Planned Parenthood in middle of funding debate and religion’s hand in the shutdown showdown

After weeks of federal budget negotiations, the focus has shifted in the past couple of days from economic issues to a particular rider that would eliminate all government funding to Planned Parenthood through the Title X family planning program. Conservatives are targeting Planned Parenthood because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though those abortions make up less than three percent of Planned Parenthood's services and federal money is not used to pay for abortion services. Richards said she is frustrated that the Planned Parenthood rider is being misleadingly portrayed as a fight against "abortion funding," when so many patients in rural and medically underserved communities depend on Planned Parenthood clinics as a primary health provider.

"One in five women in America have been to a Planned Parenthood health center for basic health care," she said. As lawmakers hold the government hostage over the funding of her organization, Richards said she remains confident that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere.

"Women's need for quality affordable care is not going away, and neither is Planned Parenthood."
The organization was founded in 1916 when Margaret Sanger, a nurse in New York, opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Contraception, and obtaining information about contraception, was then illegal under what was called the Comstock laws. That ruling declared that contraceptive devices and birth control were no longer “obscene.”


Planned Parenthood now has 800 health centers in the United States. The most controversial services are their in-clinic abortions and emergency contraception services. But the organization also offers breast exams, cervical cancer screening and vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases.

Speaking to the Huffington Post, she said the cuts would hit rural communities especially hard: "More than 70% of our health centers, more than 800 centers in the country, are located in rural America or communities that are medically underserved communities.