King County wants to ax family planning services for poor women & teens in Rainier Valley
Digg This![At Below The Waist, we think it is important to support people all over the world who work in reproductive health. We found this blog post on a Seattle area blog. Their clinic is suffering with a budget, and as a result services could possibly be lost. We think it is important to support these folks, and we would hope you write to the people in charge and remind them just how important reproductive health is.]
King County wants to ax family planning services for poor women & teens in Rainier Valley, White Center, etc. Can you help?
Many of you already know that King County is facing a major budget crisis. What you may not know is that the budget currently being deliberated by the King County Council eliminates no less than FIVE family planning clinics – including the valley’s own Columbia Public Health Center in the Genessee Business District – as well as family planning and STD services for teens in juvenile detention. The clinics on the chopping block could close as early as the end of 2008.
According to our friends in the family planning loop:
Eliminating Family Planning just doesn’t make financial sense. Making free family planning services available to poor women actually saves us money. In fact, for every $1 invested in family planning, we save $4.
Cutting family planning and STD services constitutes a misuse of taxpayer money, as we are only deferring the cost until a later time. Furthermore, we are doing so at the expense of poor women and their families. I realize that cuts must be made somewhere, but to do so by targeting the most vulnerable members of our community is simply unethical.
Access to birth control and STD services is the single most effective way to reduce unintended pregnancies, to reduce state-supported births and abortions, and to contain the spread of STDs. Additionally, these services function as a critical entry point into broader medical care and social services for low-income women and their families.
Now, while some teen patients may be able to continue getting family planning services at the pediatric clinic, if these budget cuts pass there will be no services whatsoever for adult women.
In other words, without these clinics, thousands of poor women and teens in King County will have no place else to go for reproductive and sexual health care.
For more information, go here.
You can help!
Take a moment to urge lawmakers against this short-sighted solution. Tell them not to balance the budget on the backs of our neediest neighbors and to restore funding to the family planning clinics at White Center, Columbia (Columbia City), Renton, North (Northgate), and Northshore (Bothell), as well as family planning and STD services at juvenile detention, in the 2009 budget.
There is no time to waste, as the King County Council will adopt the 2009 budget by next Mon., Nov. 24, so if you’d like to see funding restored to these vital family planning services, contact the council TODAY urging them not sacrifice the reproductive health of our community’s most vulnerable citizens.
Three ways to make your voice heard:
1. Attend the last remaining County Council Budget Hearing TODAY at 1:30 pm at King County Council Chambers (516 Third Ave., Room 1200). Sign up to testify or hold a “save family planning” sign.
2. Testify electronically to the County Council – it only takes a minute – go here to share your comments.
3. Email the King County Council directly:
bob.ferguson@kingcounty.gov, larry.gossett@kingcounty.gov,
kathy.lambert@kingcounty.gov, larry.phillips@kingcounty.gov,
julia.patterson@kingcounty.gov, jane.hague@kingcounty.gov,
pete.vonreichbauer@kingcounty.gov, dow.constantine@kingcounty.gov,
reagan.dunn@kingcounty.gov
cc: Executive Ron Sims (exec.sims@kingcounty.gov), David Fleming, Director of Public Health – Seattle & King County (david.fleming@kingcounty.gov), Bob Cowan, Director of the Budget Office (bob.cowan@kingcounty.gov), and your state legislators. To find your legislators, go here.
