It’s that time of year when politicians try to convince us to support them by telling us all the things they stand for and stand against. A topic that is ALWAYS brought up is Planned Parenthood and if they are elected, whether or not they plan to keep funding it. Here’s why you should care about the defunding of planned parenthood and what it could mean for you.
Whether you’ve been inside a Planned Parenthood or not they are known for one thing: providing abortions for girls that are not ready or do not want to have a child, but they do so much more than that. Planned Parenthood offers affordable birth control, STD screenings, and Pap smears for little to not cost, which means that Planned Parenthoods in low income areas could greatly benefit these communities. Even more so, they help girls who don’t know where to go to make sure that they are safe and okay. They also provide services for men like routine checkups and more serious examinations to address sexual dysfunction and cancer. Many Planned Parenthoods even offer LGBTQ+ services which include hormone therapy for transgender patients.
Defunding Planned Parenthood could mean that people who normally cannot afford these services will no longer be able to get them and will no longer have the help they need.
Furthermore, once Planned Parenthoods are gone the number of unsafe abortions will rise because girls with no where else to turn will attempt to do it on their own.
But Planned Parenthood being defunded is an even bigger problem than the health services simply not being provided anymore; it’s a message to women that their bodies aren’t only theirs. Whether Planned Parenthood helps with affordable cancer screenings or not, the biggest factor in the talk about whether they deserve money is the fact that they offer abortions, which is a woman’s right. Planned Parenthood being defunded could mean more and more deaths, whether from risky abortions or cancer that wasn’t caught in time because alternative healthcare was too much money.