Guest Opinion: Defunding Planned Parenthood will hurt New Yorkers

By Angela Riddell

Earlier this month, Paul Ryan and GOP leadership made their plans official. Along with repealing the Affordable Care Act, they want to block Medicaid patients from accessing care at Planned Parenthood.

Every day for nearly 50 years, Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes has opened our doors to care for patients in Chemung, Schuyler, Steuben, and Tompkins counties here in upstate New York. We see almost 10,000 patients every year – no matter their ZIP code, their income, their race, immigration status, or gender identity. But if some extreme politicians in Washington have their way, many of the folks we serve would be blocked from the preventive health services we provide – including birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment.
Planned Parenthood is part of the fabric of communities across the country, serving 2.5 million people each year. We are the experts on sexual and reproductive health and education, and women, men and young people have been turning to our doctors and clinicians for 100 years. In fact, an estimated 1 in 5 women in the U.S. will rely on Planned Parenthood in her lifetime.
We are committed to ensuring New Yorkers have access to the reproductive health care they deserve, no matter their income, ethnicity, sexual identity, or geography. No matter what.
There is no doubt that Planned Parenthood health centers are an integral part of New York’s health safety net. All of Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes’ five health centers are located in medically underserved communities, and in 2010 Planned Parenthood was the ONLY safety-net family planning provider offering family planning services in Chemung, Schuyler and Tompkins counties.
The people of New York cannot afford to be put at risk while our federal legislators advance their personal political agendas at the expense of public health and welfare.
As any health care provider will tell you, people across New York need more access to health care, not less. That’s why it is so irresponsible for a group of out of touch politicians to push legislation that would cut over 100,000 New York state residents off from the basic preventive care that Planned Parenthood provides every day. Those hurt the most would be those struggling to get by, and those who already face barriers to accessing health care – especially people of color, people with low to moderate incomes, and people who live in rural areas. Many of these patients would have nowhere else to turn if politicians block them from coming to Planned Parenthood.
Attacks on access to care are not only harmful to New Yorkers’ health, they’re unpopular. Polls show that people across the country overwhelmingly support Planned Parenthood.
Here at Planned Parenthood, our patients don’t come to us to make a political statement – they come because we provide the compassionate, affordable health care that they need. And that’s what we will continue to do here in New York – no matter what.
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Angela Riddell is the interim chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes.