New Report Shows Community Health Centers Cannot Replace Planned Parenthood

A new report by the Guttmacher Institute affirms that Planned Parenthood health centers play an indispensable role in providing family planning services and underscores the fact that Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) cannot fill the gap for patients who rely on public health care programs — such as Medicaid and Title X — if their access to care at Planned Parenthood health centers were blocked.

Notably, according to Guttmacher's policy analysis, FQHCs — more commonly known as Community Health Centers — often do not provide family planning care at every site, and serve far fewer contraceptive patients on average.

The report, which draws from new research, echoes comments by medical professionals such as the executive director of the American Public Health Association — who, in a comment earlier in 2017, said "our health system is unprepared to meet [the] need" that blocking patients' access to Planned Parenthood would create.

The big takeaway: Ending access to Planned Parenthood would be devastating, and leave millions of people with nowhere else to go for essential health care.

“It’s time to end this charade that Planned Parenthood is somehow replaceable — it’s a thinly veiled political attack on women’s health and rights."

Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

"Women’s health and lives cannot be an afterthought. You go to the mechanic you trust to fix your car, and you go to the provider you trust — Planned Parenthood — to get your birth control.

If politicians do not end these senseless attacks on women’s health care, millions of women across the country will be hurt in the process.”

Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Legislation to “defund” Planned Parenthood — as the American Health Care Act passed in the House of Representatives in April 2017 proposes — would hit people who rely on federal insurance and public health programs.

That’s largely people who already face barriers to accessing health care — such as people with low incomes, people of color, and people who live in rural areas — who also make up the majority of Planned Parenthood’s patients.

The study can be read in full at Guttmacher's site.