What Planned Parenthood REALLY does.

With all the current controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood, my head has been spinning with the sheer volume of misleading and simply untrue things being said about the organization.  I used to work at Planned Parenthood, so I figure I'm in a position to put at least some of these untruths to rest.

I worked in one of PPH's many small town family planning clinics.  We did not do abortions at our clinic, as most PPH's don't.  Only one PPH clinic in Minnesota actually performs abortions.  The other 23 do pretty much the same thing as my clinic did. We provided birth control to people.  As well as pap smears, breast exams, STD tests and treatment, and pregnancy tests.

I think much of the controversy surrounds what takes place after those pregnancy tests, so I'll tell you exactly how we handled them.  First of all, we did the test, which took five minutes to run.  Unlike the crisis pregnancy centers, we didn't tell the woman the test would take half an hour and then force her to sit in a room looking at images of fetuses.

When I was trained in to deliver pregnancy test results, here's what I was told to do: 

If the test was negative, I was to encourage the woman to come back to get birth control (which usually involved getting a pap smear, which is why they would have to come back). 

If it was positive, the first step was to ask them if they were surprised by the result and if they had thought at all about what they would do if the test was positive.  Most of them had, since they were already there for the test. 

If they said, "I want to keep the baby" then we handed them a pregnancy resources guide which had the names of maternal help organizations, along with an application for Medicaid if they weren't insured. 

If they said. "I've been thinking about adoption," then we handed them the same pregnancy resources guide which also had the names of several adoption agencies in it.

If they said, "I'm thinking about getting an abortion," then we handed them the same pregnancy resources guide which also had the phone number for the Planned Parenthood clinic which did abortions.  If they asked for more information on abortion, we were not allowed to give it to them.  We simply pointed again to the phone number and told them to direct all their questions to the people at that phone number.

And under no circumstances, ever, were we instructed or permitted to try to influence the woman in any way as to what she wanted to do about the pregnancy.  That was her decision to make, not ours.  We simply provided her with the resources she asked for and let her take it from there, using her own judgement and support system.

When I hear PPH being so demonized by Michele Bachmann and her ilk, it really makes me angry.  Not only because of how wrong they are in their assumptions, but also because they are defaming the many wonderful, caring people I worked with over the years.  I never once met a co-worker who was there to benefit from the windfalls of "big abortion."  My co-workers were genuinely warm and giving people who were there to help women (and men).  They were there because they deeply believed that all people should be able to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy.  We tried our very best to prevent unwanted pregnancies to begin with, and when that failed, we allowed women to  decide their own futures with whatever help they needed from us.