Planned Parenthood — and women — under siege

When I was a student at UC Santa Cruz in the early 1970s, there were no abortion providers in the county, whose medical system was dominated by the local Catholic-run hospital. So my sister Cindy and several other feminist activists who were also Santa Cruz students founded the first women’s health clinic in the county and imported a doctor each week to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

Cindy and her feminist health collective were part of the emerging “our bodies, ourselves” movement that understood — like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger a half century earlier — that if women did not have control of their own biological destinies, they would never be free. These young feminist health workers were scorned and harassed by the local medical establishment. But they were my heroes.

Cindy later became a family doctor and helped deliver many babies, including Joe — my wife’s and my first son. She also volunteered to work for a time at a Planned Par-

enthood clinic in the Pacific Northwest, where she had to wear a bulletproof vest and be escorted in and out of the building by bodyguards. This is the courage it takes to help women assume dominion over their bodies and lives.

I think of my sister when I drive by the Planned Parenthood clinic in my San Francisco neighborhood, on Valencia Street.

The patients and staff going in and out of the clinic are often confronted by protesters with banners and signs, who thrust antiabortion pamphlets and paraphernalia at them — including tiny rubber replicas of fetuses — even if the patients are simply coming to the clinic for Pap smears or breast cancer exams.

This gantlet of shame and condemnation can be deeply disturbing to the women seeking help at Planned Parenthood.

But it’s nothing compared with the nationwide political campaign aimed at restricting women’s access to abortion services, which has made it impossible for low-income patients in many areas of the country to get access to the health care they need, by curtailing or shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics.

The defeat of President Trump’s health care plan has given some breathing room to Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500 million a year in federal funding. But Republicans have made it clear the organization is still in its crosshairs.

Even in liberal oases like San Francisco, Planned Parenthood provides crucial health services that are not otherwise available to its largely poor and minority clients.

More than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood patients in San Francisco have incomes at or below the federal poverty level. These patients rely on the Planned Parenthood clinic for basic health care needs, including prenatal services, AIDS/HIV screening, treatment of sexually transmitted disease and even some primary care.

Abortions constitute only about 2 or 3 percent of the work that Planned Parenthood Northern California clinics provide, according to the organization’s interim CEO, Gilda Gonzales.

“We’re seeing a higher level of stress at our clinics these days,” Gonzales told me. “There’s been a sharp increase in the number of requests for IUDs and implants — long-term contraceptive solutions — because women are uncertain about the political future.”

Last week, I made my way through the “40 Days for Life” prayer vigil outside the Planned Parenthood clinic on Valencia to see how patients were responding to the new state of siege in the Trump era. The demonstrators were polite but impassioned, insisting I was entering a “killing center,” not a clinic.

I found the patients inside equally outraged by the offensive against Planned Parenthood. “Everyone has a right to say what they have to say, but Planned Parenthood is trying to make this a safe space for women — and this is not the place to engage in debates that might turn combative,” said Whitney Russell-Holcomb, a 23-year-old woman who does customer service for a San Francisco tech firm.

“Frankly, it’s none of these strangers’ business what I do with my uterus.”

Russell-Holcomb, who came to the clinic for a Pap smear, said she chose Planned Parenthood because she had “negative experiences with another doctor before. I’m a sexual assault survivor, and the doctor made shaming comments about what happened to me. But the people at Planned Parenthood are always welcoming and supportive.

“Trump is terrifying,” she added. “We elected a sexual predator president. What kind of message does that send to other men like him?”

There is indeed something deeply unsettling about a man like Trump — whose boasts about what he can do to women’s bodies with impunity became a defining moment of the 2016 campaign — again crowing about his control of women, this time through the power of the federal budget.

Women should not be in this battle by themselves. They are our sisters, wives, lovers, friends. How deeply and truly lost and forsaken would men be without them? That’s why I liked talking with Ian Anderson in the clinic waiting room, a 35-year-old Oakland paint contractor and musician who had come with his new girlfriend for STD screenings — “kind of a responsible sexual partner date.”

“It’s gross to see middle-aged men out in front of these clinics telling young women what to do with their bodies,” he said.

“These gray-haired guys can’t relate to what it’s like to be a young woman of color with limited options. Would they be there for her if she were forced to have a baby? Would they pay for the kid’s education? These women are entitled to their own lives.”