The executive director of a Northeast Portland nonprofit that sustained an estimated $10,000 in property damage Saturday night said protesters targeted the group because they mistakenly believed it counsels people against abortion.
The Mother and Child Education Center in the Hollywood neighborhood of Portland offers resources to parents after they’ve decided to have children, said Maura White, executive director of the center, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. It is not a pregnancy resource center, as marchers who targeted the group appear to have believed.
“We’re not anything like that,” White said. “I’m a pro-choice, liberal Catholic Democrat.”
Dozens of marchers clad in black clothing traveled from Grant Park to the area of Sandy Boulevard late Saturday and damaged businesses such as a Starbucks and a Bank of America branch, in addition to the nonprofit.
White, who said she got a heads up from law enforcement that protesters might erroneously target the center, said the center’s front windows were all smashed. A sign outside the center has graffiti and a mural is tagged.
She said she’s frustrated that her group, which offers pregnancy tests so parents can qualify for prenatal benefits as well as other services, has been mischaracterized as a pregnancy resource center that steers women away from abortion. “They lumped us in with them,” she said. “We’re not anti-abortion.”
— Beth Slovic bslovic@oregonian.com
