By Kelly Schleich
Last week I saw a statement in the Beacon that shocked me, a statement made by a priest in the UP community, someone we should be able to trust to tell us the truth.
In the article, "All Life is Valuable," it was implied that the Planned Parenthood Regional Service Center under construction on Martin Luther King Blvd., a neighborhood with a high minority population, is being built there to "selectively kill unborn children of color."
Whatever your views may be on abortion, it is incomprehensible and wrong to associate an organization as valuable to our community as Planned Parenthood with a campaign of eugenics.
If Planned Parenthood were part of some grandiose plan to diminish the population of African Americans and Hispanics in our community, why would it provide them with breast exams and cervical cancer detection and treatment? Why would it give them guidance about prenatal health and pregnancy? Why would it provide tests and treatments for the sexually transmitted diseases that can cause infertility?
The fact is, only 5 percent of Planned Parenthood's services are for abortions and abortion care. The majority of what the their doctors and nurses do for the community is provide reproductive health services, including contraception, counseling and educational programs, on a sliding scale, to people who are uninsured or underinsured.
The sad truth is that many of the people here in Portland without insurance are minorities. Last year, over 60,000 people, including men, received care at one of Planned Parenthood of the Columbia/Willamette's clinics.
These people rely on Planned Parenthood for basic health care that many of us in the UP community, covered by insurance, take for granted.
For those who call themselves pro-life, it can be difficult to see past the abortions that Planned Parenthood performs. For many Catholics, it can be hard to accept that it gives information on birth control and sex to teenagers. But what neither group can deny is that for many people, often the poor and marginalized of our community, Planned Parenthood is the only resource they can rely on for their reproductive health.
If we at UP, a community of people that is passionate about social justice, truly want to reduce the number of abortions in Portland, including those obtained by African American and Hispanic women, we should start with the root causes of why they feel they need that abortion.
Economic difficulties, lack of family support, spousal abuse, unavailability of resources like affordable child-care and parenting classes, and simply being too young to be a parent are all reasons women decide not to carry a pregnancy to term.
We also need to understand why they got pregnant in the first place.
Misinformation about reproduction and sexuality, inability to afford birth control and unhealthy relationships involving abuse or sexual pressure all lead to unwanted pregnancies.
Helping communities and families address these issues and providing them with non-judgmental support is a more effective and humane long-term strategy to reduce the number of abortions instead of vilifying Planned Parenthood, a valuable community resource.
