Planned Parenthood believes in access to family planning and reproductive healthcare and choice. We believe that every woman -- regardless of income, age or marital status - has the fundamental right to decide when and whether to have a child. It is government's role to support personal childbearing decisions with medically accurate reproductive health information, including sex education, and access to contraceptives and safe, legal abortion.

• Family Planning Funding
• Sex Education
• Abortion
• Emergency Contraception
• Pharmacist Refusals
• Minor’s Health

Family Planning Funding

Each year more than 400,000 low-income women in NYS receive family planning services from clinics that receive public funding from state programs. These services fill an otherwise unmet need for women who often have inadequate or no health insurance. Services offered at these clinics include: contraceptive services; family planning counseling; breast and cervical cancer screening; pap tests; screening for anemia, diabetes, and high blood pressure; testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections including HIV; safer sex counseling; basic infertility screening; and referrals to specialized health care. Every year demand increases for these services and the cost of care increases, yet spending remains far below what is needed to serve this demand, resulting in an unjust two-tier health care delivery system.

Sex Education

Despite the fact that 85% of Americans support responsible, age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education in schools, the government has allocated millions of dollars for “abstinence-only” sex education programs, which exclude any mention of contraception, family planning, or disease prevention. Planned Parenthood believes that it is critical that our young people have access to accurate information and services.

Medically-accurate programs acknowledge that individuals have the right to choose when they want to become sexually active. Those who decide to engage in sexual intercourse should receive honest, accurate and responsible safer sex information. This kind of curriculum has been proven to delay the onset of intercourse, reduce the frequency of intercourse, and increase contraceptive use.

Abortion

Planned Parenthood believes that women have the right to obtain a confidential, medically safe, legal abortion under the standards set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade decision.

In contrast to New York, the US Congress has singled out certain classes of women (low-income women, federal employees, military personnel serving overseas, residents of the District of Columbia, and women in federal prisons) and restricted their access to legal abortions because their health care is funded in part by the federal government. New York provides state dollars to fund abortion services for women who cannot afford them, even though there is no federal participation in funding.

Planned Parenthood believes that in all cases, women, their families and their doctors should be able to make decisions about the best way to protect a woman's health. Anti-choice organizations have tried to erode the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision (which ensures a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose) by advancing vaguely worded and deceptive bans on abortion procedures without an exception for the health of the woman. The ban on so-called “partial birth abortion” is an example. Such bans have been found to be unconstitutional by numerous courts, including the Supreme Court, specifically for failing to protect a woman's health.

Emergency Contraception

In 1998, the FDA approved the first packaging of emergency contraception (EC), also known as "the morning after pill." EC is a high dose combination of oral contraceptives that if taken within 120 hours of unprotected sex, can safely prevent a pregnancy from occurring. EC does not affect an established pregnancy. (NOTE: EC is not the abortion pill.)

Planned Parenthood supports increased access to EC, including allowing trained pharmacists and nurse practitioners, who have entered a collaborative agreement with a physician, to dispense EC directly to a woman; increased awareness and availability on college campuses; mandatory access for women who have been sexually assaulted; and ultimately, for EC to be available over-the-counter for all women.

Pharmacist Refusals

Minors’ Health

Planned Parenthood believes that minors, as well as adults, should have confidential access to reproductive health services, including family planning, disease prevention, and abortion.