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At the rally for Planned Parenthood, thoughts of ‘my sisters’ elsewhere

BY SUSIE WILSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SEX MATTERS

Planned Parenthood of New York City held a rally last Saturday to protest the recent removal of $75 million in federal funds for Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s 84 national affiliates and $317 million in Title X funds in the Republican FY 2011 budget revision. I’ve attended rallies for reproductive health issues since my first mass protest in 1989 in Washington, D.C., where I joined hundreds of thousands of women fighting for their rights. The decision to join the group in Lower Manhattan felt as natural to me as putting on a well-loved pair of jeans.

My daughter, 44, joined me with a good friend from her grade school days, and together we journeyed by subway to Foley Square in Lower Manhattan across from the Court House for the two-hour midday rally. Planned Parenthood wanted Congress to hear from “supporters of women’s health…speaking out loud and clear to protect federal funding for…birth control and other necessary, lifesaving care that women need and deserve.” (Five Planned Parenthood affiliates and many health centers provide family planning services in New Jersey, and I’m certain they were well represented at the event.)

As I stood looking into the afternoon sun, I read the words carved in stone on the front of the imposing classical Court House: “The Administration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government.”

I thought to myself, Yes, this is a rally about justice ---- for women.

On my way into the city, I read a brief history about Planned Parenthood that gave me some context for the serious situation in which it presently finds itself. Planned Parenthood’s beginnings date to 1916 when Margaret Sanger opened America’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York — across the river, fittingly, from where hundreds of women and men gathered on Saturday to defend her legacy.

Sanger’s dedication to providing all women with the opportunity to control the number of children they bear by giving them access to birth control stemmed from what she learned at home: Her mother had 18 pregnancies, bore 11 children, and died in 1899 at the age of 40. Working as a nurse with poor, immigrant families on the Lower East Side, Sanger saw the misery, sickness, and death that resulted from unwanted pregnancy and illegal abortion. The two organizations she later founded — the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and the American Birth Control League — eventually became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. The development of statewide affiliates followed.

From its inception, Planned Parenthood’s mission has been to offer access to family planning for all women — rich, middle class, and poor in the U.S. and worldwide. In 1966, the federal government began to support their efforts. As a key element of the War on Poverty, President Lyndon Johnson zeroed in on “lack of family planning as one of four critical health problems facing the nations.” As a result, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and amendments to the Social Security Act provided federal funds for contraceptives and family planning services for low-income, married women for the first time to state clinics and nonprofits like Planned Parenthood.

Next, a Republican president showed his support for federal funding for family planning. President Nixon signed Title X of the Public Health Service Act into law, which made contraceptives available regardless of income. Congress showed its support by broadening Title X and increasing federal funding for community-based sex education programs and preventive services to unmarried teenagers at risk of pregnancy.

Title X-funded clinics and nonprofits, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, reach 4.7 million women every year to provide not only contraceptives, but also education to prevent unplanned pregnancies. (In recent years, Planned Parenthood has expanded its mission to include breast and pelvic exams, and STD and cancer screenings for adult women and men and teens.)

In 1973, Roe v. Wade legalized a woman’s “right to choose abortion” up to 22 weeks, or later if her life or health are endangered as part of “the constitutional right to privacy.” Some affiliates offer surgical and medical abortions to adult and teen women. (In some states, teens must receive parental or a judge’s consent before undergoing the procedure.)

Providing legal abortions is a small part of the work of Planned Parenthood clinics, despite the rhetoric of the right wing. The organization’s mission is to prevent the need for the procedure with education and services.

There have been increasing efforts — starting with Ronald Regan and primarily under Republican administrations — to reduce family planning funding, restrict abortion access, and fund abstinence-only-until-marriage instruction for teens. But until last week’s action by the House of Representatives, no legislative body has voted to eliminate all funding for Title X and Planned Parenthood.

Actually, until this action, the outlook had been rosy: The 110th Congress increased domestic family planning funding, decreased funds for failed abstinence-only sex ed programs, and approved the largest increase ever to international family planning funding.

I was glad to have this background at the rally as I stood under a blue sky and listened to the many speakers motivate us to keep pressure on our senators (who will now vote on the bill), because, as actress and speaker Kathleen Turner said, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York assured us that the Republican budget is “dead on arrival” at the Senate, but urged us to take nothing for granted.

I was pleased that most of the women present were far closer to my daughter’s age than mine and that I saw more men were present than at previous rallies for women’s reproductive rights. I took both as good omens for the future. People put their feelings onto their homemade signs; my favorite was one of the simplest: Planned Parenthood is Better than Unplanned Parenthood.

Who could disagree? Wouldn’t abolishing funding for birth control services only add to the number of unplanned pregnancies? Wouldn’t unplanned pregnancies lead to more abortions? I learned years ago that for every $1 spent on family planning, $4 is saved in expenses incurred in Medicaid public health costs. Is that math too basic for the Republican members of the House, hell-bent on cutting spending?