Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania works to educate and empower people as advocates for key issues effecting reproductive health care and individual choice. PPSP's advocacy work on the local, state and federal levels addresses a range of issues including health care reform and comprehensive sexuality eduation. Advocacy is an integral part of PPSP's mission and allows us to continue offering accessible and affordable quality health care to men, women, and teens.
Pennsylvania Issues
- Comprehensive Sexuality Education
PPSP is a member of the Pennsylvanians for Responsible Sexuality Education (PARSE) coalition which is working to expand existing state standards to require that Pennsylvania's public schools teach to medically-accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexuality education. Click here for more information on our efforts.
- Pharmacy Refusal? It’s Outrageous!
Despite EC being available behind-the-counter to women and men 18 and older, Plan B emergency contraception (EC), also known as "the Morning After Pill," is not easily accessible, particularly in rural areas, where only half of all pharmacies in Pennsylvania stock it. Across the country, there have been many reports of pharmacists refusing to administer it. In some cases, pharmacists have even refused to fill regular birth control prescriptions!!
IT’S OUTRAGEOUS!
We want to know if this has happened to you. If a pharmacist has refused to give you Plan B or regular birth control, please email us!
- Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act
Click here for more information on the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act
Federal Issues
- Health Care Reform
Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania is working to make health care affordable and accessible for all people. Click here to read Planned Parenthood's piorities for health care reform.
- Funding for Comprehensive Sexuality Education Progams
Planned Parenthood is working with federal legislators to ensure that failing absitnence-only programs do not receive federal funding in the future. Taking a step in the right direction, President Barack Obama eliminated abstience only funding from his FY2010 budget. While this is great news, there is still more work needed ahead. We will be watching this issue very closely in the near future.
- Prevention First Action
The Prevention First Act (S.21/H.R.819) symbolizes our shared commitment to supporting healthy families through commonsense prevention measures. It is an omnibus family planning initiative that expands access to preventive health care services and education programs to help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies, prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and improve women’s health — all while saving scarce public health dollars.
The bill includes measures to fully fund Title X, expand access to services through Medicaid, require equity in contraceptive insurance coverage, protect rape survivors’ access to emergency contraception (EC) in the emergency room (ER), improve awareness about EC generally, and protect teens’ health through medically accurate, real sex education.
Improving access to contraception and preventive health care should be a shared national goal. As a nation, if we are committed to reducing the number of abortions in America, the most effective way to do so is to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by increasing both the availability of contraception, preventive health care programs and teen pregnancy prevention initiatives.
Southeastern Pennsylvania Representatives Brady, Fattah, Murphy and Schwartz have co-sponsored the Prevention First Act. Representative Gerlach and Senators Specter and Casey have not signed on to co-sponsor this crucial legislation.
