The recent attacks by the GOP and Glenn Beck on Planned Parenthood have prompted me to speak out. I have a connection with Planned Parenthood and as a woman, a personal stake in women’s rights. I see these attacks as just another means to chip away all that we have achieved as women in regards to our rights and choices.
It was in Utah, in 1972 when first learned about Planned Parenthood and became a staunch advocate of theirs. I was raised Mormon and I had just turned 18. It was the summer after my high school graduation and I found myself to be pregnant. Back in the day, especially in Provo, Utah we never discussed safe sex (safe meant you didn’t get caught by your parents) or birth control methods and alternatives. There was no one you could go to for information….no internet…..no network of individuals who could offer advice. Premarital sex was a sin and it was especially a sin as a Mormon. If anyone found out you had unmarried sex and especially if you ended up pregnant, you risked excommunication from the church and worse, the real possibility of being completely ostracized from the community, your friends and everything you knew.
I had wonderful parents and we could speak about many subjects but like most teens, we did not discuss sex especially if it was about sex I was participating in. I grew up in a church and community that believed when you had a serious problem, especially one that could cause you to go to hell, you were required to go and confess to your bishop. Seriously? A young girl is supposed to make an appointment with an old man at her church and talk to him about doing the dirty deed? The only time one of us did that was when a parent forced us to go.
Back Story: A year prior to the 1972 pregnancy crisis, I was in love with a Mormon boy. We had been fooling around and even fornicating (Mormon term for the dirty deed) and he decided he wanted us to “come clean” with our bishops and confess. So…….in an attempt to not lose my boyfriend I agreed and made the dreaded appointment with my bishop. Now, let me tell you a little about my bishop………this was a man who asked my preteen sister, in a routine interview, some very inappropriate questions. She was mortified and so were my parents. So……..my boyfriend went to his bishop and I went to mine……it did not go well. In the interview when I told him I had premarital sex he wanted details and kept pressing me over and over for them. “What did you do first? Did he touch your thigh? Did he touch your breasts? How many times did you do it? How long did it last each time?” Creepy questions that made me feel uncomfortable like I was being interviewed by a pervert for a porn magazine. It was like I had confessed to murdering someone and the police wanted to know if I had called the victim bad names first………Who cares…..I murdered someone, move on. He pressed me over and over for details and when I refused to give them he became abusive and told me “He knew from the moment he saw me at church what kind of girl I really was. And that he could tell by the way I dressed.” OK…..well, I said my good byes and vowed never to speak with him again.
So now……it is a year later and that bishop is the LAST person I would go in and talk with especially since getting pregnant out of wedlock would have required me to not only give him the sordid details but would have required a possible church court where I would need to face not only him but his counselors and clerk and watch them all salivate over my naughty ways.
I went to my doctor (who was also a Mormon bishop) to get tested to see if I WAS actually pregnant (we had no over the counter pregnancy tests back then) and was treated very badly. While I was laying there with my legs in the stirrups, humiliated, scared, and vulnerable, while my doctor berated and verbally abused me about my condition and the act that lead me to that condition. In parting, after staying in the room while I dressed while he continued to chastise me……he called me a slut and said I was indeed pregnant, about 8 weeks along, and then he left the room. No words of advice, no offers of help, nothing……..I left with my head down, self-esteem in ruins and went home to cry. I didn’t dare talk to my parents, my doctor was an abusive ass, my bishop had earlier proved to be a perverted pig, and I felt I had nowhere to go for help.
I am not sure who told me about Planned Parenthood. If memory serves a girlfriend I had confided in mentioned it. They had a branch located in Salt Lake City so I went to them. From the moment I walked in I felt there were people who understood, people who cared, and people I could talk to. They were loving, gentile, and kind and I went from feeling like a sinner and pariah to just a teen who had gotten herself in trouble and needed help and guidance.
Planned Parenthood never told me to get an abortion. They simply accessed my situation and had a councilor sit and talk with me about my options. Options that included, keeping the baby, adoption, and even abortion. There was no pressure to pick one over the other and with each choice there was the promise of help and guidance along the way. I decided…..my choice…..to get an abortion. I was not very far along and really, it was preferable to my parents finding out or having everyone I knew shun me (or so I felt). Planned Parenthood made all of the arrangements and plane reservation to California for a day trip. I paid about 300 plus dollars out of pocket (the father gladly came up with the funds rather than having to become a dad at 17). I was met in the airport in California by other caring Planned Parenthood staff members and was given the opportunity before the procedure to talk with another councilor just to make sure this was still what I wanted.
At no time did I feel pressured or judged and for a young girl used to dealing with a very judgmental and patriarchal community…….having the opportunity to be treated with compassion and understanding was like a breath of fresh air. The procedure was quick, humane, and painless and I went home that same day. Planned Parenthood gave me plenty of follow up care and birth control options as well as someone to talk to who was not there to judge me.
I will forever be indebted to them for what they did and I know countless girls and women feel the same way.
Right now the GOP and far right conservatives want to cut funding for Planned Parenthood even though their funding does NOT pay for abortions. This NOT about the budget but about a social conservative agenda and an attempt to eventually take away a women’s right to choose. It is about ideology and NOT finances. This will cut access for thousands and thousands of girls and women who either do not have access to this care or cannot afford it. Cutting their funding may seem to some like a simple budget cut but there is more to it than that……..how many girls will not have access to cervical cancer screenings and end up with cancer because it wasn’t caught soon enough? How many girls will not have access to birth control and give birth to babies they cannot remotely take care of and who will end up in state care? This is about a safe place to go for an abortion rather than an attempt to do something in a back room that can often end in death or permanent harm. This is about someone to talk to if you are being sexually abused, feeling scared and lost, unsure of the correct information, or to have someone to talk to who understands. This isn’t about going to hell for having sex and killing babies. This is about the right to choose when sometimes the girl is given few other choices. I want a young man who is confused and afraid to buy condoms to be able to have a place to go. I want the wife with meager income to have a place to go for reproductive options. This is about critical healthcare and information that a mostly male GOP cannot possibly understand. I want the shame and religious stigma taken out of reproductive choices.
I am 56 now and have little need for the services of Planned Parenthood on a personal level……..but I want other women and girls to be able to have the choice to receive their services if they need them. I want choice NOT compulsion. I DON’T want the GOP defunding Planned Parenthood and masquerading it as a budget cut instead of what it really is…….a theocratic moral agenda they want to place on us while they continue to chip away at removing the rest of our rights.
The recent attacks and hidden camera journalism is just another step towards making sure all of us have fewer freedoms and choices. They vilify Planned Parenthood now so they can justify cutting their funding. They make up stories and lies to back up their falsehoods and no one seems to be stopping them.
The GOP keeps ranting and raving about Big Brother and the perceived loss of our freedoms when really……..THEY are the Big Brother and they are holding a stick in one hand and a Bible in the other. The assault on Planned Parenthood, along with the recent bills redefining rape or penalizing private insurance companies for having an abortion option, are just steps…..steps leading us back the past when young girls scared and alone, had nowhere to go for help and no one to talk to.
Don’t let this happen…….even if you oppose abortion you should NOT oppose freedom and choices.
