Community Clinic

I have an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in the morning (nothing to worry about - just a routine follow-up), so I actually have a little bit of precious "alone time" here in my hotel room.  With no toddler to distract me, I can actually write in peace for once.

So here's what I've been involved with lately. 

Our local Planned Parenthood clinic is scheduled to close this month, after 40 years of service to the community.  In a small, rural town like mine, PPH was the only place people looking for affordable family planning care could go.  There are no other low-cost clinics anywhere near here, and if you're trying to get care with discretion, you can't count on the local medical center.  After all, you're definitely going to run into one of your mom's friends while you're there, who probably has access to your medical records and knows what you're doing there.

So for this community, PPH closing is a major catastophe, to say the least. 

For the better part of a year, I've been working with a local group based at the Public Health Department that's been trying to set up a teen wellness clinic.  A place that would offer family planning services, as well as other wellness services, to local teens.

When it started, the point of it was to supplement PPH's dwindling hours.  For several years now they had only been open a few hours a week.  However, with the announcement that PPH would be closing, our clinic project took on a whole new level of importance.

I had mentioned to my parents that I had been attending these steering committee meetings, and had talked to them a little bit in passing about what we were doing.  Last week, I was told by my mom that I should quit mentioning it to my dad, because he is very concerned that my involvement in this project will hurt our family business.

I don't take this as any kind of criticism on my dad's part.  I'm sure he's as pro-family-planning-clinic as the next guy.  He's simply being realistic about the intolerance for liberal ideas (or as I call them, "common sense") that can always be found in our community.  Even though this project won't have the name "Planned Parenthood," and even though it's a Public Health project, which I think is fairly uncontroversial, the mere fact that birth control will be available to (unmarried) people will invite the ire of the local conservative majority.

It just really saddens me that in this day and age, birth control is still a controversial issue.