South Cuyahoga News

The Bedford Heights Health Center was one of 22 Ohio abortion providers supported by the $2.08 million in grants from the Cleveland Foundation during the six years that “pro-life” U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) served on the foundation’s board.

These grants, approved by the board under Moreno’s leadership, went to Ohio’s largest abortion providers and to political organizations seeking to block any limits on abortion in the state.

That’s according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service 990 filings by the Buckeye Reporter.

Grant recipients include Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Equality Ohio Education Fund.

The Bedford Heights Health Center, located 25350 Rockside Road, is listed as one of 22 Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio “health centers.” 

Moreno joined the Cleveland Foundation board in April 2014 and served as a member until April 2020.

Across five years, the foundation’s largest grants – totaling more than $1.8 million – were to Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, a non-profit that both performs abortions for a fee, and lobbies state government against regulating the practice.

Last summer, the group actively supported “Issue 1,” which enshrined a "right" to abortion in the Ohio State Constitution. Issue 1 passed in the November 2023 election.

According to its latest tax filing, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio earned $10.5 million in 2022 for performing abortions. It announced it would expand in the state after Issue 1’s passage and would be focused on “providing services to out-of-state patients,” Axios reported.

The Ohio Department of Public Health reported 18,488 abortions were performed in Ohio in 2022.

“Combating disinformation and supporting abortion access”

The Cleveland Foundation was conceived in 1914 by Frederick H. Goff, a prominent lawyer whose clients included John D. Rockefeller, “for the benefit of future Cleveland, for education of its boys and girls handicapped by poverty, for the healing of its ill, the comfort of its aged and the guiding of its weak,” according to a report in the Bucryus Evening Telegraph. 

Early causes included funding a Cleveland Public Library book delivery service for “handicapped, aged and convalescent” (1945), backing a Western Reserve University research project on child tooth decay (1948) and a study of the feasibility of piping water from Lake Erie to northern Ohio counties (1954).

For the past 60 years, the Cleveland Foundation’s largest grants have been to abortion providers and to political organizations lobbying for expanded federal abortion funding.

In 1967, the Cleveland Foundation made a $237,000 ($2.16M in 2023 dollars) donation to help Planned Parenthood expand in inner-city Cleveland. Abortion was not yet legal in Ohio, but clinic doctors would perform sterilization procedures there on willing women.

Last summer, foundation donors funded a summer internship at Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, the state’s most prolific abortion provider, for Case Western student Ayosubomi Akande.

Akande worked “alongside the advocacy team to help defend and promote reproductive freedom in Ohio. She will assist in campaigns aiming to educate and engage Cleveland communities in combating disinformation and supporting abortion access,” a Cleveland Foundation press release said.

Prior to joining the Cleveland Foundation Board, Moreno was a mentor at the Cleveland Foundation Innovation Lab from November 2007 to March 2011.

The Cleveland Foundation’s Chairman is Constance Hill-Johnson, a Cleveland nursing home owner from Bratenahl. Its CEO is Lillian Kuri. Hill-Johnson is the “first black woman” to chair the Cleveland Foundation. Kuri, formerly an aide to Cleveland Mayor Michael White (D), is the “first woman” to be its CEO.

The Cleveland Foundation had $2.8 billion in assets in 2022 and made $138.5 million in grants.