Statement from Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida in response to protests against health centers

For Immediate Release: Oct. 8, 2015

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 10, 2015
CONTACT: Melissa St. Onge / 561-472-9953/ [email protected]

Melissa St. Onge, Communications Manager,
Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida:

“Planned Parenthood is the most trusted women’s health care provider in this country, and we have provided high-quality care for nearly 100 years. In fact, one in five American women has turned to us at some point in her life for professional, nonjudgmental and confidential care. Our focus is on providing high-quality, affordable health care to the thousands of women, men, and young people who rely on us every day.

“Extremists who oppose Planned Parenthood’s mission have made outrageous and false claims.  They are engaged in fraudulent behavior intended to mislead the public but instead they’ve been discredited and disproven. It’s clear that the real agenda behind these attacks is to ban safe and legal abortion.

 

“Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our patients, which is why we are fighting back hard and calling these protests what they are – part of a decade-long campaign of deceiving the public, making false charges, and terrorizing women and their doctors, all in order to cut women off from care at Planned Parenthood.

“If those who oppose our mission were serious about reducing the rate of abortion they would work with us to reduce unintended pregnancy rates and increase access to vital preventive health care.”

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Background information

• The anti-abortion groups who released fraudulent video tapes in July of this year worked for years to secretly record videos and edit them in extremely misleading ways, all with one goal – to ban abortion and cut women off from health care at Planned Parenthood.
• Three teams of experts in video forensics, production, and transcription have determined, as we’ve always said, that the videos distort and misrepresent the truth, and they are not credible or reliable.
• Stem cell research and other tissue research can lead to important scientific and medical breakthroughs.
• While Planned Parenthood does not provide tissue donation services in Florida we do provide a full range of reproductive health care including life-saving cancer screenings, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STI’s), contraception, sexual health education and abortion care.
• Three recent national polls show strong support for Planned Parenthood and/or for safe and legal abortion:

•  A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that a strong majority of Americans — 61% — oppose eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood’s preventive services. The poll also shows that 47% of adults hold favorable views of Planned Parenthood — unchanged from a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll when the videos were initially being released (and higher than the approval ratings of Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, and every candidate for president).
•  A Quinnipiac University National poll shows that 69% of American voters oppose shutting down the federal government in the dispute over funding Planned Parenthood. The poll found that 56% of Republicans oppose a shutdown over Planned Parenthood’s funding (and only 36% of Republican voters support a shutdown).
•  A new poll released by Bloomberg shows that the vast majority of the public agrees with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. By 67% to 29%, people think the case was decided correctly. (For context, respondents agreed with the marriage equality ruling 54% to 42% and with the recent Affordable Care Act decision 49% to 44%.)
• Planned Parenthood won’t engage with protesters at our health centers but will be providing security to ensure the protests won’t impact our health centers’ visitors and our ability to serve our communities.

 

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For over 40 years, building healthy communities has been Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida’s mission.  Our health care services include lifesaving cancer screenings, breast health care, well-woman exams, contraceptive services, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, and abortion services. Over 90% of the services we offer are preventive and help women, families and communities stay healthy.

Visit our website at www.ppsenfl.org