Happy Mother’s Day, Planned Parenthood!
You deserve some hard-earned recognition for all you do, especially for mothers.
Your services and your clients have been characterized recently by some outrageous statements. Bad enough was the charge by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., that “90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is provide abortions.” In fact, the opposite is true. Ninety percent of the care Planned Parenthood provides is preventive care, such as annual exams, birth control and cancer screenings.
Even worse was Glenn Beck’s declaration on Fox News that “only hookers use Planned Parenthood.” That’s not only wrong, but insultingly so.
In a recent online article, Clare Coleman, former head of the Planned Parenthood network in New York’s Hudson Valley, asks us to picture a typical Planned Parenthood patient: “You’re a working woman between 20 and 24 with a job you don’t love, a toddler you’d die for, and no health insurance. You live paycheck to paycheck, and you know penny to penny how much cash you’ve got until the end of the month. You’re rushing home on Route 9 to relieve your mom who’s with the kid, and the engine light on the car comes on. You feel a wave of panic. You know you’re always one emergency away [from] everything falling apart.”
Hardly a “hooker.” This young mom could be you, your sister, your daughter, your friend.
On this Mother’s Day, it is important to remember that a considerable number of Planned Parenthood clients are already mothers. They include a mom on the brink of financial uncertainty; a mom trying to leave an abusive partner; a mom suffering with a serious health condition; a mom who has found that her two children have a genetic disorder that she does not want to risk passing on to a third child. The majority of these women will be seeking contraceptive services, not abortions.
Some of the special services that our Colorado Planned Parenthood affiliate (Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, or PPRM) offers mothers or soon-to-be mothers:
• Contraception: Children spaced at least two years apart are more likely to be healthy — and so are their moms. Affordable birth control empowers women to plan their families.
• Prenatal programs: Through a partnership with the Rose Hospital Midwifery Program, PPRM offers case management for at-risk pregnancies. One goal is to reduce low birth weight. Others include healthy habits during and after pregnancy, like good diet and tobacco cessation.
• Childbirth classes: PPRM recently began offering childbirth classes, which are designed to help a woman, and often her partner, feel comfortable and confident about her impending birth.
• Midlife services: These include gynecological exams, cancer screenings and menopause evaluation and monitoring. Mothers are still mothers, even when they are no longer fertile.
Last month I was privileged to tour the new Planned Parenthood Health and Education Center in Colorado Springs. According to the center manager, Madonna Huntingford, a full 91 percent of clients have no form of health insurance to pay for their visits.
To deny public funding to such mothers, prospective mothers, and fathers is perhaps the most anti-motherhood, anti-family action politicians could take.
Yet, those who claim to be “pro-family” regularly do exactly that. Just prior to this Mother’s Day, the Indiana Legislature voted to cut the entire $3 million in federal money that previously had gone to the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics. Shame on them! What a slap in the face to the mothers and prospective mothers of Indiana.
So, thank you, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, not only for your services but for your advocacy. So far you have not only helped keep such dire anti-choice, anti-family measures out of Colorado, but you also have supported pro-motherhood legislation like House Bill 1021 (passed in 2010), which mandates the inclusion of pregnancy in health insurance plans.
Special kudos to you on Mother’s Day.
Dottie Lamm, former first lady of Colorado, mother of two and grandmother of three, participated in the recent capital campaign for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.
