Okay, this business about Planned Parenthood has gone too far.
While there is a regular sine curve of those who challenge Planned Parenthood and its elgibility to receive public funds for providing affordable health care to millions of girls and women, the U.S. House of Representatives has actually, tangibly, in-fact, just voted to entirely de-fund the 95-year-old nonprofit. Mostly this out of the desire to make a public statement for those who are anti-abortion, capitalizing on the inevitable federal budget shortfall. Mind you, the great bulk of Planned Parenthood's work is to provide access to contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings, HIV counseling, and pre- and post-natal care at more than 800 clinics around the country -- very often in low-income communities, where there are truly no affordable alternatives for its clients. It also does a great deal of public education. Abortion (which is the most common surgical procedure in the U.S. for women; most of those who receive abortions are already mothers) is about 3% of its total services, and is entirely funded by private dollars.
From The New York Times:
“These charges make me so angry,” said Judy Tabar, president of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, which runs 19 clinics in Connecticut and Rhode Island, offering 70,000 patients birth control, cancer screening and other medical services and, for fewer than 10 percent of visits, abortions.
“What we do every day is prevent more unintended pregnancies than anyone else in the country,” she said in an interview at her office in New Haven. “We have a huge impact on the lives of women and families.”
Personally, I have been one of many, many people who have received compassionate and preventive care from Planned Parenthood (like at this clinic!). It is now under a real threat of not being able to offer this care to many, many others.
From Gail Collins' column, also in The New York Times:
But here’s the most notable thing about this whole debate: The people trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business do not seem concerned about what would happen to the 1.85 million low-income women who get family-planning help and medical care at the clinics each year. It just doesn’t come up. There’s not even a vague contingency plan. ...
There are tens of millions Americans who oppose abortion because of deeply held moral principles. But they’re attached to a political movement that sometimes seems to have come unmoored from any concern for life after birth.
There is no comparable organization to Planned Parenthood, providing the same kind of services on a national basis. If there were, most of the women eligible for Medicaid-financed family-planning assistance wouldn’t have to go without it. In Texas, which has one of the highest teenage birthrates in the country, only about 20 percent of low-income women get that kind of help. Yet Planned Parenthood is under attack, and the State Legislature has diverted some of its funding to crisis pregnancy centers, which provide no medical care and tend to be staffed by volunteers dedicated to dissuading women from having abortions.
Now is the time to speak up. There is no one else who is able to do the work it does, no one else with the will and ability (and with the wonderfully fierce leadership of Cecile Richards).
Thank you so much for posting this reminder.
Posted by: Anotherfreakingcookingblog.wordpress.com | February 19, 2011 at 11:56 AM