Due to comments recently made by President-elect Donald Trump, the future of women’s reproductive rights and Planned Parenthood, an organization that facilitates family planning services and reproductive healthcare to many low-income women, is a topic of national discussion. President-elect Trump has been openly pro-life throughout his campaign, and has also talked on many occasions about his wishes to cease federally funding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue providing abortions. Planned Parenthood provides many other vital, and often life-changing services to women outside of abortions, and the federal government should continue funding Planned Parenthood because all women have the right to those services if they choose to seek them. …show more content…
However, federal funds from Title X cannot be used to cover the cost of such services, and Medicaid only covers abortions in certain cases: rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother (Kurtzleben). Any further restrictions, or even less restrictions, are decided on by the individual states. In fact, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “even though the state cannot ban abortions, it is under no legal obligation to fund nontherapeutic abortions or to provide public facilities for such abortions” (Alters). Also, when looking at the big picture, only a small percentage of the total services Planned Parenthood clinics provide is made up of abortions. In 2014, it was about three percent. Some pro-life supporters argue that this is a misleading statistic because it looks at total services and the majority of patients receive more than one service, but still, only 12 percent of Planned Parenthood’s patients receive abortions (Kurtzleben). In the grand scheme of things, the organization prevents an unimaginable number of abortions because of the services and contraceptives they provide to women and families. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune cleverly coined Planned Parenthood as “America’s largest abortion preventer” ("Political Attacks on Planned Parenthood Are a Threat to Women's