Planned Parenthood's Fight in Aurora

Planned Parenthood's Fight in Aurora
By Sara Paretsky
The Chicago Tribune

Sunday 30 September 2007

Ugly scene a loss for women.

My grandmother watched her father die when an anti-Jewish mob
broke into their small home and shot him as he lay in bed with his
wife. The mob was jubilant and exuberant at his death; their
neighborhood priest in Vilnius, Lithuania, led the crowd through the
streets chanting a Te Deum to show their thanks to the Lord at the
death of someone they considered a nonbeliever.

Most members of that crowd called themselves Christians.

I think
of them when I look at the mob in Aurora that is trying to keep the
Planned Parenthood health center there from opening.

I have been working around these protesters and their associates
for 20 years, trying to help women get through their ranks into
clinics for medical appointments. On a recent stint at an
obstetrics-gynecology health center under siege on the North Side of
Chicago, I was trying to escort a woman with ovarian cancer through
the horde so she could see her doctor.

Part of the crowd surrounded us, chanting "Christ killers!" and
"Baby killers!" Briefly, I felt the fear my grandmother must have
known.

The police were watching the demonstrators block the clinic but
doing nothing to remove them from the entrance. After five minutes,
they came to help the cancer patient escape her harassers and return
to her car - weeping and trembling. There was no way she was going to
get essential medical care that day.

After the police left, one of the protesters said to me, "I
suppose since you think it's OK to kill a fetus you agree that it's
OK if I kill you."

This is ugly language, but no more hate-filled than the rest of
the words and deeds of those angry people who want to keep women from
getting reproductive health care.

Why are we allowing such mobs to decide who gets medical care in
Aurora, or anywhere else in America? Never mind that polls show
Planned Parenthood is the most trusted provider of health care in
America. The zealots surrounding the Planned Parenthood health center
in Aurora have actually cowed the Aurora City Council into demanding
a review of the city's permit-granting process. A spokeswoman from
the mayor's office has said that a review of this kind has never been
done before.

The foes of reproductive rights are concocting a story about
Planned Parenthood operating deceptively because the group built the
health center in the name of one of its wholly owned subsidiaries.
Planned Parenthood did this because every time it tries to build a
new facility, its opponents try to keep women from essential health
care.

Four years ago in Austin, Texas, zealots intimidated Browning
Construction into breaking a contract to build a new facility. The
Planned Parenthood building was finished ultimately by contractors
from out-of-state. A Colorado right-to-life group has just announced
that it will use these same tactics to try to keep a new Planned
Parenthood facility in Denver from opening.

According to the Aurora paper, the Beacon News, Aurora officials
- including the mayor - agree that they knew as early as February
that Planned Parenthood was likely building a health center in their
town.

It was only when this mob descended on their town that they
decided to act outside their normal protocols in approving this
health center for opening.

Illinois ranks 42nd in the nation in helping women avoid
unintended pregnancies, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which
provides research and education on sexual and reproductive health.
The institute says only 29 percent of our state's "women in need"
were provided "publicly supported family planning services" by
clinics - and these are the women who need Planned Parenthood for
safe, affordable care.

Aurora, with more than 276,000 residents, is the fastest-growing
city in Illinois; but it has very few places where women can go for
quality, affordable reproductive health care. The women of Aurora and
surrounding Kane, DuPage, Kendall and Will Counties have been calling
their new health center for appointments for the last six weeks.

Isn't it time we turned our back on the mob and let women get the
health care they need?

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/100107WA.shtml

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