Defunding Planned Parenthood is a terrible lack of foresight
By defunding Planned Parenthood, thousands of Americans will lose an extremely beneficial health resource.
October 2, 2015
Health care in this country is hard to pay for; that’s no secret. Legislation such as the Affordable Care Act tries to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for Americans, but many are still left without benefits. Planned Parenthood is an organization that provides health care, sex education, and many other services and resources for those who cannot afford it.
The health care Planned Parenthood provides falls anywhere between routine exams to abortion. Planned Parenthood’s public accessibility to abortion angers many citizens and politicians whose religion recognizes abortion as sinful. Because of these religious beliefs, many currently want to defund Planned Parenthood. Defunding an organization for their actions against personal beliefs is one thing, but defunding an institution that provides affordable and quality healthcare to low-income men and women is just selfish and immoral.
Planned Parenthood does so much more than offer abortion services. They offer examinations, STD and AIDS testing, cancer screening, counseling and lots of other programs to help people in the community. In fact, abortion is the least used service at Planned Parenthood. And, true, most of Planned Parenthood’s funding comes from the national government (a.k.a. taxpayer money a.k.a. some religious people don’t think they should have to pay taxes to fund this), the funding partly comes through Title X, a family planning program which does not allow funds to be spent on abortion.
Taking away funds from Planned Parenthood would result in more people left without a way to receive necessary health care. There would be even less HIV education and testing than there is now. Women would have to take unsafe measures to get an abortion from an unqualified individual. More women would develop breast cancer as a result of no accessible mammography service. Also, most of the same politicians who plan to defund Planned Parenthood want to repeal the Affordable Care Act as well. How are women, and people in general, going to be able to receive care at all when there are absolutely no resources for them?
Planned Parenthood is bigger than just an abortion clinic. Lawmakers and American citizens need to further research Planned Parenthood and their services before deciding to defund it completely. If there are unfixable issues within the organization, they either need to be fixed or an alternative solution needs to be offered. Programs for those who cannot afford healthcare are unfortunately extremely necessary in our country. Defunding the largest program, Planned Parenthood, would not end well at all if no other program is made accessible. I will not stand idly by while my colleagues, coworkers and fellow citizens are being stripped of their dignity and health without a choice.
Marin Brown • Nov 1, 2015 at 4:19 pm
First off, this is an incredibly important conversation to have, and I laud everyone for doing so respectfully. I am in Students for Life. One of the main things we want to do is inform people. There are many issues that I personally take with planned Parenthood, but that’s not what I want to talk about now. Many women who are pro life, myself included, are fearful of Americans losing healthcare coverage. For this reason, if PP were to be defunded, every single penny of its budget would go back to community health centers and clinics that provide the same services as PP (and often cheaper). These providers are more numerous than PP and are often underfunded and understaffed because federal money goes to PP instead of these providers. Yet these providers see millions more clients than PP, up to 20 million more. These providers also offer more services than planned parenthood, including mammograms (when Cecelia Richards testified before Congress she admitted that PP cannot and does not have any mammogram machines), child checkups, immunizations, STI/STD screenings, and birth control. The real lack of foresight in our country was supporting a company that provides low quality birth control (PP’s condoms are the second to worst-rated by consumer reports) and doesn’t provide basic health services to Americans. Instead we should have invested in clinics that offer services that many low-income families and individuals desperately need like immunization and cancer screenings.
Maggie Knox • Oct 7, 2015 at 4:00 pm
I love this article so much – you rock!
annie hart • Oct 6, 2015 at 10:11 pm
As a strong female catholic institution, we should be protecting life in whatever form it comes. We are taught to protect the poor and vulnerable in society, and what is more helpless and vulnerable than an unborn child? As I said in my previous comment, any type of organization that has anything to do with the ending of life we don’t support as a faith based school and shouldn’t support as women. Whose defending that womb inside the womb?
Audrey Carroll • Oct 7, 2015 at 10:43 am
I agree that an unborn child is vulnerable. I myself am pro-life but identify as pro-choice, because I don’t think I should be making decisions for other women. But this issue to me isn’t about abortion. It’s about all the people who would be left without health care if Planned Parenthood is defunded. I appreciate your opinion, but we just have different ones in this case.
Ellie Meysenburg • Oct 6, 2015 at 2:22 pm
I strongly disagree with so many things in this article. You failed to mention the main reasons why so many people do not want to continue funding a program like Planned Parenthood. In recent months, several videos have been released that reveal sickening and inhumane activity happening behind the scenes at Planned Parenthood. The videos show the medical director of PP casually discussing the sale of fetal body parts, with a man posing as an interested buyer, secretly filming the whole thing. The videos are extremely graphic and disturbing. Along with that, Planned Parenthood deliberately provides women with low quality condoms and birth control, in hopes that it will lead to more women in need of abortion services, which makes more money for the company. Women also reported that a single pregnancy test, that can be found in a dollar store, is priced at $47 through PP. Affordable healthcare for those who can’t afford it? I don’t think so. Planned Parenthood is taking advantage of women and going to extreme, immoral measures just to make more money. It has been proven that out of all women who walk into planned parenthood seeking “prenatal care,” 94% of them will walk out having had an abortion. As young women, we should care about the quality of health care we are being provided with, which is why it is so shocking to me that people continue to support Planned Parenthood, given its deceitful and down right awful history. You label those against the funding of Planned Parenthood as “some religious people who view abortion as sinful.” Yes, I am religious, and yes, I believe abortion is sinful. However, religion has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. I do not want a single penny of my money, or anyone’s money, supporting a place that kills babies after they have been delivered, in order to make a large profit off of their body parts. People against this are not “selfish and immoral.” People against this realize that the murder of children will always be wrong, no matter how many lies Planned Parenthood tries to tell us. A “terrible lack of foresight” would be knowing that these awful things are going on, and failing to care, or do anything about it.
annie hart • Oct 5, 2015 at 9:59 am
The fact that planned parenthood is even supported by the government is ridiculous. Abortion is wrong, and as a catholic community, like it or not, we should not support any organization that commits the killing of children. Abortion hurts women, and as a strong female institution, I constantly ask myself why so many of us are inclined to support something so destructive.
Audrey Carroll • Oct 6, 2015 at 7:46 am
Actually, like I said in my piece, the government funding does not cover abortion due to Title X and the Hyde Amendment. I do not think the fact that the government supports Planned Parenthood is ridiculous due to the fact that it provides many other helpful resources people wouldn’t be able to receive otherwise. As a strong female institution I frankly think it’s ridiculous people are so harsh in judging what other women decide to do with their own bodies.
Christina Elias • Oct 2, 2015 at 1:15 pm
This is so important. Great job Audrey!!
Mary jo VanWalleghem • Oct 2, 2015 at 11:43 am
So many people don’t know the scope of planned parenthood. This article could be sent to the KC Star opinion page for publication so more people could be informed of the positive benefits, not just the abortion side that makes headlines. Brava, Audrey.
Mo • Oct 2, 2015 at 8:42 am
This article made me so happy. 10/10 for the research to back everything up. 10/10 for being a great person
Hayley Burgess • Oct 2, 2015 at 8:40 am
PREACH! Thank you for eloquently describing every single feeling I have towards this topic. You rock, Audrey.