The Assault on Planned Parenthood Is Getting Personal for Me

[Capt. Obvious]

Last week, they came for my Planned Parenthood clinic.

I’m not talking about the closest clinic to where I live now, in the relatively reproductive-rights-friendly state of California. I’m talking about the clinic where I went for birth control when I was young and uninsured in Columbia, Missouri. Technically they’ve been coming for it for years. The clinic stopped providing medical abortions in 2012, when the doctor who provided them moved away. There was a nearly three-year gap in care until July — right around the time surreptitiously recorded and deftly edited videos from within Planned Parenthood clinics began to emerge — when the clinic was cleared to begin providing them again thanks to a doctor from St. Louis who was willing to make the 124-mile drive.

....

And, like many women, I ended up needing them, often. When I was broke, but was scared to put my birth-control pills through my conservative parents’ insurance plan. When I was broke (a different time) and had the worst insurance ever, but needed a checkup. When my friend needed an abortion, but lived in a state with a waiting period, and I drove her across state lines to a Planned Parenthood. Those octagonal yard signs might as well have been advertisements: “Stop! Planned Parenthood! Free exams and affordable contraception!”

....

But it’s useful, especially with all the action on Planned Parenthood’s behalf today, to remember that we shouldn’t need a reproductive-care health care brand. Contraception and STD testing and abortion should be things that you get from your regular doctor — and you should have a regular doctor even if you’re poor. Planned Parenthood exists because the services it provides are stigmatized and pushed out of the routine health-care framework, or are unaffordable within it. And its brand recognition is so important, in part, because the opponents of reproductive choice have gone out of their way to confuse women by establishing faux clinics that provide no health services at all, and to spread misinformation about the safety of contraception and abortion.

The campaign to take down Planned Parenthood is a primary front in the war on abortion access. It is not simply about pandering to the religious-conservative base anymore. It is not the work of just a few fringe extremists. And it is not only affecting low-income women. Just ask John Boehner, who was forced from his job as speaker of the House because his fellow Republicans would not vote for a budget that continued Planned Parenthood’s funding. Just ask the people of Louisiana, which has the highest rates of syphilis and gonorrhea in the country, where lawmakers recently moved to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. In lieu of this trusted provider of women’s health care, the state has suggested that women can visit audiologists, ophthalmologists, radiologists, and nursing homes if they are in need of breast exams, pap smears, or birth-control prescriptions. Planned Parenthood has said it will continue to fight state and national moves to defund it.

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NYMag

[trumad]

1. As a Father of a 20 year old daughter who has used PP...

It's personal for me as well.

[riversedge]

2. Me also. I do not know what is becoming of the USA--it seems

to go from bad to worse as each day passes. The teaparty and gop are relentless on this (and other social issues).

[roody]

3. Knr

[Generic Other]

4. It's personal for me too

I was lucky to be provided free exams and access to safe birth control as a young woman. When they attack PP, do they know how many women have been helped by that organization? No. Because the men who oppose PP have never even set foot inside one.

I pledge to donate my tax deductible dollars to this organization to help offset any funds they lose. I hope many women will try to do this as well. We can make a difference. Also, do not ask for my vote if you plan to vote to destroy this organization.