As of Oct. 21, five states made moves to defund Planned Parenthood.
These states and everyone who is moving to defund Planned Parenthood is doing so because of their moral plight to declare a war on abortion.
Let me be as clear as humanly possible when I say they are not declaring a war on abortion at all; they are declaring a war on women and they’re gaining traction.
A few facts to start the discussion. 97 percent of Planned Parenthood services have nothing to do with abortion. Of the three percent of services, are abortion service and the federal government funds ZERO of them.
In case that last part wasn’t taken in fully, I will repeat myself:
ZERO FEDERAL DOLLARS GO TOWARD ABORTIONS AT PLANNED PARENTHOOD.
What federal dollars do go toward are contraceptives, STI testing, cancer screenings, family planning, women’s health services and other non-gendered health services.
I have one question for those who argue for the Planned Parenthood shut down, have you been to a Planned Parenthood?
For all of your morals and opinions about what you saw in a video, have you ever sat in the waiting room at Planned Parenthood and looked around at the people being served?
I have.
As someone who has been receiving regular care from Planned Parenthood since I was 15, I can assure you that the women in that waiting room receiving medical care and advice for the first time in their lives are not arguing about that video.
In the six years I’ve been going to Planned Parenthood, I’ve never had an abortion.
I have been given advice about contraceptives, sex education that my school couldn’t give me, regular birth control I couldn’t afford and help reporting a rape.
My best friend however, did get an abortion, but she didn’t get it from Planned Parenthood.
She went to a privatized back alley abortion clinic and she almost died because of it.
The clinic was so unregulated, it didn’t fully abort the fetus and left her to suffer for weeks afterward.
After being turned away at the religious hospital in our area, she went to Planned Parenthood begging for help because of the poor care she received and the doctors there saved her life.
It’s easy to debate the morality of something when you have no connection to it.
While it is a juicy debate, please make no mistake.
The controversy over the video release is a smokescreen to steal the p u b l i c ’ s a t t e n t i o n while a huge injustice is being done to women in this country. D e f u n d i n g Planned Parenthood will undoubtedly not only increase the abortion rate in the United States, it will also increase the unsafe abortion rate and the female fatality rate through abortion.
There are simply no other organizations that offer the same services Planned Parenthood does at the magnitude it offers them.
Conservatives may think they are winning the battle against abortion by taking resources from Planned Parenthood but they’re really creating a space where people don’t have access to contraceptives and have to resort to unsafe abortions because they have nowhere to go.
I am genuinely terrified of what is happening in my country right now. I never thought I would see a day where we would start taking steps backward in the realm of women’s rights.
But here it is happening and it’s breaking my heart. Everyone who I have spoken with about Planned Parenthood has said the same thing, not to worry it’s not going to pass.
Look around you, people are trying hard to make this pass and we are sitting back not worrying about it because we aren’t taking it seriously. It’s starting to catch fire and it’s about time we react to it.
So stand up, get loud. Post on Facebook, tell your friends, write letters, make your opinions known.
If you don’t do it now, you may very well watch it disappear all while knowing you could have stopped it but didn’t.
We need to stand up for Planned Parenthood as passionately as those five states.
We need to make it known that this movement is not something we will tolerate.
We need to fight for this fundamental service or we are going to lose it.
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