The Long Island Coalition for Life staged a protest on Saturday, Aug. 14, outside the future Massapequa Planned Parenthood health center site.

Following the Saturday morning, 9 a.m., Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa, approximately 150 protesters, escorted by three police vehicles, made their way from the church to the future site at 35 Carmans Road. The "Procession of Life" gathered outside the building where they prayed the Rosary, sang songs and read scripture in efforts to deter the center's opening, which is scheduled for the end of the year.

The opposition maintains that while Planned Parenthood offers primary health care and education programs, such positives will not excuse the performance of abortions.

"They make an exception of killing children," said Our Lady of Lourdes Pastor, Father Mason, "They say they give a lot of nice things to people, but when they move over into the field of aborting kids, and killing them, they have no place here."

In a press statement, Planned Parenthood announced that they do not plan to perform surgical abortions at the future Massapequa site; however, the opposition is concerned that they may refer patients seeking abortions to other centers who co-perform the procedure.

"Whether they do it here or send them over to Hempstead or some other place," said Father Mason, "they're in conspiracy...if I said 'I don't kill on my property but I get a guy to do it for me,' it's the same thing."

In response to the Massapequa protest, Planned Parenthood of Nassau County (PPNC), which also has facilities in Hempstead and Glen Cove, organized the "Pledge-a-Protester" program. Designed to discourage and possibly lessen protests, the program asked Planned Parenthood Supporters to pledge a chosen amount of money, to be given to Planned Parenthood programs, for each demonstrator who marched on Aug. 14. Planned Parenthood hopes that protesters will not support a demonstration if it ends up benefiting the organization that they are trying to hurt. Their hope is that the community will, instead of protesting, learn how the organization can help the community.

"When there's a protest," said Planned Parenthood President and CEO Karen Pearl, "the view is that people don't support family planning or sexuality education or planned parenthood, and this is a way for the community to come forward without doing this sort of disruptive protest that closes traffic and that makes it difficult for people to move around."

The large number of protesters that gathered at the site will result in great earnings for the facility. Through Pledge-a-Protester, Planned Parenthood expects to raise over $3,000. Prior to the day of the actual protest, they had already raised close to $1,000 from supporters.

Planned Parenthood says that Massapequa was the chosen site for their next center because of the high rate of teenage pregnancy. In fact, they indicated that Massapequa is tied for eighth place on Long Island in incidence of teenage pregnancy.

The agency maintains that their message is one of prevention and that although they do not necessarily preach abstinence, they try to provide sex education programs that may help teens make the right choices regarding sexual activity and its repercussions.

"You'd like them not to perform sex," said a Planned Parenthood spokesperson, "but apparently it doesn't work...we certainly tell them about abstinence, but if they're going to do it, they better know how not to get pregnant."

Planned Parenthood expects the Massapequa site to be open by the end of the year. Along with providing primary health care for men, women and teens, they also plan to continue sexual education and training programs. It is this premise of prevention that they hope will help diminish the high teen pregnancy rate and ultimately cut back on the need for abortions.

"If the protesters really cared about lowering the abortion rate," said Pearl, "they would stand with us in opening more family planning services, because it's prevention that's going to make a difference."