The former Whole Woman’s Health clinic is seen Thursday with its sign removed. (Monitor Photo)
What was once the last abortion clinic in the Rio Grande Valley is now owned by an anti-abortion group.
McAllen Pregnancy Center, an anti-abortion establishment that is located just a few doors down from the former downtown clinic, now holds the deed.
News of the change in ownership spread after South Texans for Reproductive Justice (STRJ), a local pro-abortion group that offers free contraception and other resources, posted a statement online Wednesday decrying the sale and accusing Whole Woman’s Health of sabotaging their attempts to purchase the building.
“For years, while clinic escorting at Whole Woman’s Health, we heard antis say that they would turn the clinic into a memorial for the unborn if given the opportunity,” the nonprofit wrote. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”
The nonprofit launched a fundraising campaign to try to raise enough money to purchase the building “in an effort to maintain its legacy and make a space for the reproductive justice community,” staff said, adding that those efforts were undermined by Whole Woman’s Health.
“24 hours after our campaign launched, their lawyer told us to completely take it down,” the group said on social media Wednesday. “We ultimately changed our language and branding, but the damage had been done, and we never recovered the momentum we had during those first 24 hours.”
Whole Woman’s Health denied telling STRJ to shut down its fundraising campaign in an email to The Monitor on Thursday.
“No we did not,” Moises Serrano, a spokesperson for the abortion provider, said in an email Thursday in response to a question about its correspondence with STRJ.
Serrano also said the person who reached out to STRJ was not an attorney representing Whole Woman’s Health.
“Our staff member happens to have a law degree, but they do not work in the capacity of a lawyer in their position with WWH nor did they represent themselves in that way,” Serrano wrote in an email. “There is simply a ‘JD’ in their signature line, but their title with WWH is Chief of Staff.”
Whole Woman’s Health did not respond to follow-up questions about why its chief of staff contacted STRJ in the first place, and representatives for STRJ did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Whole Woman’s Health sold the building last month to Peruvian Alliance LLC, a company registered to Luis Alberto Rosas Calderon, according to records from the Texas Secretary of State’s office.
Rosas is also listed as a board director under the name “Dr. Alberto Rosas” for the McAllen Pregnancy Center, according to the Form 990 the center filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2019.
Shortly after purchasing the clinic from Whole Woman’s Health, Rosas sold it to McAllen Pregnancy Center, which is a crisis pregnancy center that exists primarily to convince people not to have abortions.
“WWH handed over the keys to the very people who have spent years terrorizing patients,” STRJ continued in its post. “This is a very sad time for our community.”
STRJ, however, still plans on setting up a reproductive justice center in the Valley and is “actively looking at different buildings.”
Whole Woman’s Health published a series of Twitter posts in response to STRJ’s statements on social media, denying it had any knowledge that Peruvian Alliance LLC had ties to the anti-abortion group.
“We are shocked, appalled, and absolutely heartbroken by the news we have learned today about an anti-abortion organization buying our beloved building in McAllen, Texas,” Whole Woman’s Health wrote on Twitter. “It appears they engaged in highly deceptive practices to do so, and we are exploring legal remedies right now.
“There are absolutely no circumstances under which we would knowingly sell a building to anti-abortion forces,” it went on. “We conducted extensive background checks on the prospective buyers and turned up no red flags.”
Whole Woman’s Health reiterated to The Monitor on Thursday that it was not aware of the connection between Peruvian Alliance LLC and the McAllen Pregnancy Center. It also said the organization and its realtor had researched Peruvian Alliance before approving the sale of the clinic.
“We were duped,” it said in a Twitter post. “And we are as outraged as everyone else who is learning this news.”
Attempts to reach Rosas of Peruvian Alliance for comment were unsuccessful Thursday.
