Regarding Henry Schulte’s commentary (Voices, June 16), “How can we deny a child the right to live?”: I would like to remind Mr. Schulte that the reason he remembered Planned Parenthood from his teenage days as a place “for girls and women to get birth control pills primarily” is because he is not a woman.
True, in high school that was the focus. At the time, Mr. Schulte, your teenage friends had family doctors. This was back in the day when a doctor served a family or a person, and it was usually affordable and thus commonplace. The only thing a teenager couldn’t get from the family doctor would be birth control pills.
Those using Planned Parenthood services who were not teenagers were equally interested in the medical services Planned Parenthood offered – mammograms, pap smears, cancer screenings, things that the male-oriented medical community made difficult for unmarried women (those without insurance through a husband’s work) to otherwise obtain.
Planned Parenthood also offers medical care to many places in the rural United States that do not have clinics and, increasingly, there are no longer hospitals available to a huge area of our country.
