ALL RNs are required by law to report suspected abuse, so if someone has not, not only would PP be liable, but the State BON could well get involved (if it was a nurse who failed to report), with the RN being censured or having his/her license revoked. Shame if it’s not happening.
There’s one in San Francisco. The 40 Days protest also promises to go door to door to our neighbors telling them why we shouldn’t be here providing these services.
PP is all over the news in my neck of the woods these days, over their opening a clinic in the next town. Apparently, what they did was to use another name - which was something like “Gemini Healthcare”. People are up in arms over their ‘deception’, and managing to completely miss the main issue, which SHOULD be whether or not their services are needed.
Keep up your good work, you’re needed.
Great work! Thank you!
Do women still get those five thin straws of birth control inserted under their skin? My son’s girlfriend used it years ago and was happy with it. But I don’t hear anyone talk about that one anymore.
I also wanted to chime in to say I’ve used your services (long ago) and you were a lifesaver to me.
Also, for any anti-abortion people reading this, I’d like to point out that you NEVER recommended what do to about pregnancy. In fact, after I expressed an interest in having an abortion, the counselor asked me “Have you considered the alternatives?” To which I looked at her like she had two heads, I was wondering if there was some new form of abortion. So I asked her what she meant, and she meant carrying the baby and giving it up for adoption.
There was no pressure on what decision to make. Just being there for people in need, with very big decisions to make. Thank you.
Agreed with this 100%. PP was pretty much my sole source of medical care from age 18-20, when I had no medical insurance.
“Ask the Planned Parenthood Nurse?”
No, I’d like to THANK the Planned Parenthood nurse! PP was there for me when I was young, irresponsible and too chicken to talk to my family doctor. They educated me, helped me without judging me, and helped me to make more responsible reproductive choices.
You are doing such a great thing for women. Thanks a bunch.
Another thank you to Planned Parenthood through you. I used it when I was a student, all through my 20’s and 30’s, in different cities and different states, and always had good care from caring people. Fortunately, the anti-choice people weren’t so militant and active in those days, so there weren’t picket lines to walk through nor was there bulletproof glass or buzzers. The whole concept of needing bullet-proof glass in a health care center still shocks me.
Bless you and your co-workers. You do good and important work in the world.
It sounds like Mr. Moto is talking about the “stings” that certain anti-abortion groups did, calling Planned Parenthood clinics and offering a story similar to “I’m underage and pregnant and my boyfriend is eighteen… if I come in, will you call my parents?” Lots of PP staff feel conflicted about breaching of confidentiality in mutually consensual relationships. Some of them downplayed the possibility of reporting the patient to the state, and this got reported as “Planned Parenthood protects child molesters!!!”
I’d like to answer another question if I may, I worked at Planned Parenthood for three years and loved, really, deeply loved the work. Eventually our clinic got bogged down in bureaucracy and patient services started to suffer due to internal politics, so I bailed and left soul-fulfilling work for wallet-fulfilling work.
If you mean “services” in a general sense, I would say an extremely small percentage.In the first place, pregnancy counseling was only one of the services offered. The overwhelming majority of women I saw were there with the specific intention to avoid ever having to face the question of pregnancy in the first place. Tangentially, many patients I saw expressed anti-abortion sentiments in their own lives (ie “I support keeping abortions legal, but would never have one myself”) and indeed many women facing a positive pregnancy test said to me “I don’t believe in abortion and never thought I would have one if I got pregnant.” Some of them had abortions and some of them didn’t.
My clinic was a full-service clinic, meaning we not only provided hormonal and non-hormonal contraceptives, but a huge range of standard reproductive-related health care for men, women, and intersex folks. Of the pregnancy counseling I did, perhaps 3-5 visits per day, average, most didn’t know what they wanted to do, and were simply there to hear their options presented to them in a caring and non-judgmental way.
One thing that you might find interesting: we were required to present all three options in every counsel, unless someone specifically declined comprehensive options counselling–meaning that unless you said to me “I’m against abortion and just want information on prenatal care” or “I absolutely cannot and will not have this baby and refuse to hear anything but how to get an abortion” I would discuss parenting, adoption, and abortion with you in absolutely equal measure. Every single options counsel I ever did started with the questions “Have you considered your options? What are your thoughts about what you’d like to do?” I’d say the responses leaning towards parenting and abortion came in equal measure, but only twice in the thousands and thousands of visits I did, did anyone ever ask me about adoption before I brought it up.
Thanks again for your work, Maureen.
I’ll join the chorus thanking the PP folks.
During my college years (after I aged off of my parents’ health insurance but before I finally got a job that provided health insurance of my own - about 6 years, all told), Planned Parenthood was essentially my only medical care. Granted, it was a yearly visit for the dreaded check-up/pap and renewal of my birth control, but it was also a PP doctor who diagnosed me with a well and truly dangerous medical condition before it killed me during a routine check-up.* It was also a PP doctor (and her staff) who figured out how I could get treatment for my life-threatening illness - and who *made sure * I didn’t slide through the cracks. PP almost certainly saved my life.
I never went to PP seeking an abortion (wouldn’t have considered one for myself even had I had an unplanned pregnancy). Hell, I never even went to PP seeking birth control (at my first visit, I had a long-standing prescription for birth control - I was mostly there for the yearly check-up). I know for a fact that at least half of the women I knew at that time (those not covered by medical insurance, actually!) used Planned Parenthood as their basic medical provider.
I used to plan my visits to allow me to arrive an hour or so early, so I could spend some time in the parking lot explaining repeatedly to protesters that I was not seeking an abortion because I wasn’t pregnant and that I was at PP in order to attend to my yearly gyn exam because I didn’t have health insurance and my friendly, local PP clinic would give me a yearly check-up for 35 dollars. I figured letting the protesters know that PP offered many, many services to the community other than early-pregnancy counseling was the least I could do. Some of the protesters at least weren’t aware of the fact. They had assumed that all PP did was pressure girls into abortions.
*Hypertension, if anyone is interested. In the 195/150 range. Thought to be the end result of a truly outstanding amount of stress, grossly insufficient sleep, and bugetarily-mandated poor diet, exacerbated by a rare side-effect of properly-prescribed medication. At age 27 and in otherwise excellent physical health, hypertension wasn’t a problem anyone not being thorough would have been looking for.
It doesn’t seem fair that women and children seem to be using PP as a form of primary medical care. Are men allowed that service?
FWIW, as a pro-life person, I wouldn’t give to PP no matter how much other clinical work they did besides abortions. In fact, I refuse to donate to United Way because they give money to PP, and although they can say “They money you give isn’t used to provide abortions”, to me that just means it frees up other money they have to fund that service. Likewise, even if I would direct my money to UW to other agencies, that doesn’t change the amount that is provided to PP. The only way I can do that, in my small way, is to lessen the overall donation that UW receives.
StG
What kinds of things do men come in for? When I think of PP, I think of it as offering primarily women-only services.
I’d say that, based on your own post, it’s worth exactly nothing.
I have a (male) friend who has spent the better part of the past six months getting treated for an STI from PP after his (ex) girlfriend notified him that she had HPV. So there’s an example of males being able to take advantage of the services offered.
In my own experience, PP was the place where I had my pregnancy test, then later my prenatal services when I was pregnant with Hallboy. They never mentioned abortion, instead supporting my decision to carry to term, keep my baby, but also set me up with WIC and provided me with contraceptives afterwards.
Funny - for some reason I had the impression you lived N of the city.
I was biking around my town the other day, and noticed a number of pinkish lawn signs saying “I support PP.” Had never noticed them before. Anyone know if they are a recent development? If they are local or national?
I was a little surprised, and I don’t recall seeing a whole bunch of issue-specific signs like this regarding other political/philosophical issues that were not the subject of upcoming elections. I assume it is in the context of the current dispute out in Aurora.
Reproductive health check-ups. STI testing and treatment. Condoms. More or less the same thing that women come in for, although the range is necessarily more limited since men have fewer birth control options and no chance of pregnancy.
Would you give to the UW if they supported a non-PP clinic?
Robin
MsRobyn - Medical clinic or abortion clinic?
Abortion clinic - no
Medical clinic that doesn’t provide abortion services - Yes.
StG
I think he actually wanted to know whether you rat out teenage girls to their parents.
Ditto here. They get more out of me per year (in donations) than the liquor store does, and that’s saying something. Um…not that the two are in any way related. I mean…um…I always liked Maureen. Still do. Good on you for the choices you’ve made in the OP, you got a good heart.