By Lost Girl
Planned Parenthood defunding threats from the Republican Party are growing and people are not happy.
Threats to defund Planned Parenthood (PP) have grown more serious, now that the party controls both the Senate and House.
During a CNN Town Hall meeting in January, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan made comments regarding his stance on PP.
“We don’t want to commit taxpayer funding for abortion, and Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider,” said Ryan.
Now let’s get factual.
PP does receive federal funding. The $500 million collected a year, comes mostly from Medicaid and Title X, but by law, federal funding cannot contribute to abortions.
“The funding that goes towards the actual abortion procedures come from anonymous donors or other patrons of PP donating,” said student assistant of the Women’s Resource Center (WRC), Felicia De La Isla.
“All the federal funds that PP gets or would get goes towards solely education and basic healthcare,” she continued.
Birth control, STD testing, and cancer screenings are other services that PP provides and will be affected if defunding happens.
PP has helped prevent 579,000 unintended pregnancies, provided more 4.2 million tests and treatments for STDs, and provides 270,000 pap smears and 360,000 breast exams, according to Planned Parenthood.
Only three percent of all services are abortion services, so claims saying PP is just an abortion clinic are absurd.
“They don’t know what goes on in PP, they don’t know of all the resources that they have,” said student assistant of the WRC, Naomi Salcido.
So many low-income Americans rely on services provided by PP because receiving these services elsewhere are expensive.
“With cutting funding, you’re stopping students and people who don’t have the greatest income from getting what we need that is affordable. It’s like cutting our healthcare or insurance,” said student Brianna Jointer.
Birth control can cost up to $50 a month, but with most health plans, they can be free—but health insurance is expensive.
In 2016, healthcare insurance for an individual was $321 with a deductible of $4,164, according to eHealth. That’s for one person.
Taking away a service such as PP would take away some people’s primary health clinic within their budget.
Now, I can understand the conservative point of view that some people are not okay with abortions, but PP isn’t solely about abortions.
If anything, they are trying to prevent abortions and unwanted pregnancies by educating young people on safe sex and preventative contraception.
PP wants to educate people about how to prevent unwanted pregnancies or STDs; they offer health services otherwise unattainable to most people who cannot afford health insurance.
“Planned Parenthood has helped a lot of people who don’t have medical coverage at all. And not just for reproductive health, but physical health and therapy as well,” said De La Isla.
So let’s defund PP; let’s defund some people’s main source of healthcare and let them go into debt for a simple physical check-up.
After all, we’re all rich white men who have an abundance of resources at our beck and call and we all live in the suburbs with the perfect healthy family.
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