Seven years ago, when I was 20 years old, I was in an abusive relationship and became pregnant. As someone who’s been affected by poverty, homelessness and mental health struggles, I knew there was no way I could provide for a child financially or emotionally. I reached out to several clinics, including one that I later discovered was a crisis pregnancy center — a type of organization masquerading as a health care provider that spreads misinformation about abortion — where I was continuously steered away from the option to abort. The lack of respectful, empathetic care made me feel silenced and guilty.
I turned to my local Planned Parenthood health center, where I was greeted by a kind and informative staff that asked about my needs, offered tangible resources, and educated me about all of my reproductive options, including abortion. After a few prenatal checkups, I made the impossible decision to keep the pregnancy and put my child up for adoption after her birth.
This wasn’t my first experience with Planned Parenthood. Five years earlier, I walked into a Planned Parenthood health center and was screened and treated for an STI that could have left me infertile. Today, I can confidently say that without the reproductive health care I received at Planned Parenthood through Medicaid, I would have had no viable resources to keep myself healthy, and to give my daughter’s adoptive parents a gorgeous child.
My story is not unusual. I am among the one in four people who have been to a Planned Parenthood health center for care, and I’m speaking out now because Republicans in Congress are trying to “defund” Planned Parenthood. A bill that would cut Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid program is moving through Congress right now — a naked attempt to revoke the choice of the constituency who have made it clear we do not support these attacks on comprehensive public health care, only to expand the interests of the 1 percent who do not rely on it to live.
Republicans want to punish Planned Parenthood for providing the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion. But let’s be honest about who is going to be hurt most: patients who have nowhere else to turn. The nearly 600 Planned Parenthood health centers across the country are not given a blank check by the federal government. Rather, Planned Parenthood health centers, like other qualified providers, are reimbursed for the services they provide their patients, more than half of whom get health care through Medicaid. Abortion, by law, is not reimbursable except in extremely narrow circumstances.
If Republicans successfully “defund” Planned Parenthood, health centers will no longer be able to accept Medicaid for the care that I received, which includes basic reproductive health services like birth control, cancer screenings, wellness exams and STI testing. The consequences would be devastating for the more than 2 million patientswho turn to Planned Parenthood for care every year. Health centers would have to close.
The sad truth is, without Planned Parenthood, I don’t know where I would’ve gone for STI testing and treatment, and prenatal care. Sixty-four percent of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural, medically underserved areas, or areas with health professional shortages — without them, entire communities and regions across the country would be left with no options for high-quality, affordable and comprehensive reproductive health care.
Whenever people who don’t like abortion go after Planned Parenthood, I think about the care I got there. The only thing that made my pregnancy survivable was the fact that I had agency over my decision, and the support and high-quality care I needed. Planned Parenthood was there for me, and now I’m standing up for Planned Parenthood with a message to Congress: Do not defund the life-saving work of Planned Parenthood. If lawmakers really cared about the people they were elected to serve, they’d stop risking our lives to fund the trillion-dollar war machine and pay for billionaires’ tax cuts.
Kas Howar is a Planned Parenthood Action Fund patient advocate from Dayton, Ohio.
