Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
Conservatives paint Planned Parenthood as an abortion mill and birth-control factory, an institution that doles out emergency contraception to teenage girls like Halloween candy. But a few years ago, I realized birth control wasn't quite as easy to get as I — or the religious right — thought. The first clue: a few teenage acquaintances told me they had stopped taking the Pill. Even if they had a doctor they trusted, they didn't want to use their parents' insurance — too easy for mom and dad to find out — and they didn't have the cash to pay out-of-pocket. What about Planned Parenthood, I asked? "It's not an option," one of them (we'll call her Hannah) said last year, when she was seventeen and a senior in high school. "They charge $100 a session and $40 per pack of birth control. Teenagers can't afford it unless they're under fifteen."
Hannah tried to find less expensive services, without much luck. She's resorted to using condoms, which are less effective than the gynecologist-recommended two forms of birth control (particularly for students in abstinence-only programs, who don't get the banana demo in school) and, of course, require the cooperation of teenage boys.
promotion
Planned Parenthood Federation of America serves one in four American women during their lifetime. It's widely considered the most convenient and reliable provider of low-cost birth control. It's been that way since the 1970 passage of Title X, the family-planning program of the Public Service Health Act. (George H.W. Bush was one of its primary sponsors.) Whereas PPFA had once been small and funded entirely through private donations, Title X was "seed money to start family planning services all over the country," says Gloria Feldt, who stepped down as PPFA's president last year. The results, she adds, "cannot be underestimated" For the first time, women could decide when they wanted to have children, and orchestrate the rest of their lives accordingly. So when did Planned Parenthood become "not an option" for vulnerable young women?
Planned Parenthood's mission is not to turn away anyone at all.
According to Planned Parenthood representatives, Hannah should have gotten her pills for free. But that's something she didn't understand (and I can vouch that she's pretty sophisticated). It's unlikely the clinic meant to refuse her services because she couldn't afford them: Title X requires a health center not to turn away anyone under the federal poverty line. And it's Planned Parenthood's mission, according to Jodie Curtis, assistant director for government relations for PPFA, not to turn away anyone at all. When it comes to those not covered by Title X, she says, "it is up to Planned Parenthood to figure out how to help those people subsidize the cost if they can't pay. Some states have programs to help with this, and many Planned Parenthoods fundraise to help patients cover the cost of services." Plus, PPFA is allowed to assess teens on their own income level, not their parents'.
Yet Hannah's story is symptomatic of a growing trend. Twenty-four-year-old Jennifer also tried to get the Pill through PPFA in New York. "They were very unhelpful," she recalls. "I didn't have insurance, and they just couldn't comprehend why I didn't. They kept hinting I could afford it and thus it was my negligence. But I really couldn't afford it."
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
