The good and bad of Planned Parenthood
Where will some youth find preventive care?
Imagine being a 24-year-old, fresh out of college, making an hourly wage at a small business that does not offer health insurance and being sexually active.
Also, imagine being 17, 18 and even 19 years old, opting out of college, which also means also opting out of student healthcare, normally provided by colleges and universities.
To anyone in this age group, if you are no longer covered under your parents’ healthcare benefits and you are sexually active, you are exposing yourself to many diseases and life-changing mishaps.
What do you do? Where do you go?
The obvious answer would be to go to any healthcare clinic.
But, the more popular answer for many years has been Planned Parenthood. While we can argue that Planned Parenthood provides a large number of abortions for every race and ethnicity and an even larger number of abortions in impoverished communities, they also provide prophylactics, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, sex education and family planning to those same communities that find it difficult to receive high-quality medical care and effective contraceptives.
We can even argue that this institution was designed by racists to eradicate the Black community, as it is most commonly found in impoverished minority communities, by providing safe and legal abortions.
However, the question is, are abortions a race issue or a socioeconomic issue?
A recent bill in the House of Representatives proposes to strip funding from Planned Parenthood. While, this will definitely lower the abortion rate, or the rate of safe abortions, it will also affect those young adults who seek Planned Parenthood for other services, including cancer screening, HIV testing, breast examinations and providing contraceptives. These are some of the services at Planned Parenthood that young adults seek and that the organization provides.
The institution’s annual report states that only 3 percent of its services last year were abortions, the largest percentage being STD testing and treatment.
Abortions are definitely affecting the Black community, and an increase in sexual education is necessary before it gets worse. But what happens to those young adults who are educated and look to Planned Parenthood for contraceptives and STD testing, among other things?
Once such a bill is put into effect the availability of those services will change. We may then have a group of young adults who seek treatment or other forms of preventive care and are no longer able to easily access them? Would this not create an undesired effect?
In these times when job security is not promised, health insurance is less common, and being uninsured and having difficulty receiving quality healthcare are almost the norm, what is the solution?
DISCLAIMER: The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/or contributing writers are not necessarily those of Our Weekly.
Let me first say that I believe a woman should have the right to an abortion. It is the law, and each person has his or her own decision to make. However, since the court decision, Roe v. Wade, the amount of abortions in this nation have been on a steady rise. Black abortions are now at an epidemic rate, and a lot of God’s children are being snuffed out without a chance of life.
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