify you of new content.
Click Here

Return to Home PageEducation Reporter Online - February 2022