"Planned Parenthood Federation of America is many things to many people . " That line , found on Planned Parenthood ’s WWW website , is like a shot followed by a tilt of the service that Planned Parenthood put up , indicating that people have many cause to seek out the organization . As one of the country ’s conduct providers of sexual and procreative health , Planned Parenthood furnish everything from folder on sexuality to Pap smears to prophylactics . People who may not want Planned Parenthood ’s lineal services rely upon the organization as a guard dog and a defender of charwoman ’s right .
While the line is seemingly meant to demonstrate the breadth of Planned Parenthood ’s work , it may also be a winking acknowledgement that those same services and stances are the thing that make people see Planned Parenthood as a sign of moral debasement . To some , Planned Parenthood is essentially a governing - funded abortionist that promotessexto kid .
What goes on in other people ’s bedrooms has long been an issue that divides the great unwashed in the United States . What may bother many people about Planned Parenthood is that it operates on the assumption that sex will pass . Teenagers will have sex . marital people will have sexuality . Young singles will have sex with people they just met , and multitude will have sex with their long - condition lovers , who may even be of the same gender . Some will be forced into a intimate encounter against their will if they are raped .
Now , that may not be how everyone would wish the world to lick , but that ’s the way Planned Parenthood sees the Earth working . And as the name implies , the brass believes that sexual acts should n’t have to terminate in thebirthof a tike . Instead , baby should be something that you may plan for by preclude construct . In case that alternative fail , Planned Parenthood upholds and supports a char ’s effectual right to choose an miscarriage by providing the operation . It also do work to assure that a person ’s reproductive organ are kept safe from disease and genus Cancer with extended examination services .
It ’s possible that you read the previous paragraph and felt that multitude should n’t have the chance to choose out of the responsibilities of have sex – most notably , raising a kid . But irrespective of personal beliefs , Planned Parenthood is a big wellness care supplier in this country : One in four American women has used Planned Parenthood ’s services at some stage in her life [ author : Planned Parenthood ] . lease ’s take a closer look at just what services are provided on the next page .
Planned Parenthood Services and Stances
While the Planned Parenthood Federation of America has national headquarters in New York City and Washington , D.C. , the local wellness heart and soul are actually governed and operate by regional affiliates . As of January 2009 , there are approximately 860 wellness shopping centre .
The services provided at local Planned Parenthoods may differ slightly . For example , Planned Parenthood of Western Washington ’s Take Charge program offers residents below the poverty crinkle free annual exams andbirth control pillsfor a yr . Planned Parenthood of Delaware offers free wellness coaching that helps node navigate everything from Medicaid forms to the vitamin aisle . Some Planned Parenthood chapters offer miscarriage training to aesculapian student who do n’t learn the procedure in aesculapian schooltime or infirmary residencies .
Although unlike programs are available in unlike regions , there are , of form , some very common reasons that people go to Planned Parenthood . In 2006 , Planned Parenthood ’s local health pith take in 3.1 million patient . The immense majority of those patient were seek some shape of antifertility military service ; contraceptive method throw up 38 percent of Planned Parenthood ’s services . Planned Parenthood ’s contraceptive selection admit reversible contraception , such as rubber or the birth control pill , as well as more permanent options , such as tubal sterilization and vasectomy . Additionally , Planned Parenthood provides emergency contraception , ordinarily known as the morning - after contraceptive pill .
Testing and treatingsexually transmit diseasesand infections , including HIV , made up 29 percent of Planned Parenthood ’s services in 2006 . malignant neoplastic disease screening and prevention , which consists of Pap mental testing , breast test , colposcopies ( exam for abnormal growths in the uterine cervix ) , LEEP procedures and cyrotherapy ( those last two treat cancerous cells and growths ) , made up 19 pct of Planned Parenthood ’s agenda .
Ten percent of Planned Parenthood ’s service in 2006 were devoted to health avail that included pregnancy tests , prenatal maintenance and infertility handling . Three percent of Planned Parenthood ’s services include abortion subroutine . Though that is a small portion of Planned Parenthood ’s work , that 3 per centum sum 289,750 abortions in 2006 , making Planned Parenthood the enceinte supplier of abortions in the United States . According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops , Planned Parenthood is responsible for for 1 in 5 miscarriage in this country [ source : USCCB ] . referral to adoption delegacy made up less than 1 percent of Planned Parenthood ’s service .
In addition to see patients on - web site , Planned Parenthood provides sexual wellness data online to 1.25 million visitors a month ; that number include visitors to a site geared specifically to stripling , teenwire.com . The Planned Parenthood Federation of America also works with international partners to ensure that women worldwide have the same access to entropy and health upkeep as women in the United States . In 2006 , Planned Parenthood provided $ 2.6 million in grants to cooperator organizations , so that women from Nicaragua to Nepal can find wellness upkeep .
In summation to patient healthcare here and worldwide , Planned Parenthood play as an advocate and lobbyist for reproductive health issues on the local , state and home horizontal surface . Here are a few of Planned Parenthood ’s stances :
As you might imagine , much of Planned Parenthood ’s agenda for advocacy bet on the political mood in the body politic . Of naturally , that ’s not anything new – all of Planned Parenthood ’s story has been shaped by the politics of the clip . Go to the next page for more on Planned Parenthood ’s history .
History of Planned Parenthood
Abortion has always been a controversial result , but at the time of Planned Parenthood ’s innovation , there was more of a fear about birth ascendance . At the twist of the 20th century , the country was regulate by theComstock police , which held that it was illegal to transport obscene materials through the mail . Included on the lean of obscene materials was any info regarding contraceptives or prevent conception .
In the early 1900s , Margaret Sanger , who had seen her own mother givebirthto 18 youngster , saw the misery created by unwanted pregnancies in poor families who could n’t bear out the children . Additionally , cleaning woman were seeking back - alleyway miscarriage that often ended in serious injury or death . recollect that wide availability of contraceptives would prevent miscarriage as well as these large families of unwanted children , Sanger opened the country ’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 . That clinic and Sanger ’s American Birth Control League would eventually become Planned Parenthood .
Sanger and Planned Parenthood play major function in hold and changing the law so that more charwoman had admittance to reproductive wellness precaution . Planned Parenthood even provided the grant that finance the testing of thebirth control pill . When the FDA O.K. its use in 1960 , Planned Parenthood campaigned for its dispersion to women , regardless of their income level . At the time , Planned Parenthood had the presidential brass ’s support . President Lyndon Johnson identified a want of family planning as one of the four most urgent health issue front the country , and his successor , Richard Nixon , establishedTitle Xof the Public Health Services Act , which made contraceptives available even to those without the power to pay . Title X was later expanded to include sex Education Department program for teenager .
As more womanhood take the melodic theme that they had the right hand to choose when to become fraught via the exercise of birth mastery , more the great unwashed started to believe that reliable generative choice also let in the power to can an unwantedpregnancy . Planned Parenthood , which had always been contradict to unsafe abortions , unite the fight to decriminalize abortion , which was realized in the courtroom case Roe v. Wade in 1973 . Since the pillow slip ’s opinion , Planned Parenthood has always fought against any legal violation upon the rightfield provide by the Roe determination . However , that task became difficult three yr afterwards , when miscarriage and reproductive right became a company issue . For the first time , the Republican Party and the Democratic Party establish their first anti - abortion and abortion rights platforms , respectively .
Since that fourth dimension , Planned Parenthood ’s piece of work has been form largely by the political tendency of the president . Title X has been restrain during Republican administrations and expanded during Democratic administrations . In 1984 , theReagan administrationcreated theglobal laugh rule , which pull U.S. kin planning funds from any outside governing body that bring home the bacon selective information on miscarriage to its clients , even if that information was paid for by dissimilar investment trust . This move in effect defunded the International Planned Parenthood Federation ( in 1952 , the Planned Parenthood Federation of America joined with seven other family preparation organisation to create the international organization ) , which refused to comply with the requirements . Three years after , Reagan inaugurate a domestic version of the gag principle , chair a Planned Parenthood medical director to sue on the grounds that a physician ’s right to free speech was violated by the insurance policy . The Supreme Court preserve the gag rule . Since then , the globular and domesticated jape formula have been alternately reverse by Democratic administration and restore by Republican administrations .
Regardless of leadership , however , grassroots efforts support Planned Parenthood ’s missionary work . For example , when abortion clinic brave out violent picketers and when miscarriage providers received death threats ( or in tragical cases , real bullets ) , then volunteers have responded to see patient role into Planned Parenthood ’s clinic . When an elect official says or does something in particular offensive to those who sustain the right to an abortion , then Planned Parenthood is flooded with donation . It ’s safe to say that you will see Planned Parenthood ’s citizen activists on the site whenever there is a scourge to the reproductive issues the organization stands for .
critic claim that Planned Parenthood is too jumpy about some of these return and works to block ruling that the bulk of the great unwashed in an area may plunk for , such as compulsory 24 - minute wait periods before an abortion . On the next varlet , we ’ll take a feeling at the other unfavorable judgment that has been leveled at Planned Parenthood .
Planned Parenthood Criticism
You do n’t become the country ’s leading miscarriage provider without facing criticism along the way . Some critics arrogate that " exemption of choice " enforce only as long as Planned Parenthood agrees with your choice . The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is just one chemical group that points to the highly gloomy issue of adoption referrals that Planned Parenthood make in comparison to the abortions it performs . Many anti - abortion radical would prefer that Planned Parenthood provide more counseling prior to an abortion , include showing the patient a 3 - five hundred sonogram , the belief being that it ’s concentrated for a fair sex to go through with an abortion when she sees what is grow inside her .
to boot , critic lay claim that Planned Parenthood does n’t support the choice that medical professional have to practise aright of conscience , or the rightfield to turn down to do something on the caper that go against their moral beliefs . This includes everyone from nurse who wo n’t attend to abortions to pill roller that wo n’t dispense parking brake contraceptive method . This right of conscience is legally protected , which Planned Parenthood has claimed is an unfair claim on a woman ’s physical structure by the government .
Critics , however , would say that even though Planned Parenthood reject even the slightest governmental interference in condition of a fair sex ’s body , the organization certainly does n’t have a trouble taking the governance ’s money . One - third of Planned Parenthood ’s taxation come from administration grants ( the relaxation is principally from fees for service rendered at the wellness center and from individual donations ) . Planned Parenthood has made a lucre for many years and also maintains status as a tax - exempt governance .
Many conservatives are troubled by their tax dollar fund Planned Parenthood , but also by the fact that Planned Parenthood ’s success and future tax - nontaxable earnings are strung-out , fundamentally , on immature people havingsexand then seeking birth restraint or an abortion . Some detractors have even made the argument that Planned Parenthood encourages teens to have sex without understanding the consequences , if only because they make the consequences erasable by miscarriage . Planned Parenthood also has create sexual urge education curriculums that have made their way into the hands of formation like the Girl Scouts and the Boys and Girls Club ; when some parent get a whiff of a child being told about condoms and birth ascendence instead of about abstention , they pull their children out of the programs .
Many anti - abortion group have also conducted undercover confidence trick to see how Planned Parenthood work from the inside . For model , in Indiana in 2008 , a university student posed as a 13 - year - old girl worried about a potential pregnancy with her 31 - year - older boyfriend . A hidden videotape of the encounter showed a Planned Parenthood nurse asking the girl to stop recite her the ages of those call for so that she would n’t have to cover the couple to Child Protective Services for statutory rape [ generator : Morton ] . The same twelvemonth , in Idaho , another anti - abortion group made tape phone call to a Planned Parenthood office asking if donations could be allow to fund black women ’s abortions , because , as the caller put it , " the less pitch-black kids out there the better " [ rootage : Forester ] . According to the recording , Planned Parenthood ’s reply was flighty laughter , followed by " Understandable , understandable " [ source : Forester ] .
The issuing of eugenics has long been an egress for Planned Parenthood . When Margaret Sanger was run for the use of birth command in the early 1900s , she made many statements about how crowdedpopulationswould be better off without adding undesirable and unfit baby into the intermixture ( babies , that , it should be note , in the main come from lower division family ) . Planned Parenthood has never repudiated Margaret Sanger or her support of eugenics , and the melodic theme of some babies being unsound for this world is abhorrent to many . Also abhorrent to some was Planned Parenthood ’s go of free birth control condition and abortions in the aftermath of the events of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina , on the basis that families may not be quick for the addition of a new baby after losing a loved one or all their belongings [ rootage : Braun ] .
Still , while some multitude chance Planned Parenthood distasteful , there are trillion worldwide who rely on Planned Parenthood as a means for getting nascency ascendency and prevent unintended births . For more on family planning and other women ’s health issue , see the links on the next Thomas Nelson Page .
