Do You Stand with Planned Parenthood?

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

On February 18, 2011, the newly elected leaders in the House of Representatives voted 240-185 in favor of the Pence Amendment, which bans Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding. This launched the most crippling legislative assault on women’s health care in American history.

The House leadership wants to eliminate the national family program called Title X, which has provided millions of women with preventative care since 1970. In addition, they want to stop all federal funds from supporting care through Planned Parenthood’s more than eight hundred health centers across the country, which provide lifesaving services every day of the week. To some individuals, Planned Parenthood is their only source of preventative healthcare. Simply put, their legislative attack will cut off health care access to millions of women who need it the most.

It is clear that these are dangerous ideological attacks that have no basis in common sense.

At a time when increasingly more women and families cannot afford health care due to increasing costs and a struggling economy, the House leadership wants to eliminate the programs that provide services like birth control, family planning, lifesaving cancer screenings and HIV testing to millions of women.

This care saves lives — yet the new House leadership wants to end it.

So what is the premise of the Pence Amendment? Mike Pence (a Republican from Indiana) and other House Republicans believe that Pence Amendment and other legislation that targets federal funding for abortion would help alleviate the federal deficit. WRONG. For one, under Title X funding, organizations such as Planned Parenthood cannot and do not use federal dollars to finance abortion services. There is already a ban on federal dollars being used towards abortion services through the Hyde Amendment. Planned Parenthood uses the Title X federal funding for the clinical services previously mentioned, which is a crucial element to the work they do. However, these cuts would also be detrimental to the work Planned Parenthood does to provide comprehensive sex education. Second, family planning programs like Title X are fiscally sound: for every public dollar invested in family planning, taxpayers save nearly $4. Yet, in their ideological zeal to attack women’s health, the House leadership doesn’t seem to care.

Eliminating the national family planning program and stripping Planned Parenthood of all federal funds means that women across the country will lose access to basic primary and preventative health care. That means more women with medical problems will go untreated and there will be many more undetected cancers and infections discovered when it is too late to save women’s lives.

The use of Title X funding is vital for the health of our nation and for those individuals who can’t afford to get basic healthcare. Eighty-five percent of Title X clients have incomes at or below 150% percent of the federal poverty level, and 66% are uninsured. Cutting Title X funding is going to affect women in low-income brackets because they are four times more likely to face an unintended pregnancy due to limited access to contraceptives or irregular use of costly birth control. Title X services are incredibly effective at helping prevent nearly one million unintended pregnancies each year, almost half of which would otherwise end in abortions.

As a Campus Action Intern for Planned Parenthood and a volunteer for our local New London Planned Parenthood, I’m outraged by the political turmoil around this issue. The passing of the Pence Amendment is bad policy and bad politics. The government says they want to save money, but instead imposes outrageous cutbacks on programs that have shown to be effective at lowering unintended pregnancy, spread of STIs and saving medical costs both for the federal and state government. As a strong believer in women’s reproductive justice and rights, I can’t just sit idly by while this attack on women’s health is going on, and neither should Connecticut College.

I come from a city where teenage pregnancies are common. Many of the teens in my high school made bad decisions that led to unintended pregnancies. Being mostly minorities and coming from low-income families, they found it hard to seek the proper medical attention at an affordable cost. Luckily, there was a local Planned Parenthood that helped many of them receive proper check-ups during their pregnancies, and offered counseling as well as parenting classes to help them through this strenuous experience. This is why I stand with Planned Parenthood.

We need to send a message to the extreme House leadership and tell them to stop the assault on women’s health and to get back to what they promised to do — fix the American economy.

Here’s what we can do to stand with Planned Parenthood:

Call Your Elected Officials— Tell them THANK YOU for supporting Planned Parenthood and women’s health and to continue the fight in the Senate to defeat these attacks.
Connecticut’s senators are Joe Lieberman at 860-549-8463 and Dick Blumenthal at 860-258-6940.

Go to www.istandwithplannedparenthood.org to take action: sign an open letter to Congress and to every senator who still has a chance to stop it.

Share your story about how Planned Parenthood has been there for you, your family or your friends. If you are one in five American women who have been helped by Planned Parenthood say it, show it and share it at www.raiseyourhand.org.

Text-to-Sign to Support Planned Parenthood. Text–I Stand With PP– to 69866. •