 |
| From this girl's facebook |
So, I don't know if you guys are also insanely pissed about Susan G. Komen pulling their funding from Planned Parenthood, but I SURE AM.
Here are some links to get you doing things:
The NY Daily News ran this article that's worth reading, and also that has a poll, where "SCREW YOU SGK YOU SHOULD NOT PULL YOUR FUNDING THAT IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND NOT HELPING WOMEN GET SCREENED FOR BREAST CANCER YOU IDIOTIC JERKS" is currently in the lead! Let's keep it there.
Cecile Richards (president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) wrote a piece for HuffPo about three easy things you can do, one of which is the following, most important link:
Sign this completely badass letter. It'll also get you on Planned Parenthood's action email list thing, where they contact you and say, SIGN THIS PETITION! or PLEASE GIVE US FIVE DOLLARS BECAUSE EVERYONE HATES US.
Sadly, right now, I'm getting a lot of emails from Planned Parenthood. Everyone's coming at them right now, and ironically, pretty much all of the people attacking PP don't actually know much about what PP is or does.
Yes, some Planned Parenthood centers provide abortions. But not all of them, not by a long shot. In some states (such as my home state, Utah), none of the Planned Parenthood centers provide abortions. They can provide referrals to places that will provide them, but they don't actually do them. I volunteered in the phone bank at the Salt Lake City Planned Parenthood, and I had to tell a bunch of scared-sounding girls that nobody was going to force them to do anything, and that Planned Parenthood actually has a lot of great counselling options and the people who work there just want what's best for you. They're not going to pressure you to do anything you don't want to do. They're not going to force you to look at pictures of aborted fetuses, like the so-called crisis pregnancy centers run by religious groups that spout lies like it's their job (maybe it is, I don't know, but I do know that getting tested for STIs does not make you more susceptible to them, as I heard one CPC worker say to a teenaged girl).
Also, none of Planned Parenthood's federal or state funding goes towards providing abortions. In my Planned Parenthood Action Council of New York training, the clinic workers explained to us how they had to keep everything separate - for example, if you get a new pack of birth control pills in any of the appointments that are linked to your abortion, pre-, post-, or whenever, those birth control pills have to come from the completely separate stock of abortion-related supplies that are on a separate shelf, with different stickers, and the UPC code has to be entered into a tracking database to prove that the money used to buy it was not from the non-abortion side. It's insane, but they do it, because they have to.
I don't even know how I feel about abortion. I think it's a really tricky moral question, and it's not one I ever want to have to deal with, but even if I don't agree with abortion (I'm not saying I do or I don't - I'm saying it's a really complicated topic), I definitely support Planned Parenthood and the insanely huge range of other things it does.
Planned Parenthood provides counselling. They do STI testing. They do pelvic and breast exams. They do Pap tests. They do sex ed (and yes, they include abstinence). They help parents learn to talk to their kids about sex. They help victims of rape or sexual assault get resources. They provide medically necessary care to women, and they do it on a sliding scale based on income. They don't turn anyone away based on an inability to pay. They have financial counselors to help you figure out how to get the care you need with the money you have (or don't have).
Basically, when I was in high school, and didn't know much about Planned Parenthood, I thought it was where you went to get an abortion. As I got older, learned more about the organization, and volunteered for it in various aspects, I realized that it's so much more than that, and so important to the health and well-being of a whole hell of a lot of people.
Honestly, if you don't know about what Planned Parenthood actually does, take half an hour to read about what they do and what they offer. It's a great organization, and as someone who was in an abusive relationship and was sexually assaulted, all I can say is that I wish I had known sooner the overwhelming amount of help that PP can provide.
/end rant. Back to waxing rhapsodic on pop culture.
