A Man’s Testimonial For Planned Parenthood

I come from central Minnesota, near the city of Saint Cloud. It’s a largely Catholic and Lutheran place, with some Muslims since the arrival of many east African immigrants, some Jews, some Buddhists, pagans, and other religions, and some atheists, like myself. Having grown up with these people, I can tell you that, whatever our differences, we have one thing in come- we have sex.

People are going to have sex. Whether they’re Christian or atheist or Muslim or what have you, there’s a wide gap between what the socially conventional dogma of marital, missionary reproductive sex is, and the sex that we, as humans, have- the sex that we’ve been having since long before the sexual revolution let us talk about it more openly. That includes atheists who are prudes in the bedroom. It includes pregnant Muslim teenagers. It includes Christians who hand out free condoms and pamphlets to their friends and classmates. It includes pro-life group leaders who get abortions. People have sex. If people are going to have sex, yes, personal responsibility plays a huge, massive, gigantic, central role in all of that, but people can be more responsible when they have the information and the options available.

The first time I had sex (with who was, at the time, my long-time girlfriend), I went to Planned Parenthood to learn about safe sex, because my school had taught abstinence-only sex ed for every year except the last sex ed class we had, where they did a very short coverage of a few methods of birth control. I’m glad I went to Planned Parenthood, because it turns out a lot of what I learned in class was incomplete, outdated, or wrong. I see a lot of my old classmates pregnant, or working instead of going to college because they got someone pregnant. Yes, they could have been more responsible, but at the same time, the options of responsibility could have been there. It would be awesome if parents would just do it, and schools and PP didn’t have to, but they don’t. I’m glad that PP taught me how to use birth control correctly, because otherwise, I might have thought I was being responsible while really just making misinformed choices, and maybe I would be one of those college-aged kids with a baby to look after. I’m glad I’m not, and that I get to go to college, but I wish some of those people I went to school with would have had the information they needed to be responsible. If these budget cuts force Planned Parenthood to close offices to salvage their operation, a lot more kids from St Cloud might end up misinformed, pregnant, and poor. I don’t want that for my community.