In recent months, Planned Parenthood has struggled with being pigeonholed by conservatives as nothing more than an abortion clinic. But now, the organization has taken a serious leap to prove once again that women can and already do rely on them for a variety of other, totally uncontroversial services, like forthcoming expanded breast health care.
Remember back when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that they'd be pulling their grants from Planned Parenthood, and everyone flipped out? Then, Planned Parenthood received a surge of donations and promised the dough would go toward preventative breast cancer services and education. Now, they're actually putting the money where their mouth is by using $3 million in donations toward a new breast health initiative!
Here's what the initiative means for women ...
Planned Parenthood has been offering basic breast exams at clinics (and in 2011, provided more than 750K of 'em nationwide), but the organization couldn't fund follow-up care if they spied an suspicious abnormality. Now, thanks to the new initiative, $1 million will be spent ensuring Planned Parenthood's patients can get mammograms, biopsies, and ultrasounds. That's awesome news for women without health insurance or whose health insurance doesn't cover those screenings.
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The additional money is going to be put toward outreach and education efforts aimed at ladies under 40 and Latinas (who have disproportionately high death rates from breast cancer), which sounds like a well thought-out plan.
And get this! They'll also use the funds to introduce an "assessment tool," which will help Planned Parenthood docs better understand each patient's breast cancer risk, so they can get women the care they need faster. Sweet! Who wouldn't benefit from something like that? In fact, regular OB/GYNs might want to consider incorporating something similar into their practices.
All in all, the new services sound nothing short of incredibly beneficial for women who rely on Planned Parenthood for health care. And when it comes to the politics of the initiative, both sides of the aisle have to agree -- there's nothing remotely controversial about going above and beyond to help women prevent breast cancer.
How do you feel about Planned Parenthood expanding their breast health care?
Image via Army Medicine/Flickr
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Comments 8
Luckily under the new healthcare bill all preventive women care will be covered at no cost, as well as birth control. I believe the no cost birth control already started last month or the month before. By 2015, everyone will be required to have so kind of insurance (either private or through the government)so I think in just a few short years, planned parenthood will no longer be needed for anything except abortions.
So...before all they did was abortions. Got it.
Yank their federal funding and let them survive on donations. Maybe then they'll actually do what they've been purporting to do, preventative medicine instead of infanticide.
"luckily under the new healthcare plan...." your talking about it but idk if you actually know anything about it. you are aware that each state gets to choose whether or not to participate correct? Therefor planned parent hood will be necessary in the more conservative controlled states that do not support the bill.
And by the way six years ago when i was 18 and entered into my first relationship ever PPH helped me get BC at a tiny 60 dollar cost to me every three months. you see i was working at target and while i was hired as full time my hours would be consistantly changed to keep me from reaching full time satus thusly disqualifing me from any kind of corporate provided insurance. 40 hours one week 6 hours the next. thanks to PPH i was able lower my risk of getting pregnant (because condoms are not 100%)with a man i lived with for two years. turns out he was a cheater, my mistake. now im mariied with a son and im happy. Never got an abortion, never needed one because PPH provided me with the tools i needed to keep myself from making that decision. Actually i have known a few people who have gotten abortions and i dont think any of them went through PPH. I knew one girl who had two children age five and three who had 6 abortions paid for by the medicaid she got from the state, after her children were born btw. she had full access to BC through her medicade but continued to have unprotected sex with strangers because her abortions were paid for. I think if you want to ban something STUPIDITY in my generation is what you should be focusing on not places that help out the people who want to be responsible.