OPINION BY HILARY PADAVAN
Planned Parenthood has recently come under fire from many politicians who are dead-set on defunding the program because they don’t agree that abortions should be legal. They paint the company as a baby-killing, greedy, immoral organization that takes advantage of vulnerable young women.
Such stigma against Planned Parenthood frightens me because it just shows how uneducated the general population is on what Planned Parenthood really does. They use abortion as an excuse to attack women’s health organizations and are trying to push an agenda that would leave millions of men and women who can’t otherwise afford health care out of luck.
Abortion is only one small fraction of what Planned Parenthood does for men and women all across the nation. The majority of what Planned Parenthood does is screen for STIs/STDs and cancers and give out contraceptives to keep sex safe for those who perhaps don’t have access to these services elsewhere. A
bortions only account for 3% of Planned Parenthood’s total provided services—in fact, Planned Parenthood is focused more on the education of young people to prevent unwanted pregnancies from ever happening rather than terminating current pregnancies. They provide anonymous sex education in a country that seems to want to tip-toe around the subject and promote abstinence only sex “education” that has been shown to not keep teens from having sex.
This isn’t to say, however, that I think that people who believe abortion is wrong are uneducated and ignorant. Not at all, actually. These conversations are important to have to open up people to other perspectives on such issues, but taking these ideas a step further and trying to force them on everyone is where I draw the line.
You can’t force people to believe and practice what you do just because you feel it’s “right” for them to do so. Unless you need their services, you should have no say in their funding because you don’t rely on them—you don’t know the full, personal effects defunding this company would have on millions of people. Protest abortions all you want, bring up these topics and discuss them with others, but leave Planned Parenthood out of it.
