PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood

Introduction

Planned Parenthood is one of the world's leading providers of sex education, family planning information, and reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood advocates for pro-choice public policies, and politically opposes policies counter to those goals through lobbying, grassroots campaigns, educational programs, and legal action. Their political involvement has included the drive for contraceptive access, comprehensive sex education, and legal abortions. The International Planned Parenthood Federation, based in London, consists of member groups such as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Discussion

Areas of Planned Parenthood

These member groups consist of local affiliates that operate health centers, among other services such as abortion. Planned Parenthood also supports independent advocacy and research organizations such as the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the Guttmacher Institute. International goals in developing countries include the prevention of pregnancy and childbirth complications as well as efforts to combat sexual violence, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and assisting local organizations seeking to guarantee basic health care and reproductive health rights.

Planned Parenthood traces its founding to Margaret Sanger's movement in the early decades of the 20th century to provide all women access to family planning and birth control. At the time, Comstock laws made the provision of contraceptive information illegal. The experience of Sanger's mother and her own nursing work among poor immigrant women facing unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions led her to challenge these laws by opening the first American birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916. She later founded the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and the American Birth Control League, which merged and later become the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Planned Parenthood emphasizes preventive care through contraception, STD testing, and cancer screenings. (Tone 2001)

Women's Rights Movement

Planned Parenthood became part of the larger women's rights movement that began during the social upheavals of the 1960s. Equal access to birth control remained a primary focus, as Planned Parenthood supported the research and development of new forms of birth control, including oral contraceptives (the birth control pill), which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved for sale in 1960; the intrauterine device (IUD); Lunelle; NuvaRing; Ortho Evra; and Depo-Provera. Planned Parenthood helped secure the 1970 enactment of Title X of the Public Health Service Act, which provides funds for further contraceptive research and education and provides access to contraceptives regardless of income. They also campaign against teenage pregnancy through their advocacy of comprehensive sex education programs that do not focus solely on abstinence.

Planned Parenthood has also been active in the pro-choice movement to provide women with information about and access to safe, legal abortions. In 1970, Planned Parenthood of Syracuse, New York, had become the first affiliate to offer abortion services. Once the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the United States, Planned Parenthood fought to preserve legalization and prevent laws limiting full rights to access and privacy. They also fought against the opposition of pro-life groups, which included mailing campaigns, distribution of critical information, and peaceful picketing; and, in ...