Once again, America finds itself facing a controversial issue. From here, the land of the free to erupt into another state of ceaseless internal conflict. Planned Parenthood is an organization that provides beneficial sexual health services to Americans, but in turn, it carries out abortion services, which is popularly opposed. Many want to cut federal funding and donations from Planned Parenthood because these citizens believe abortion is all the organization embodies.
Planned Parenthood should not be cut from funding, because it is more than an abortion clinic; it is an organization that supplies contraception, provides testing to STD’s, administers yearly women’s health check-ups, teaches sex education, and provides assuring counseling to all of its patients. It all started with Margaret Sanger, a nurse trying to abolish the trend of women secretly performing abortions on themselves. She opened her first birth-control clinic in 1916 in Brooklyn, New York. The chain continued to thrive, and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America was born.
Planned Parenthood has grown from the simple birth control clinic in several ways “PPFA works in a number of ways to achieve its mission of providing information and services to those who are facing reproductive choices. PPFA clinics provide the following services: abortion or abortion referrals, family planning, birth control, pregnancy testing and counseling, adoption referrals, prenatal care, sex education, voluntary sterilization, HIV testing, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and gynecological care”.
Planned Parenthood may complete abortion, but it is not paid for by donations or US funding “it is not a mystery that Planned Parenthood pays for abortions. Thus, if another organization is truly opposed to abortions, they should simply not make a contribution in the first place” (Carone 3). Although many people today are pro-life, there are a lot of pro-choice followers to be found as well. So, Planned Parenthood would be able to survive without certain donors inputting money. But, cutting all funding would expunge the program completely.
Cutting all funding will cause millions to be bereft from PPFA’s services. Cutting all funding would be America making a huge mistake. Contraception to a few may be as controversial as abortion, but in actuality it is a saving grace to people everywhere; especially women. Face it, there are millions of American people who want to be sexually active, but are not yet fit to have children. By providing birth control Planned Parenthood actually decreases the amount of abortions per year; thus, birth control and Planned Parenthood have benefited society.
In fact, abortion rates have decreased by 11% in the last 50 years“by 2002, moreover, only 9 percent of births were unwanted, compared with 20 percent in the early 1960s. As a major provider of contraceptives—it furnished birth control to two million Americans last year—Planned Parenthood serves as “America’s largest abortion preventer,”” (Zott 2). This new open-minded era has caused the old to hate the new, and the new to hate the old. Many have not realized that this open-mindedness, similar to the acceptance of birth control is actually total equality and peace slowly finding their ways into the world.
Feminism also plays a considerable part in the need for contraceptives “I wanted to become a newspaper reporter, and I was already working for a professional paper while going to school. I knew that a pregnancy would be the end of my ambitions” (Jacoby 2). Women have struggled for centuries to obtain high status’ within their workplaces and communities. Believe it or not, the idea of settling down isn’t always the beautiful portrait of a humble house with a white picket fence.
Today, many women enjoy an independent lifestyle in which having children at the age of 25 is not on their to-do list. Planned Parenthood’s STD testing, and common women’s health procedures are needed by citizens. Lower income citizens are lacking in exorbitance, but are overrun by worries. Planned Parenthood eases these worries by offering a cheaper form of sexual health benefits “clinics provide services to those on Medicaid insurance-people who cannot afford other insurance providers. (Sisung 2).
Planned Parenthood’s benevolent attitudes have had the capability to take lower class struggles, and transform them to lower class satisfactions. The amount of health services PPFA preforms should be enough to keep them from shutting down “in 2011 it carried out tests and treatment for more than four million individuals with sexually transmitted diseases. It supplied 750,000 exams to prevent breast cancer, the most common cancer among U. S. women.
And it performed 770,000 Pap tests to prevent cervical cancer, which was a leading cause of death among women before this screen became widely available. ” (Zott 2). It’s clearly evident that PPFA is a commonly used resource in society, and shutting it down will effect many people negatively. How could the citizens of the United States terminate such a critical institution? How could they deny help to lower income families? How could they leave those people behind? How could they let them down? Counseling, family planning, and sex education are crucial in producing more responsible young adults.
Planned Parenthood’s renowned for their sex education programs “In addition to the medical and educational services that take place in PPFA clinics, the organization offers sex education resources at the community level. Some of these efforts have included: sex education aimed at the family unit; presentations by PPFA staff or volunteers at community outlets such as schools, churches, or community centers; and training for medical professionals and social workers… emphasis [of the education] is focused on promoting birth control and disease prevention. (Sisung 2).
Thorough presentations are hard to find and often complicated, but Planned Parenthood makes them susceptible and straightforward. Sex education in schools is found ineffective “when you survey kids and ask, “Where do you get your sexual knowledge? ” they almost never say schools… they say peers, family, media institutions… And given how little sex ed there is, it’s probably not because of schools. Many people support the idea of sex ed, yet they balk at the content. This is one reason there has been so little sex ed in the schools.
It is such a controversial subject” (Goral 1). Places like Planned Parenthood pick up the slack from subordinate school oriented sex education. Everyone knows that sex n is a personal subject, and is tough to talk about in a high school environment. This is no one’s fault. Society deems sex a taboo subject, and everyone listens. The world has worked like this since the beginning of time. Although abortion in some opinions is extremely morally wrong, the citizens of the United States need to realize that not keeping Planned Parenthood will put many people at risk.
The statistics of the services PPFA provides proves this even more, “Patient care provided by Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers follows as: 32% Contraception, 41% STD/STI treatments, 12% Cancer screenings and preventions, 11% other women’s health services, 3% Abortion, and 1% other services. ” (Zott 1). This proves that Planned Parenthood is comprised of way more than abortion, 97% more to be exact. Many have Planned Parenthood’s values misconstrued, and a one sided story is what is infuriating the public “for some people, Planned Parenthood has come to symbolize abortion, which it has provided since 1970.
But in all the rhetoric, facts have sometimes gone missing. For instance, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona declared last year on the floor of the Senate that abortion accounts for “well over 90 percent” of what Planned Parenthood does. The actual figure is 3 percent. If a future Congress and White House were to do so [end PPFA], however, it would drive women once again into the back alleys, without necessarily decreasing the number of abortions” (Zott 1). Although PPFA is associated with abortion that does not mean idding it will solve the abortion problem. Potentially, it could make the problem worse, by forcing women to once again complete illegal abortions on themselves. Planned Parenthood is not an abortion clinic. Planned Parenthood is not evil. Planned Parenthood is not insignificant to this country. But, Planned Parenthood is important, beneficial, and worthy of place in the US. This conflict has been rampant for too long, and now is the time a termination is struck upon it, by keeping Planned Parenthood supported.
