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
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: