Planned Parenthood

A nationwide poll conducted by Peter Hart Research, in March 2007, uncovered citizens’ overwhelming dissatisfaction with our country’s current approach to reproductive health issues and their strong desire to see elected officials focus on policy solutions to help reduce unintended pregnancies through measures like sex education and access to contraception. The data definitively demonstrates that components of Planned Parenthood’s Prevention First Agenda are not only good health policy, they are good politics. Policies to expand access to affordable birth control and comprehensive sex education receive strong support from the vast majority of voters across all demographics (including Republicans, Catholics and people living in rural areas.) Moreover, voters who feel conflicted about abortion rights support these prevention measures even more strongly than voters overall.

Unequivocally, the unifying issue for voters’ agenda for government and policymakers centers around the need for better sex education:

The Ohio Prevention First Act—an omnibus bill that addresses the key issues Ohio women face in obtaining reproductive health care and information about reproductive health care options.

In the United States, about half of all pregnancies are unintended.
SOURCE: Guttmacher Institute
98% of women will, at some point in their lives, use birth control. Birth Control is basic health care and no pharmacies should be able to stop a woman from getting a medication that she and her doctor have decided she needs.
Source: Guttmacher Institute
In Ohio 1.3 million women are in need of family planning services and 666,670 women are in need of state funded family planning services.
Source: Guttmacher Institute
Ohio ranks 44th among all states and the District of Columbia in public funding of contraceptive services. Source: Guttmacher Institute
In 2005 13% of the female students at Timken High School in Canton were pregnant—that’s 65 young women facing unintended pregnancies.
Source: Canton Repository, MUSTARD SEEDS: The ‘Irresponsible’ should get blame, August 21, 2005
Ohio has the 28th highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States.
Source: Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

Forbid a health insurance company from limiting or excluding coverage for FDA-approved prescription contraception if the policy covers other prescription drugs or devices.
Require sex education classes to provide students with medically accurate information about abstinence, contraception and condom use as ways to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS. Sex education programs that do not follow these guidelines are not eligible for state funding.
Launch a teen pregnancy prevention grant program through the Ohio Department of Health to award grants to public and private entities to establish or expand programs geared toward at-risk youth.
Earmark the existing $1.7 million in state funds each year for women’s health programs that include contraceptive services.
Require a pharmacy to dispense any prescribed drug, device or over-the-counter medication in stock without delay, consistent with the normal timeframe, and ensure that every licensed pharmacy does not intimidate, threaten or harass its customers in the delivery of services.
Ensure that sexual assault victims have access to emergency contraception and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases at hospital emergency rooms.
Require the Department of Health to distribute materials and educate medical professionals and the general public about emergency contraception.

PPSWO advocates for accessible and affordable health care for all individuals who want or need it. We advocate for increased funding for family planning services and routine gynecological health care through Title X, America’s family planning program. According to the Guttmacher Institute in An Enduring Role: the Continuing Need for a Robust Family Planning Clinic System, Policy Review, Winter 2008: “Efforts to expand coverage in the United States could bring welcome relief to many women. In 2006, 20% of reproductive-aged women—some 12 million women—lacked any form of insurance. Among poor women, the situation is even more dire: Fully 40% of the nine million reproductive-aged women with a family income below poverty were uninsured. Clearly, there is a long way to go.”

Also from Guttmacher in its Remember Her Words: The Analysis and Advocacy of Cynthia Dailard, 1998-2006 in its Policy Review, Winter 2007: “Thirty years after its enactment, the Title X program remains the centerpiece of the U.S. effort... Title X has been enormously successful in helping American women plan their births and avoid one million unintended pregnancies each year... Yet despite these significant accomplishments, the Title X program... has been besieged both politically and financially for most of its life... In fact, taking inflation into account, the $254 million in FY 2000 funding is 58% lower than the $162 million appropriated in 1980. By FY 2006, inflation-adjusted funding had fallen further, by 61% from the 1980 level.

One in six U.S. women who received recent contraceptive or reproductive health care obtained these services at a publicly funded clinic.
-- Guttmacher Institute 2007 Annual Report

Also according to Peter Hart Research, voters strongly support a broad array of other policy initiatives ranging from dealing with publicly funded crisis pregnancy centers to protecting women and health care providers from clinic violence. Support for every policy initiative tested is even stronger among “conflicted” voters than among voters overall—the data consistently demonstrate that a proactive policy dialogue with these voters is especially critical for policymakers to initiate in seeking to connect with this unique constituency’s goals.