The Planned Parenthood Health Center in Bloomington does not rely at all on federal funds, so the recent vote in Congress will not affect their operations, said Judi Morrison, vice president of education and marketing at Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.
Instead of using Title X funds, which provide family planning and health services, the Bloomington clinic relies on their patients’ payments, donations and community grants.
Republicans in the House of Representatives voted last Friday to halt all federal funds to the organization for a year to provide time for an investigation into whether Planned Parenthood makes profit by selling aborted fetuses for medical research. Some lawmakers have also threatened to force a shutdown of the federal government Oct. 1 to stop a budget that includes money for Planned Parenthood.
“It’s a good thing that we don’t have (federal) fundings (in Bloomington), but we don’t expect anything to come of the vote,” Morrison said.
Morrison cited Obama’s decision to veto anti-abortion measures to explain why she doesn’t expect anything to come of the vote in Congress.
Eight clinics in Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky rely on federal funds, but Morrison said she is disappointed in the vote.
“The real ramification of federal defunding is it would remove access to essential reproductive health care, including birth control and STI testing and lifesaving cancer screenings for hundreds of thousands of low-income women and men across the country,” Morrison said.
She added that it will negatively affect Indiana because nearly half of all pregnancies in the state are unintended.
The clinic in Bloomington performed 694 abortions in the 2014 fiscal year, according to Morrison. They also gave out 224 Pap smears, 633 HIV tests and 1,890 chlamydia and gonorrhea tests, according to their Center Profile statistics.
Nationally, abortions account for three percent of all procedures Planned Parenthood performs, according to their statistics.
Presidential candidate Jeb Bush has called for Planned Parenthood’s funds to be reallocated to other health clinics. Carly Fiorina, one of his opponents, claimed during last week’s Republican presidential primary debate that a Planned Parenthood video showed “a fully-formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’” The released videos do not contain this scene.
On the lawn in front of the Bloomington clinic last Saturday, Alex Kipp of Evansville said he believes none of the candidates go far enough, and said he was disappointed House Republicans voted to halt funding for only one year.
“I’d like to see abortion criminalized,” Kipp said.
His sign read, “Babies are Murdered Here.com.”
A “Doctors for Life Rally” is planned for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Planned Parenthood Bloomington Health Clinic. Local doctors and IU professors will discuss early human development and reasons why unborn children should be protected, according to their press release.
