There are thousands of reasons why those who live and raise their families in the Central Valley should be alarmed by the House of Representatives' attempt to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood -- 43,495 reasons, to be exact. That's the number of mostly low-income women, men and teens that visited Planned Parenthood Mar Monte health centers last year in Fresno, Bakersfield and Modesto alone -- and received health care, including breast-cancer screenings, cholesterol checks and family planning services.
In many cases, these working-poor women and their families wouldn't have been able to receive such essential services anywhere else. Close to two-thirds of patients were below the federal poverty level, and over 55 percent reported having lost jobs, work hours or health insurance over the past year.
The overwhelming majority of services for our patients in the Central Valley -- more than half of whom are Latino -- were for basic health check-ups and contraception. The teens who attended our education programs learned how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and how to avoid unintended pregnancies. That's especially significant in the Central Valley, where teen pregnancy rates are above the national average. Those numbers have been declining in the past two years, and we are proud to have played a role in this progress. But our ability to provide these services will be severely limited if Planned Parenthood is cut off from all federal funding, and we risk having to close our doors.
The ultra-conservative leaders in the House claim that their effort to de-fund Planned Parenthood, in an amendment they attached to a federal budget bill, will stop any taxpayer money from going toward abortion. But for the last 35 years, federal dollars have been prohibited from being used for abortion -- which represents only a tiny percentage of the services Planned Parenthood provides. The truth is that the only services that would be cut if the organization loses government funding are family planning -- which prevents abortions -- and primary health care that protects the lives of women and children who may have no other medical services to turn to.