Melinda Tuhus Photo
Rene Carrano is mad that Republicans in Congress passed a budget bill last week that eliminates all federal funding for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She’s been a patient at the New Haven clinic for almost 15 years.
“I knew they had a sliding scale and I didn’t have insurance at the time,” said the self-employed hairdresser (pictured) from her home in the Annex neighborhood. The clinic is now at Edwards Street and Whitney Avenue. “They’ve always been good to me; if I ever have a problem, they’ll take me right away. I know there are people who have objections with the abortions [carried out there]; but I’ve been seeing one of the clinicians for a long time and I love her. I’m 45; I go for my annual [check-up]; I get birth control there.”
Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy is mad, too. He’s participating in a conference call this afternoon with the governor of Vermont, the mayor of New York City, and the head of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards. The conference call title: “Speak Out Against Dangerous Attacks on Women’s Health and Family Planning Programs at Planned Parenthood.”
Last week he and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman issued a statement calling on House Speaker John Boehner to oppose the amendment cutting Planned Parenthood’s money. (Boehner supports it, as did most Republicans in the House; most Democrats voted against it, including the entire Connecticut delegation.)
Planned Parenthood is one of programs on the chopping block as Washington fights over the federal budget for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The package passed by the Republican-led House on Saturday cuts more than $60 billion in federal spending, a move supporters say is essential to reducing the budget deficit and slimming down the government.
Democrats still hold a majority in the Senate, which is expected to reject most of the reductions. A government shutdown looms if the two chambers can’t agree by March 4.
In an interview in her office Monday, Susan Yolen (pictured), vice president of New Haven-based Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, said she wasn’t surprised by the amendment, offered last week by Indiana Rep. Mike Pence.
“I think Mr. Pence has been around with this kind of language for years. He just hasn’t had the groundswell, I guess, of support from leadership that he now has with the new Republican majority. We were bracing for it.”
The New Haven clinic is one of 800 Planned Parenthood runs around the country.
Yolen said the New Haven clinic sees 64,000 patients a year. About a third are on Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income individuals that’s funded by both state and federal tax dollars. (A spokesman at the national Planned Parenthood office said that 90 percent of the $363 million the organization receives is federal funding or Medicaid payments, and that’s a third of its $1 billion budget.)
If that money goes away, Yolen said, 30 percent of local patients will no longer be able to get services. Only 10 percent of patients come to Planned Parenthood for abortions, she said.
House Republicans, including Pence, who opposes abortion rights, said the organization promotes abortion. In a statement on his website about the passage of the amendment, Pence called it “a victory for taxpayers and a victory for life.”
They cited a recently-released video by an anti-abortion activist group, Live Action, showing a Planned Parenthood worker offering advice to two people posing as an underage prostitute and her pimp. Planned Parenthood has said the video — patterned after those that got the housing advocacy group ACORN in hot water—was heavily edited and unfair in its portrayal. The organization has fired the worker involved.
Yolen said that Planned Parenthood is about a lot more than abortions — which, except in very specific cases, can’t be paid for with federal money because of a long-standing provision called the Hyde Amendment.
“The vast majority of our work is basic pregnancy prevention, basic health visits, cancer screenings in particular,” Yolen said. “So it’s not abortion-focused.”
She and other women’s health advocates predict the elimination of federal funds to Planned Parenthood, along with a zeroing out of Title X funds, will lead to more, not fewer, abortions.
Title X is the national family planning program. “It was founded back in the early 1970s by President Nixon, believe it or not,” Yolen said, “back in the days when it was a very positive Republican value to support family planning. So it’s been around all those years, and it really is the core of our national program to help women prevent unintended pregnancy, but more than that, it provides vital screenings for young people and low-income women.”
It covers annual exams for thousands of Connecticut women, including pap smears — a test for cervical cancer — clinical breast exams, and the testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.
Yolen said she and her colleagues are cautiously optimistic that the funding cuts passed by the House will die in the Senate, or be vetoed by President Barack Obama. But, she added, “We certainly aren’t taking anything for granted.”
The organization will be working until the Senate votes, she said, marshaling supportive lawmakers. There are senators, Yolen said, who don’t support abortion rights but “do understand the importance of preventing pregnancy and will vote with us in that regard.”
Providing family planning services, she said, saves a lot more than it costs.
“Every dollar the government spends on family planning saves four dollars. This has been documented over and over again, by preventing the cost associated with an unplanned pregnancy, so in the first nine months you’re saving money on prenatal care visits, [then] labor and delivery, and particularly sometimes, the neonatal intensive care kind of costs that drives the cost of delivery up very high. So we will be losing money by not investing in family planning.”
Carrano has another reason to support Planned Parenthood. “My son is 20 years old and he wanted to get checked out because he had unprotected sex and wanted to be checked out for STDs and he went there and he liked it too. I’m pretty mad about [the cut] because I like going there, and especially for young girls or even boys who need to go there.”