If you drive by Planned Parenthood’s medical center on Forest Park Parkway, you are likely to see protestors who want the government to ban abortion.  Their 40 day campaign and banner are titled, “Pray to end abortion.”  

 

Over the next 40 days and beyond, we encourage our community to pray, if you wish.  But we ask that you take these additional steps to make a difference in the lives, health and futures of all women in our state and in our country.  Your action will insure that women have access to medical services and information needed to plan for their families, to be healthy and to prevent unplanned pregnancies that lead to abortion. 

 

• Call members of Congress.  Urge them to insure that comprehensive birth control services remain in the package of covered benefits under health care reform.  Congress is getting relentless pressure from US Catholic Bishops who have mounted a campaign, insisting that these services be cut because they argue that, “birth control is not health care.”

 

• Call the Governor’s office.  Urge him to apply for expanded Medicaid family planning benefits, provided under the new health reform law.  These benefits would help hundreds of thousands of Missouri women who are uninsured.

 

• Know which candidates running for office support access to prevention services, birth control and comprehensive sex education.  Know which candidates support giving women, not the government, the right to make personal reproductive decisions.

 

• Know which candidates support ineffective abstinence-only sex education, support defending pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and know which candidates support making all abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest.  These are the expressed views of many running for office this year.

 

• Make your vote count on November 2.  Vote for candidates who support women’s lives and who support women’s health.  Elections matter, especially this year.   The candidates we are endorsing can be found at     www.ppadvocates.org

 

• Urge our elected officials to fight for the new health care law, and to withstand pressure from those who wish to dismantle and defund it.  Virtually every citizen and every family will benefit from the protections and provisions of this new law.   

 

And to those outside of our facility, we urge you to do more than protest, we ask you to work with us to pass sensible and effective “Prevention First” policies and programs that promote family planning, well woman care and responsible and age appropriate sexual health education.  These programs work; they improve the health and well being of individuals and our community.

 

 

Paula Gianino

President and CEO, Planned Parenthood ADVOCATES, St. Louis and Southwest Missouri