Planned Parenthood Statement on Defunding Bill
For Immediate Release: Aug. 14, 2015
WASHINGTON -- As senators move forward to vote on a bill to block Planned Parenthood health centers from serving patients who rely on publicly funded programs for health care -- stripping millions of basic, reproductive health care they depend on -- Planned Parenthood issued the following statement.
Quote from Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Action Fund:
“Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Joni Ernst should probably listen to the medical community before they decide to legislate health care for millions of people. Family planning providers are uniquely qualified to provide reproductive health care, and providers have asserted that the “absorption” plan to simply hand off millions of women’s health care simply isn’t feasible.
“More than half of Planned Parenthood’s non-profit health centers are in rural or medically underserved areas, and millions rely on us each year for care. If this bill went into effect, blocking our health centers from serving patients who rely on publicly funded programs for health care, millions of people would struggle to access quality reproductive health care -- period. We’ve seen this in states before: When similar measures were passed in Texas, 54 percent fewer patients received care, and in Indiana it led to an unprecedented HIV outbreak.
“Planned Parenthood is the nation’s leading and most trusted reproductive health care provider. Every year 2.7 million women, men, and young people rely on us for birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and well-woman exams. The majority of American voters oppose this defunding bill, and have seen it for what it is -- an orchestrated political attack on reproductive rights and access to abortion. We already know how far some in the GOP will go in their quest to end safe and legal abortion -- standing behind a group associated with the most extreme wing of the anti-abortion movement, opposing funding for breast cancer research, and stopping a bill in its tracks that would have helped wounded veterans start a family. Now they’re throwing a government shutdown tantrum unless they get their way -- and block millions from getting basic health care. Senators Paul, McConnell and Cruz , we already know you do not have a record supporting women’s health. You don’t have to keep trying to prove it."