The Women We Forget When We Talk About 'Defunding' Planned Parenthood

In 1970, Carol Corbin was a nervous, newly sexually active 19-year-old when she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to get birth control for the first time. Instead she left with orders to get a tumor on her ovary looked at immediately. Follow-up tests revealed it was the size of a football, and Corbin had stage 3 ovarian cancer. Decades later, Corbin, now 65, credits that Planned Parenthood clinic in Silver Spring, Maryland, with not only providing a “haven” for women seeking judgement-free reproductive health care, but with saving her life ― and she’s joining efforts to highlight the role the provider plays in cancer screening and prevention. “If I hadn’t been able to go to Planned Parenthood,” Corbin told The Huffington Post, “I’m quite sure that I would have been dead within a year.” The conversation around the ongoing GOP efforts to pull federal funding for Planned Parenthood has been dominated by birth control access, and with good reason. Preventing women who rely on federally subsidized healthcare from using Planned Parenthood ― which is what the effort to “defund” the provider essentially does ― would curb access to contraception and broader family planning services.  But Planned Parenthood is working hard to round out the conversation by highlighting the stories of women and men, like Corbin, who rely on the provider for preventive cancer care and screenings. Prohibiting the federal go...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news