Planned Parenthood: Republican Proposal Would Deny Women Access to Needed Services

Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood (UHPP) President/CEO Patricia McGeown today decried the draft FY 2012 funding bill just released by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS as politically motivated and dangerous to the health care of women. The bill revives proposals to ban Planned Parenthood from public funding used to provide preventive care and eliminates the entire Title X family planning program.

"This proposed budget demonstrates that certain Republicans in Congress remain out of touch with their constituents and are willing to put politics above sound economic or health policy," said Patricia McGeown, President/CEO of UHPP.

Planned Parenthood is a trusted nonprofit health care provider that provides professional, reliable and quality health care, including birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, annual exams, and STD testing and treatment to three million women and men across the country. In 2010, Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood provided reproductive health services to over 13,000 patients who made nearly 23,000 visits to centers in Albany, Hudson and Troy. Nationally, one in five American women has been to a Planned Parenthood health center at some point in her life.

"The vast majority of care we provide is preventive," stated McGeown. "For most adult women, reproductive health care is basic health care. Every day women come through our doors desperate for an affordable source of GYN exams, medical screenings, and birth control. At a time when Americans desperately want and need Congress to focus on fixing our economy and creating jobs, House Republican leaders are instead continuing their campaign to take away preventive health care and affordable birth control from millions of women," said McGeown.

The House Republican budget includes the following provisions aimed at preventing women's access to health care. It:

• revives the failed attempt to prohibit Planned Parenthood from participating in federal programs like Medicaid to provide preventive health care, including birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, annual exams, and STD testing and treatment;

• eliminates funding for the Title X National Family Planning Program, which provides access to birth control, cancer screenings, and other family planning services to five million low-income women each year;

• revives the failed attempt to effectively ban insurance coverage of abortion in the new health exchanges under the Affordable Care Act - taking away a common health benefit that most private health plans currently offer;

• prevents the implementation of the groundbreaking health care reform law, including new benefits that include insurance coverage of women's preventive services like mammograms, cancer screenings, and birth control, with no additional co-pays;

• cuts the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative by $64.79 million - from $ 104.79 million to $40 million - and stipulates that $20 million of that money must be used for grants to provide ineffective, abstinence-only education;

• includes a sweeping new refusal provision that undermines patients' access to quality health care.

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Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood (UHPP) is a community-based non-profit organization working to promote healthy sexuality and reproductive choice through exceptional services, honest education and fearless advocacy since 1934. In 2010, over 13,000 patients made nearly 23,000 visits to UHPP health centers located in Albany, Hudson and Troy. UHPP health educators present over 350 education programs reaching over 4,800 youth and young adults. UHPP services are delivered with special concern for the underserved.