My Planned Parenthood/Brewer Rant

Yesterday, I linked this article to my Facebook:
http://news.yahoo.com/abortion-battle-planned-parenthood-sues-arizona-003707537.html

It discusses the law passed by Jan Brewer to block funding to Planned Parenthood from the state. In response, Planned Parenthood is suing the state of Arizona (and five others that have followed suit by pulling or blocking funding.)

Here's my problem with this whole situation: Leatherface (and those that support this legislation) is basing this decision on moral grounds because Planned Parenthood offers abortion services. In fact, a whopping 3% of their clientele require abortions or abortion referrals. Three percent.

I have personal experience with Planned Parenthood. When I was active with my church group, there were regular protests and rallies against PP. This was in the late '80's when the ProLife movement was really gaining steam. My uneducated self only knew that PP was 'bad' and associated with the dark, seedy abortion clinics of my imagination. Evil lived there!

Fast Forward to my Senior year of High School... I had just turned 18 and a home pregnancy test confirmed that I was pregnant. Without knowing where to go or what to do, my boyfriend and I ditched school one afternoon to drive to the PP in Phoenix (where no one was likely to see or recognize me).
Once there, they ushered me into a room where they administered a pregnancy test (again, positive) and set about asking me a series of questions about my support system at home, my academic and work history, my economic and financial plans. After answering their survey, my boyfriend and two counselors joined me in a homey little conference room where we discussed my personal options. I knew abortion was not a choice for me... and because I didn't bring it up, it was NEVER discussed. Not once. Adoption was discussed. Keeping the baby was discussed. But I wasn't pushed for any kind of 'decision' in that room and when I left, I had an armful of pamphlets for adoption and a stack of coupons for diapers and baby formula, and a sample bottle of prenatal vitamins to get me through until I could arrange for legitimate OB/GYN care - which was encouraged.
Since then, I've been without health insurance on a number of occasions (such is the case when you work as a free-lance artist) and during many of those times, I've relied on PP for birth control, my yearly lady-exams, as well as breast cancer screenings and specialty referrals - all on a sliding scale directly proportional to my income.

I am the 97%.

My daughter is a Senior in High School this year. I'm thrilled to death that she can be covered under her dad's health insurance for several more years. (A luxury I didn't have at 18, even though I was still a student - my mother's insurance rejected my prenatal care and so the state paid for it entirely under AHCCCS.) So, in my case, the ACA would have helped me out and actually saved taxpayer money - which is why I roll my eyes at those who rail against it.

If my daughter were stuck in college with no health insurance and no money and needed to get her monthly pills or a well-exam, PP is precisely where I'd refer her.

She is the 97%.

I don't understand the mentality.
It's like saying you can't support a restaurant because there's a dish on the menu that you can't eat.
Or calling for the closing of all pharmacies because they are stocked with the 'morning after pill'.
Really? So no one will get their Cumadin, or their Darvocet? Screw the people who need their inhalers refilled or their oxygen tanks replenished. Evil lives here!!

No one says you have to agree with it. Hell, I don't agree with the idea of getting wasted every night 'til you puke... even though it's perfectly legal.

There's a sense of entitlement that permeated our moral fabric and resulted in the 'right' to reject anything that isn't part of our chosen lifestyle, and I fear it has affected our common sense.

We cannot rid this world of all that is undesirable or wicked. We cannot sanitize it to everyone's liking. There will always be poverty. There will always be war. There will always be starvation and oppression. There will always be serious issues requiring serious debate and laws to 'protect and serve' the people of this nation and this planet. They will not always 'protect and serve' you. Sometimes they protect and serve your neighbor. Sometimes a corporation.

What I don't understand is why we can't support an entity or organization that is 97% "good", but rather must do away with it because it is 3% "bad"? Where do we make that distinction? Based on what is undesirable to us?

I'll tell you this... if I used that rule to toss out students, I'd have no one left to teach!! My theatre kids are amazing, creative, talented, energetic little creatures... but as teenagers, they run about a 95/5 ratio of helpful qualities to undesirable ones. I'm sure that I run at about 80/20... some days, I'm straight-up 50/50.

In the meantime, the law doesn't go into effect until August 2nd, so go get your well checks now. Who knows what will come of these services in the near future. Also, AA Women's Health at 4135 Power Rd. in Mesa is holding a 'Well Women's Care Clinic' on July 21st at 8am - offering free services for the day to promote their new facility... presumably to the 97%.

Thank you, Jan Brewer, for saving us from evil - and ourselves - by limiting the funding available for women's services. I'm sure that someone out there will look back at this and say, "Well, that's the smartest thing she ever did."

Someone.

But not the 97%.