Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides affordable reproductive healthcare created by Margaret Sanger in 1916, has long been disputed because of its stance on currently debated issues. Just months after the organization turned 100, Paul Ryan announced the GOP would make a push to remove its government funding. While many pro-life individuals argue that Planned Parenthood is a group of clinics that stand to only promote and perform abortions, they do much more for individual reproductive rights. It's true that Planned Parenthood performs abortion procedures, but they have a wider variety of services for people seeking reproductive care.

STD tests, various types of cancer detection, and fertility drugs are just a handful of things Planned Parenthood provides for its patients. The organization provides high quality, affordable healthcare services and education to approximately five million people annually. Planned Parenthood reports around 80 percent of their patients every year receive services related to preventing unplanned pregnancy, meaning the doctors employed by Planned Parenthood prescribe and distribute various birth control methods and educate patients on preventative procedures to impede pregnancy. They also report performing more than 4.2 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including over 650,000 HIV screenings.

Cancer screenings, including breast exams for breast cancer and pap smears for cervical cancer, are provided through Planned Parenthood. Roughly 270,000 pap smears and 360,000 breast exams are completed each year. How many abortions does Planned Parenthood perform each year, you ask? The answer lies right around 3 percent of total visits each year, meaning of three million patrons, around 329,000 individuals visited their local clinic for either a consultation or an actual procedure. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood provides educational services and outreach programs to roughly 1.5 million teens and young adults each year.

So, what does this have to do with government funding? The answer is simple. For the people opposed to abortion who see funding cuts to the organization as the solution to outlawing the practice, they must know that this belief is simply incorrect. By removing government funding from the organization, individuals who need affordable healthcare suffer. Government funding makes up 41 percent of Planned Parenthood's yearly funding. When this amount of money is cut from their budget, the number of individuals Planned Parenthood as a whole can service will decrease by close to 50 percent.

It should be dually noted that it is illegal for government funding to be spent on performing abortions, according to the Hyde Amendment first passed in 1976. This piece of law is argued to create an appropriate boundary between private and public donations being spent on a highly controversial procedure.

As previously stated, defunding Planned Parenthood would quickly set up an important healthcare organization for failure. Paul Ryan and other congressional parties have moved to defund Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. However, the money funneled into Planned Parenthood from the government legally cannot be spent on abortions. Therefore, by defunding the healthcare organization, the government would diminish access to affordable cancer screenings, STI tests, and birth control to a large number of American people.

Personal accounts of how Planned Parenthood helped individual patients can be found here.