Welcome to Gaia! ::

SEX & RELATIONSHIPS | Critics don't realize how agency's services avert need for procedure

October 15, 2007
BY LAURA BERMAN

Planned Parenthood has arrived! After months of debate, the health clinic finally has opened its doors in Aurora -- notwithstanding serious censure from pro-life activists.

Whether or not you support a woman's right to choose, the arrival of Planned Parenthood in Aurora can be viewed as nothing short of a windfall. It is certainly true that this clinic will provide women with safe and legal abortions. However, it will also provide women with affordable and easily accessible birth control, STI/STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, breast health exams, cervical exams, adoption counseling and placement, and crisis counseling. In fact, only 3 percent of all Planned Parenthood services are abortion-related.

Indeed, the purpose of Planned Parenthood is to prevent abortions. Steve Trombley, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood, put it best in published reports when he said, "We know that the services provided at this center will do more in one day to prevent abortions than our opponents will do in a lifetime of protesting."

In our current environment of rising health-care costs and astronomical prescription prices, clinics such as Planned Parenthood are providing the basic health-care services that so many uninsured Americans desperately need yet cannot afford.

Right now approximately 30 percent of Americans ages 18 to 34 are uninsured. This means that thousands of young women do not have affordable access to cervical exams, breast health exams and STD testing -- all of which can mean the difference between early detection and the tragic alternative. Planned Parenthood provides these services to women at an affordable cost, something that most hospitals across the nation are unable to do.

Women's health issues always have taken a back seat in this country. Birth control methods are rarely affordable or worry-free -- costs of birth control pills continue to rise, and numerous side effects continue to accompany it. In hospital rooms across the nation, women's sexual health is a non-issue, and doctors routinely perform unnecessary hysterectomies and careless episiotomies.

Rape victims are not always offered the morning-after pill, and in some cases, they have even been denied this safe, legal form of birth control. Moreover, America has the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed country in the world, so the sexual education and sexual health issues of this country clearly need more attention.

Fortunately, there is a change in the air. Not only are Planned Parenthood clinics offering women compassionate and comprehensive health care, but many of our presidential candidates are giving their support to sexual education and women's health. In fact, Illinois' junior senator and presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, even threw his support behind the opening of the Aurora Planned Parenthood. He told reporters, "I fully support Planned Parenthood's desire to open a new facility in Aurora. The proposed center will serve the growing population in a part of the state where access to a full range of reproductive health care services is lacking."

Obama's support of women's sexual and reproductive health is a step in the right direction. Planned Parenthood is making massive strides in the forefront of women's health care, and this much-needed social service is a benefit to any community it serves.

I want to commend the employees of this new clinic in Aurora for standing up in the face of adversity and breaking through protest lines to care for the women of our community.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Planned Parenthood!

From the Chicago Sun-Times