70 protest at Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Rosa

About 70 anti-abortion demonstrators picketed outside the Santa Rosa branch of Planned Parenthood on Saturday, one of several hundred protests across the United States this weekend prompted by recent controversy over the women’s health organization’s delivery of fetal tissue to scientific researchers.

“Today is almost entirely about the sale of body parts from no longer living humans,” said Mary Heeny, 81, of Santa Rosa, who helped organize the local protest. “It’s a good reminder to people who are supporting abortion that the tissue is body parts that come from no longer living human babies.”

The demonstration outside the Sonoma Avenue clinic was part of a national campaign that staged protests at 320 Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, The Washington Post reported. Organizers billed the effort as the largest-ever rally against the health-care provider.

The controversy ­­­­­- which has prompted calls to defund and shut down Planned Parenthood - was sparked by an anti-abortion activist’s secretly recorded video of a conversation with a Planned Parenthood official.

Abortion opponents said the video showed Planned Parenthood was illegally harvesting and selling the organs. Planned Parenthood said the videos were deceptively edited to support extremists’ false claims.

The organization’s defenders say the unedited video makes clear the goal is only to recover the costs of handling and transporting the parts, which is permitted by law.

“These rallies are meant to intimidate and harass our patients, who rely on our nonprofit health centers for basic, preventive health care,” Eric Ferrero, vice president of Planned Parenthood, said in a statement. “The people behind these protests have a clear political agenda: They want to ban abortion and block women and men from accessing basic reproductive health care.”

Protesters in Santa Rosa, supported by sporadic but not infrequent honks from passing motorists, held signs saying: “Planned Parenthood sells body parts,” “Defienda la Vida,” “Take my hand not my life,” and “Stop govt. funding of Planned Parenthood.”

Forrest Haskins, 45, of Santa Rosa, said he developed his opposition to abortion during 21 years spent as a missionary in Tanzania.

“Just living among people of all different cultures, different languages, convinced me that all people are sacred,” he said. “Babies that are not yet born, they matter, and they don’t have a voice.”

The Washington Post contributed ?to this story. You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@jeremyhay.