If only they knew . . .

I wish the Congressmen who voted to defund Planned Parenthood knew what I knew. If they did--and they honestly cared about women's health and children--they'd be hard-pressed to vote against Planned Parenthood.

I vividly remember the time I spent there for my social work practicum. I went in a bit uncomfortable with knowledge that the clinic referred women for abortions. I quickly learned that, far from its reputation among those who don't know, Planned Parenthood does not encourage abortions. Rather, for women facing an unwanted pregnancy, abortion was an option, as was continuing the pregnancy and keeping the baby , and as was continuing the pregnancy and putting the baby up for adoption. I was trained to respect the client's choice. If she had no interest in an abortion, then our discussion turned to services to make sure she had a healthy pregnancy and services to help her thereafter, whether with the adoption or raising her child.

While there, I learned how, for many women, Planned Parenthood was their only health care provider. For many, if Planned Parenthood had not been available to do their annual exam, including a Pap test and breast examination, they would not have had those services. I learned that many women looked to Planned Parenthood for choices about contraceptive methods and provision of their Pills, IUDs, diaphragms, and condoms so that they might never need to consider an abortion.

Throughout the time I was there, I was always saddened when a woman chose abortion over adoption or keeping the child. But the decision to undergo an abortion was only very very rarely reached lightly. For even those women who resolutely opted for an abortion from the outset, it was clear that they had reached their decision only after gut-wrenching consideration and discussion with those closest to them. Yes, there were women who cavelierly approached abortion as nothing more than another birth control method, but those women were rare, and deserving of no more distain than woman who cavelierly create broods of children, fathered by different men, which neither they nor the fathers can support.

I spent an awful lot of time educating clients on different contraceptive methods or preparing them for what to expect as they underwent their first pelvic exam. I talked to a lot of high school girls who felt pressured by their boyfriends to have sex, and we discussed healthy relationships and strategies for dealing with peer pressure, things I learned during my training.

I learned that far from being an abortion-mill, Planned Parenthood was an agency that sought to promote women's health and to protect a woman's autonomy.

One woman's story in particular has stayed with me over the years. She'd returned to the clinic for her post-abortion exam, and her first stop was a visit with me. I knew from the outset that she was not okay. As we talked, she explained that her pregnancy was the result of an extramarital affair. She had given birth to one child with congenital birth defects, which prompted her husband to have a vasectomy. Thus, when she became pregnant again, there was little doubt that it was not her husband's child. She explained that she was very torn about having the abortion: one the one hand, she wanted to have a healthy baby, but the reality was that her husband would have left her once he found out about the affair, and she would not have been able to care for her special needs child alone. She reluctantly opted for an abortion. Maybe she should have thought about the consequences--the choice--before she had her affair, but that's beside the point. What was the right choice in this circumstance? Who's to decide? I can only say that it was a decision that only she could make because only she would have to live with the consequences.  Having made the decision to have an abortion, can anyone honestly say that she should have had to entrust her health to some illegal provider of abortions?  I think the answer is self-evident.

I have no doubt in my mind that abortion is always a tragedy; it is evidence of a failure somewhere along the way, but the answer is not to defund an agency simply because it provides a service.