BILLINGS, Mont. — On Friday, the staff of a Planned Parenthood clinic in a quiet residential neighborhood here conducted four Pap smears, nine contraceptive appointments, two screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and three pregnancy tests. Of the 24 patients seen that day, two had abortions.
It was a typical workload for this health center and for Planned Parenthood, the organization that emerged as the final sticking point in the budget talks that nearly led to a government shutdown.
(Sandhya Somashekhar/WASHINGTON POST) - Genoa Carver, 27, a chemist from Billings, Mont., went to Planned Parenthood in her hometown for her annual exam Thursday.
Planned Parenthood: Where it is, what it does
House Republicans were eager to cut off money to the organization, which is the nation’s largest abortion provider and a political force in Washington. President Obama blocked the effort, but groups that oppose abortion rights have vowed to raise the issue again and, in the meantime, are pushing for congressional hearings.
Planned Parenthood and its backers say that it serves a broader function than performing abortions, particularly in rural and medically underserved communities where the group has most of its clinics.
In Montana, women — and a few men — cross lines of protesters to tend to their most intimate problems. They drive hours to get birth control pills they cannot buy closer to home. They are screened for depression, cervical cancer, osteoporosis and high cholesterol. Many lack health insurance.
Many also get abortions. In Planned Parenthood’s more than 800 health centers in the United States, the group completed more than 300,000 abortions in 2009 — one out of every four in the country — the latest year for which data are available. Of the 15,000 people treated at Planned Parenthood of Montana last year, nearly 1,000 had the procedure.
Those abortion numbers have led some abortion opponents to call Planned Parenthood an “abortion mill.” In a recent floor speech, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said that abortions represent “well over 90 percent” of what Planned Parenthood does — a remark that his office later said was “not intended to be a factual statement.” According to the national group’s statistics, the proportion is closer to 3 percent.
Of the five clinics in Montana, one doesn’t offer abortions. One performs them three days a week; the others, one to two days a week. Planned Parenthood also partners with four medical centers throughout the state.
“It’s a small part of what we do,” Stacy C. James, president of Planned Parenthood of Montana, said Friday afternoon at the Heights clinic in Billings, one of two Planned Parenthood centers in the city. As if on cue, a half-dozen giggling teenage girls tumbled into the lobby, slipped condoms into the pockets of their ripped jeans, and left.
“That said, I am so glad we do” abortions, James said. “It’s not something I want to set aside. I am so proud that we provide this service, even though our primary goal is to prevent pregnancy.”
The possibility that Planned Parenthood could lose its government subsidy sent ripples of anger and panic through the waiting room of the clinic. It sits amid a neighborhood of townhouses and low-slung apartment complexes, where herds of antelope sometimes traverse the parking lot.
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