Dear Bailey,

Planned Parenthood (PP) provides more than abortions, right?
Sexual education is something that I care about, and it should be important to us all. I write a column about sex and sexual education. Sex is something we all have or will have in common.

Someone asked me during the break what I did for work. When I told him that I write for The Linfield Review about sex, he was so excited. He told me that he had a customer come in with her mother, and the mother wanted him to tell her daughter that sex was bad. After repeated comments from Mom, he finally looked at the daughter and said, “I’m not going to tell you that sex is bad. It’s a great and wonderful thing, but it is extremely dangerous.”

The danger sex presents is what makes preventative care and screening so important. Last week, a bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives to cut funding for these health needs. If this bill is put into effect, organizations such as Planned Parenthood will not have the funding to provide easy and affordable access to these health care needs.

The funding to PP began in 1970. Why would the government want to pull it now and risk all the recent progress our society has made?

President of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards and U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin were interviewed on CNN. Abortion through PP is a big concern for many people, but Richards said that the funding is for the “95 percent of Planned Parenthood services, which are preventive care: cancer screening for cervical and breast, birth control, STD testing and treatment.”

Abortions are not paid for with federal funds, and isn’t the first step to preventing abortions going to the source and providing preventive care?

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts is pro-life and says he does not have many friends in the PP community, but he knows that PP has done more to prevent unintended pregnancies than any other organization and that this is the wrong way to fix the issue.

Richards added that 60 percent of patients only have PP to go to for the basic care that they need:

“If this bill becomes law, millions of women are going to lose their health care services,” she said.

Moore suggested that it is a double standard to cut PP and attempt to pull Woman, Infants, and Children without providing access to family planning. Reading through the comments under the video of the news story on the CNN website displays how misinformed people can be about the situation and sex. One person said that when he was young, his parents taught him morality and that tax payers’ money should not be used for younger people to continue with their immoral behavior.

Unfortunately, many people subscribe to this line of thinking, and the reality is that places like PP are about so much more than birth control and abortions. They have saved lives. In my own experience, PP has made a difference in my life and in the lives of many other people I know.

More than half a million women have signed a petition to continue funding and thousands have sent in their stories of how PP has affected their lives. People have until March 1 to show their support. If you are interested in showing your support, please visit the PP website or visit it on Facebook.

I would like to encourage people to write in with general questions or comments about sex throughout the rest of the term.