Family Planning Prevents Abortion

After the U.S. House of Representatives voted last week to eliminate the national family planning program, Title X, and barred Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds for any purpose, they wasted no time in claiming their just-passed legislation would prevent abortions.

The logic is puzzling, if not altogether absent.

Reducing the need for abortion is a goal we can all support. But ending Title X funding and trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business will not accomplish that goal.

It’s simple: Title X funds cannot be used to fund abortions, so eliminating the program won’t reduce the number of abortions performed. But it will have an impact. That’s because Title X services prevent nearly one million unintended pregnancies each year, almost half of which would otherwise end in abortion.

The connection is deceptively obvious. Reducing unintended pregnancies reduces abortions. Making it more difficult for women, men and teens to access the care they need to prevent unintended pregnancies will, inevitably, lead to more abortions.

If eliminating Title X and pulling funding for Planned Parenthood won’t reduce abortions, what will it do?

For starters, it will cut nearly $8 million that currently provides lifesaving preventative care at the 28 Planned Parenthood health centers across the state. These health centers provide vital care to nearly 90,000 of our state’s women, men and teens each year - patients who would otherwise not be able to afford or access the treatment and care they need.

And yet, despite the claims of so-called fiscal conservatives, cutting preventative care programs from the federal budget won’t actually save a single taxpayer dollar.  In fact, family planning programs like Title X are some of the most fiscally sound investments we can make.

For every public dollar we spend on family planning, Michigan taxpayers save nearly $6.37 in Medicaid costs for pregnancy-related care and medical care for newborns in the first year alone. In 2008, Michigan’s family planning program saved an estimated $74 million in Medicaid spending.

Recent polls show that over two thirds of all voters disagree with restricting federal funding for family planning services. Clearly, this attack on women’s health is out of step with American values, won’t save money, and won’t reduce abortions.

This legislation would stop women across Michigan from accessing basic primary and preventative health care.

The truth is that over 90 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are preventative health care, including cancer screenings, annual exams and birth control. Women must be screened every year for cervical cancer, a deadly and costly disease that cannot be detected without the type of low-cost exams Planned Parenthood and Title X provide. Without access to annual exams, more women will not be diagnosed until it is too late.

This dangerous legislation would cut off millions of women from their only source of primary care, increasing their risk of undetected cancer and unintended pregnancy.

Now, it’s up to our U.S. Senators to band together and reject this extreme approach and guarantee that Planned Parenthood and the men, women and teens in Michigan who rely on our services are protected.

For the 90,000 Planned Parenthood patients in Michigan and the millions more across the nation, this attack isn’t merely political. It is deeply personal, and it will irrevocably alter their lives for the worse.

You can help by calling Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin and urging them to vote against this all-out assault on women’s health care.