Planned Parenthood of Indiana to Use Donations to Provide Services Through Mid-June

Planned Parenthood of Indiana will use $100,000 in unsolicited donations to continue serving Medicaid patients through June 15th.After a bill stripping the organization of its public funding became law earlier this month, donations have poured into Planned Parenthood's offices. President Betty Cockrum says the checks have come with personal, sometimes angry, messages attached."'If you don't like abortion—and nobody does—why would you reduce access to birth control?' Or, 'What this bill is going to do is increase the number of abortions because more women will have unplanned pregnancies.' Or 'I'm sending you this donation because my mother's grandmother died of an illegal abortion," she says. "Even if we had solicited, that typically gets done within an established database. And these gifts are coast-to-coast and out of 1,015 donors, 727 of them are new, first-time donors."In the past, floods of donations have become trickles after a few days."That's not happening in this case because as the word gets out more, and more national media cover it and people like Dan Savage put it on a blog with our link, it's just becoming more and more known," says Cockrum.Despite that, Cockrum says donations are not a sustainable revenue source. The organization will be in court on June 6th with a challenge to the law. A ruling on the organization's filing to have the law dismissed is expected by July 1st.Planned Parenthood will continue to serve current low income patients, but no new Medicaid patients will be accepted.