I know you can’t use that word any longer (kind of like “liberal”), but Planned Parenthood was once a classic Progressive endeavor. It wasn’t called Planned Parenthood back in 1916 when Margaret Sanger opened her first health clinic inBrooklyn, NYC, where immigrant mothers like her own died at age 40 after 15 or 20 children and sexual education was outlawed – not to speak of abortion. Sanger went to jail almost immediately (it took nine days until he police raided the clinic) but continued the struggle for women’s rights. In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League which later merged with another organization devoted to the same goals to become Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood advocates for sex education as well as access to health care and reproductive health. It also plays an important role in the debate pro-choice/pro-life in the United States. Roughly one third of its funding comes from the U.S. government.
Today, Planned Parenthood has three main goals
- Education: programs which improve the public knowledge on the implications of human sexuality for society and individuals
- Access: Providing access to health care services “in settings which preserve and protect the essential privacy and rights of each individual” (www.plannedparenthood.org)
- Research: Helping improve our knowledge about the benefits of health care and reproductive health for individuals as well as the national economy