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As Julie said in her speech, abortions only cover about three percent the services Planned Parenthood provides. The organization understands and respects each individual’s right to make informed, independent decisions about health, sex, and family planning. Their health centers provide a broad spectrum of safe, reliable health care. Planned Parenthood is proud of its vital role in providing young people with honest sexuality and relationship information in classrooms and online to help reduce our nation’s alarmingly high rates of teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate among the world’s developed nations and approximately 750,000 teenagers in the United States will become pregnant this year. Furthermore, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than three million teen girls have a sexually transmitted infection. That's at least one in four and half of sexually active young people in the U.S. will contract a sexually transmitted infection by age
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Naturally, that same month I skipped my period. I took a home pregnancy test but refused to believe the result. I was in shock. I was planning to have children, of course I was, but not for a year or so. I had a new job beginning in a few weeks! How could my pills fail me so dramatically? The nurse practitioner who met with me asked, with a neutrality I would not have thought possible, what I wanted to do. By asking the question that way she gave me permission to do what I wanted to do. It was fine to have a baby if I wanted one; it was also fine to not have a baby if I didn't. Again, to no one's surprise but my own, it turned out that I did want to have the baby. I did, and she's five now. Of course I can't imagine my life any other way. Another woman would have had different circumstances, and might have made another decision. And, at Planned Parenthood, that would have been fine. I think we paid $20 for that visit, which, to put it mildly, changed my life. It sometimes seems to me that, in the understandable heat of the abortion debate, we lose sight of the more mundane but no less critical services Planned Parenthood provides: affordable, accessible health care and non-judgmental counseling. Planned Parenthood was there for me, and I will always be
Naturally, that same month I skipped my period. I took a home pregnancy test but refused to believe the result. I was in shock. I was planning to have children, of course I was, but not for a year or so. I had a new job beginning in a few weeks! How could my pills fail me so dramatically? The nurse practitioner who met with me asked, with a neutrality I would not have thought possible, what I wanted to do. By asking the question that way she gave me permission to do what I wanted to do. It was fine to have a baby if I wanted one; it was also fine to not have a baby if I didn't. Again, to no one's surprise but my own, it turned out that I did want to have the baby. I did, and she's five now. Of course I can't imagine my life any other way. Another woman would have had different circumstances, and might have made another decision. And, at Planned Parenthood, that would have been fine. I think we paid $20 for that visit, which, to put it mildly, changed my life. It sometimes seems to me that, in the understandable heat of the abortion debate, we lose sight of the more mundane but no less critical services Planned Parenthood provides: affordable, accessible health care and non-judgmental counseling. Planned Parenthood was there for me, and I will always be