Planned Parenthood role in Sonoma County detailed

As a national debate rages over Planned Parenthood, North Bay supporters are rallying around the embattled organization, which has become a major provider of reproductive health services for women and men since its arrival in Santa Rosa two decades ago.

From its clinics in Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties, Planned Parenthood delivers an array of services that supporters say would be jeopardized if the organization loses its federal funding, as Republicans in Congress have threatened.

'When you look at the overall picture, you realize there are so many women and men that really depend on these services in areas where there aren't a lot of other services available,' said Santa Rosa resident Connie Codding, a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood Northern California, an affiliate of the national organization.

Almost 90 clients a week receive services at the Santa Rosa clinic, which saw 4,648 clients last year. It provides birth control and STD testing and treatment, cancer screening, emergency contraception, immunizations and abortions. The organization declined to provide the number of abortions or other services at the clinic.

Recently, it started offering PrEP, a daily pill to prevent HIV, to high-risk patients. Additionally, the organization has a large Community Services and Education Program that provides sexuality education and case management services to youth, teens and families.

It is part of a network of clinics in 20 counties in Northern California that provide health and education services to 155,000 clients annually. Men make up 13 percent of patients, and women make up 87 percent. Almost all clients qualify for subsidized family planning services because their household incomes are less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

Planned Parenthood has faced criticism and congressional backlash recently for its practice of supplying tissue from aborted fetuses for scientific research. Some in Congress have suggested $528 million in federal funding for Planned Parenthood could be shifted to the nation's network of community health centers.

Naomi Fuchs, chief executive officer of Santa Rosa Community Health Centers, said defunding Planned Parenthood would constitute a major blow to reproductive health care options nationally and locally.

'It's still an essential service provider in our community,' said Fuchs, whose organization is one of several in the city that provide a full range of reproductive health services, including abortions.

Local health care organizations like Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health also provide abortions, as does Women's Health Specialists, which has had an office in Santa Rosa since 1983. It offers services similar to Planned Parenthood with a more local focus, said Shauna Heckert, the group's executive director. The elimination of funding for Planned Parenthood would significantly narrow the health care options for local women, Heckert said.

'Women in Sonoma County deserve choices, especially for these sensitive services,' Heckert said.

Planned Parenthood stresses that abortions constitute a very small percentage of the services it offers.

'The important thing to know is that 97 percent of our services are preventive health care and 3 percent are abortions,' said Adrienne Bousian, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Northern California. 'And we're proud to provide abortion services,' she added.

Such figures, however, have been criticized as misleading. Several groups have noted that the calculation gives equal weight to unequal services, comparing a $10 pregnancy test with an abortion, a more involved and costly medical procedure.

Up to 12 percent of Planned Parenthood clients received abortions last year from the organization, based on an analysis of figures in its 2014 annual report. Nationally, Planned Parenthood served 2.7 million clients in 2014 with a total of 10.6 million services, according to the report. Of those, 327,653 were abortions.

If such rates are similar in Santa Rosa, the local clinic would be performing several hundred abortions per year.

How that compares to other providers is not clear. Sutter Heath said it provides about 70 abortions per year, and only for medically complex cases. The organization farms out routine abortion services to other providers.

Fuchs, who was away from her office, didn't have precise figures, but estimated the clinic performs 'three or four' a week at its Vista Family Health Center in Santa Rosa.

St. Joseph limits abortions

St. Joseph Health System, which runs Santa Rosa Memorial and Petaluma Valley hospitals, only provides inpatient abortions in cases where the mother's life is at risk, in accordance with 'the ethical and religious directives' of its Catholic values. Neither Kaiser Permanente nor Women's Health Specialists provided statistics

Supporters of Planned Parenthood stress that defunding the organization would do far more damage to the organization's preventative services than its abortion services. Under what is known as the Hyde Amendment, federal funding can only be used for abortions in the most extreme circumstances, such as cases of rape, incest or where the woman's life would be at risk.

In California, Medi-Cal covers abortions for low-income and uninsured people. The state paid just over $20 million last year for abortion services; about half of that amount — $9.8 million — went to Planned Parenthood, according to the state Department of Health Services.

Abortion numbers dropping

The total number of Medi-Cal funded abortions is on the rise in California, up from 56,068 in 2008 to 64,619 in 2013, a 15 percent bump. But in Sonoma County, the total number of Medi-Cal funded abortions fell 21 percent during that same period, from 961 to 759.

It is unclear how many abortions are provided annually in California and Sonoma County. The state does not track abortions performed outside of the Medi-Cal system, explained DHS spokesman Anthony Cava.

Nationwide, the total number of abortions has been dropping for decades. After reaching a high of 1.6 million in 1990, it fell to just under 1.1 million in 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The abortion rate has been dropping too, falling from 19.4 abortions per thousand women in 2008 to 16.9 in 2011. Experts have attributed both trends to the wider availability of contraceptive devices.

Whatever the percentage of abortion services Planned Parenthood represents in the community, its affiliation with the national organization makes it far more of a target than other providers.

Protests continue

Protesters are a regular presence outside its Sonoma Avenue offices. About 70 anti-abortion demonstrators picketed outside the facility on Aug. 22, one of several hundred protests across the United States prompted by recent controversy over the women's health organization's delivery of fetal tissue to scientific researchers.

Critics like Santa Rosa resident Mary Heeney, who is part of the group 40 Days for Life, reject the argument that eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood would harm preventative service more than abortion services.

People could still obtain contraceptive services from any number of other providers if the federal government withdrew funding for Planned Parenthood, Heeney said. She predicted Planned Parenthood would collapse without federal funding and the organization would no longer be able to provide abortions, which is her group's goal.

'Basically we're looking at saving babies one at a time,' said Heeney, 81.

As a reaction to the congressional hearings on Sept. 29, Planned Parenthood organized a National Day of Action that Bousian described as a 'pink wave across the country.' It included 300 in-person events as well as a boost in social media activity, including supportive tweets from Hilary Clinton and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

'I cannot emphasize enough the outpouring of support we have experienced in Northern California in recent days,' said Bousian. 'People deeply appreciate the compassionate and non-judgmental care we provide.'

Planned Parenthood has had a presence on the North Coast for about two decades. The first office in Sonoma County was opened in Rohnert Park in the 1990s by a different affiliate in Planned Parenthood. When that operation ceased in 2010, the Northern California organization opened a satellite site in Santa Rosa with limited hours, expanding to a full-service health center in 2011.

The clinic in Ukiah opened in 2011 and Clearlake, where a satellite office had operated for several years, opened in 2014.

The organization has an active advocacy group in Sonoma County that supports its financially and educates people about its work, Codding said. When attacked, whether by politicians in other parts of the nation or, closer to home, such as the arson at Thousand Oaks Planned Parenthood office, its support grows, Codding said.

'Planned Parenthood gets more support when adverse things come out,' she said.