Planned Parenthood and the option to have an abortion, have long been a topic of political discussion in this decade. However, on Friday, in a vote 240-185, the House passed an amendment to de-fund Planned Parenthood. This monumental decision will change our country and affect thousands of women nationwide.

Growing up, I went to a high school in a decent sized Texas city. In high school, I was taught abstinence - only sex education like many Texas students and I saw how a lack of sex education was detrimental to the student body as a whole. Many of my fellow students were unable to access the information they needed about contraception and as a result, many students were faced with the choice of having a child too young, or terminating an unwanted pregnancy.

What Planned Parenthood offers is the education that schools don't.

Planned Parenthood's de-funding will deny thousands of women access to various types of contraception and education about the contraception they choose. What Planned Parenthood mostly does is provide women with education about every form of contraception and provides them with the contraception. In addition, the lack of affordable or free education about contraception will lead women to have to make a choice between abortion or an accidental child, causing an increase in abortion. The exact opposite of what those in support of the amendment would want. Yet, without Planned Parenthood, a woman's right to her choice of an abortion would become difficult as well.

Planned Parenthood will no longer be available to offer termination services, meaning access to safe abortions will be limited. This in turn will cause a rise in unwanted pregnancies carried to term and cause thousands of women's lives to completely change. Also, Planned Parenthood offers hundreds of women a day nationwide the opportunity to be checked for STDs and STIs. Defunding this service, as well, will cause a rise in infections and STD's nationwide because women have no access to testing centers. Just look at what happened in Scott County, Indiana when they shut down their rural Planned Parenthood clinics.

It seems that those in the House against abortion are also against contraception methods. Unfortunately, we cannot stop an entire nation from making the decision to have sex. Planned Parenthood cannot be de-funded without causing an entire slew of other issues for our nation to face in the future.

The unfortunate truth of this decision is, our nation will become my high school on a larger scale and thousands of women will suffer in the 1950's era institution of this amendment.

Women deserve the right to contraception, STD testing, and safe abortions because it is their life that is affected when a child is conceived.