The head of Planned Parenthood in Nassau County on Monday slammed federal lawmakers who are seeking to prevent the organization from receiving federal funding.
JoAnn Smith, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, said at a National Council of Jewish Women-Lakeville Section meeting that defunding Planned Parenthood means women will not have access to critical health care services other than abortions.
“It’s not about eliminating funding for abortions because, guess what, there is no federal funding for abortions,” Smith said. “The services that are being taken away are not the abortion services because, quite frankly, most people pay for their abortions.”
The services, she said, include Papanicolaou, or pap, tests, cancer screenings, birth control and sexually transmitted infection tests.
Smith said while there was already criticism of Planned Parenthood’s services across the country, a video that surfaced on the Internet in July allegedly showing Planned Parenthood employees selling organs of aborted babies increased the opposition.
David R. Daleiden and Sandra S. Merritt, leaders of an anti-abortion group called the “Center for Medical Progress,” were indicted in January on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, after they falsified California driver’s licenses to present themselves as biotechnology representatives during the secretly videotaped meeting with Planned Parenthood officials in Houston.
Smith said Daleiden and Merritt were trying to claim that Planned Parenthood was profiting from fetal tissue research.
“This group organized themselves and was working for several years to go underground to make totally fraudulent videos reporting that Planned Parenthood was doing something illegally,” she said. “They have since been debunked 100 percent. There is absolutely nothing accurate in them.”
Smith said Planned Parenthood officials and the organization’s supporters were “screaming and shouting because it was justice” after the indictment.
“This was a hoax,” she said. “This was a fraud with one goal: to defund Planned Parenthood.”
The video, Smith said, helped lead to the U.S. Senate passing a bill in December repealing the Affordable Care Act and stripping Planned Parenthood of all federal funding.
President Barack Obama vetoed that legislation in January, saying it would reverse the progress made in the country’s health care services.
“If not for Barack Obama, today there would be no money for Planned Parenthood,” Smith said.
She said federal and state lawmakers should look at the good Planned Parenthood does for both women and men.
Smith said Planned Parenthood of Nassau County provides 27,000 services for 14,000 patients per year.
She also said the organization’s Nassau branch targeted the areas of Hempstead, Roosevelt and Westbury, three locations where teen pregnancy rates were much higher than elsewhere in the county.
“I am very proud to say that the teen pregnancy rates in those three communities have decreased according to our most recent statistics,” Smith said.
She said in Hempstead, the teen pregnancy rate dropped 29 percent, in Westbury, the teen pregnancy rate dropped 35 percent and in Roosevelt, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped 50 percent over the past few years.
Smith said the results did not just relate to the medical services the organization provides, but also its education efforts in promoting safe sex initiatives.
“This is because they have access to education and they have access to birth control,” she said. “That combination is magical.”
“By defunding Planned Parenthood, they are taking those two things,” Smith added.
