Protect Planned Parenthood

By Megan Graves, Columnist

It seems like every day something happens that makes me want to write ten pages about why it’s wrong. For reference, I write these articles about a week before you read them, so there’s still a week’s worth of bullshit that hasn’t even happened yet.

It’s terrifying how difficult it is to keep up with everything.What’s worse is that by the time I do write about something, it’s already “old news”.

This is being done on purpose. If one executive order is signed, we have time to question it, analyze it, and try to change it. If ten executive orders are signed, some will either end up waiting weeks before they’re properly analyzed, or they may fall through the cracks completely.

We can’t forget that just days after millions of women world-wide marched for their rights, Trump banned the U.S. from funding any other country’s women’s health care organizations if they offered or even just discussed abortion.

We’ve gotten to a point where simply saying “women’s health care” is politically charged, even though it’s a basic necessity with no political agenda. As Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood puts it, “the women who come to Planned Parenthood, they are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, they’re not coming to make a political statement, they’re coming because they need high-quality, affordable health care, and that’s what we provide.”

While that statement is in regards to Planned Parenthood specifically, it stands for any other women’s healthcare organization that is or is being threatened to be defunded.

If a woman needs healthcare, including abortion, she isn’t doing it to make a statement or prove a point. She’s doing it because it’s the best, healthiest option for her.

I know this is a heated topic, but we live in a reality where nothing will ever stop abortions from happening. They can be greatly lowered, however, by easier access to birth control and information about reproductive health, which is exactly what the organizations being defunded provide.

It’s also important to note that no federal funding goes towards abortion whatsoever. It hasn’t since the 70’s.

It’s so backwards to defund these places if the goal here really is to lower the abortion rate. If you look at what these organizations provide, abortion isn’t the main service to begin with. More commonly, they provide cancer screenings, pre-natal care, sex education, and pap smears.

Cutting their funding won’t end abortion, it will quite literally kill women.

Not only will it take away access to the care I listed above, it will cause women who are seeking abortion to go about it in dangerous, even deadly ways. If we really were fighting for life in these scenarios, we would fight for such procedures to be done as cleanly and as safely as possible. We would increase funding so that more women could gain access to birth control. We would not cut funding.

I understand that some of you are and will always be against abortion. There’s nothing wrong with that. You have control over your body and you can choose to control it however you need to. Where the problem lies is when we tell other women they can’t do something that can be life-saving because we simply don’t like it.

The problem grows when we limit health care in general because the organization in question offers information and access to abortion as a viable, medical option.

I’m not telling you that you have to like abortion. I’d argue that nobody “likes” it. But I urge you to realize that if Planned Parenthood gets defunded, if Roe v. Wade gets overturned, it will not end abortion. It will further police women’s bodies and it will take away the independence that comes with being in control of, if nothing else, your own body.

It will take away access to important screenings like mammograms and pap smears from thousands of women. It already has. It isn’t just a few women that rely on these organizations, it’s thousands who cannot receive healthcare anywhere else.

It will endanger women who need to have an abortion.

I know that pro-life beliefs come from a place of kindness and empathy. But if things keep going in the direction that they are, thousands of women will face serious health risks and even lose their lives.

Please. Stop politicizing women’s bodies, and let us have access to the care we need.

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