Letter: Planned Parenthood is my first choice provider

As a Planned Parenthood patient in Ithaca, I know from personal experience that these health centers play a vital role in our state. I, like many others, chose Planned Parenthood as my first choice provider because they provide high-quality and nonjudgmental care.
Here in New York, Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes serves nearly 10,000 patients a year at their five health centers, providing affordable birth control and family planning counseling. Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes provides STI tests for over 2,000 patients, pap tests for almost 5,000 women and nearly 3,000 breast and cervical cancer screenings annually. If extreme members of Congress are successful in their crusade to defund Planned Parenthood, in New York state alone, about 200,000 women, men and young people would be blocked from care at Planned Parenthood. Across the country, 2.5 million people would no longer have access to care.
Every day, for a century, doctors, clinicians, and staff in health centers across the country open their doors and care for patients like me. They answer the questions we can’t or don’t want to ask anyone else, and they give us the accurate, unbiased information we need to make some of the most important decisions we will ever make about our health and our lives.
Let’s be clear: If politicians defund Planned Parenthood, they won’t be striking a line from the federal budget. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that defunding Planned Parenthood would cost taxpayers $130 million over 10 years. Planned Parenthood, like every other doctor’s office or hospital, is reimbursed for the care they provide to patients who rely on public health programs like Medicaid. That means the people who would be most hurt are those already struggling to get by and those who already face barriers to accessing health care – especially people of color, people with low incomes, and people who live in rural areas. More than half of Planned Parenthood health centers are in rural or medically underserved communities. In 21 percent of counties where they see patients, Planned Parenthood health centers are the one and only safety-net family planning provider. For many of these patients, there is nowhere else to go for care.
That is why I traveled to Washington, D.C. on March 1 alongside hundreds of other Planned Parenthood patients and health care providers, to tell Representative Reed and Senator Gillibrand that we won’t stand for these attacks on our health care and the provider we trust.
Here in New York, Planned Parenthood cares for about 200,000 patients each year. We don’t go to Planned Parenthood to make a political statement. We go for compassionate, affordable, high-quality health care. Every person, no matter who they are or how much money they make, deserves that kind of care. We will not allow politicians to take it away.

Erica Sava
Ithaca, New York