Great.
As if the infamously misogynistic Donald Trump being a legitimate candidate for the U.S. presidency wasn't enough, today Congress has thrown women's health issues out the window. Here are three major reasons why this is utterly horrific, no matter whether you're pro-life or pro-choice.
1. For many poor women, Planned Parenthood is the only option available for cancer screenings, STD/HIV testing, birth control, and other health-related services.
Did you know that only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions?
According to statistical analyses, most of Planned Parenthood's time, energy, and money goes toward STD testing, with contraceptives and cancer screenings following closely behind. Planned Parenthood provides the most essential services for women's health, and at a low cost.
For instance, I don't have insurance. This year I needed to get a follow-up pap smear to last year's, which turned out to be abnormal. Without Planned Parenthood, there would have been absolutely no way for me to get my follow-up pap, because I couldn't have afforded it otherwise. If the issue had turned out to be cervical cancer (it didn't), I wouldn't have even known about it.
The House's decision to defund Planned Parenthood sends this message to me: "We don't care about you or your health. If you wanted your cancer to be detected, well, you should have thought about that before you decided to be poor."
Nobody "decides" to be poor. Defunding Planned Parenthood is basically saying that poor women's lives are worthless.
2. Planned Parenthood is a much-needed safe space in the medical world for trans people.
In a society that upholds the gender binary with staunch conviction, it's difficult for a trans person to feel safe anywhere -- especially in the medical world, where insensitivity about gender identities often triggers dysphoria and other kinds of stress for trans patients. Not to mention, doctors' lack of education about trans health can have medical repercussions.
Planned Parenthood, however, recognizes and welcomes people of all genders. Many clinics even administer hormones, showing that Planned Parenthood has a knowledge of trans health that is severely lacking in the medical world.
Additionally, when I visited the Boulder clinic for my pap smear last month, I filled out a form that distinguished between biological sex organs and gender identity, asking me about both. The form even asked me for my preferred pronouns!
I'm not trans, but I imagine that if I were, I would feel much safer going to Planned Parenthood, rather than to a doctor that misgenders me and/or doesn't understand trans health.
3. Planned Parenthood is the world's largest provider of sex education.
Come on, people. This seems pretty obvious. A sizable chunk of abortions performed in the U.S. are due to lack of -- ahem -- parenthood that is planned. Ring a bell? One of Planned Parenthood's central goals is to educate the public -- particularly adolescents -- about sex, birth control, STDs, etc. Even if you're anti-abortion, you've got to recognize that if more people use birth control, fewer abortions will be performed anyway.
As it stands, sex education in the U.S. is truly awful, because so many schools opt for an "abstinence-only" approach, which is so impractical that it only worsens the rate of teen pregnancy. Planned Parenthood is countering the plague of bullshit that is abstinence-only sex ed, and to take that away is to ask for a world of trouble.
So, thank you, Congress. Thank you for telling me that you don't care if I live or die. Thank you for completely ignoring trans issues, as usual. Thank you for keeping our teenagers at healthy Victorian-era levels of crippling shame. And, finally, thank you for being a bunch of old white men who decided you have dominion over my body.
Wait, did I say thank you? I meant fuck you.
