I have visited Planned Parenthood a number of times in my life, for different reasons. My experiences with them have been helpful, and the people there were unfailingly courteous. This diary tells the story behind my first visit to Planned Parenthood and what I experienced there.
In the middle of my sophomore year of high school, just after I turned 16, I started dating a man three years older than I was. The relationship was long-term and after most of a year we decided to make it lifelong and get married after we were both out of college. K. was a student at UC Berkeley, aka Cal. Shortly before I turned 17, we went ring shopping and he asked me to marry him; I was 16, in high school, and engaged. We didn't discuss a date for a wedding because the time when we wanted to marry was years away. (We were together for 7 years and never did get married; we're still good friends.)
I had never had sex voluntarily at that time. I was raped at the age of 10 by the babysitter, a high school woman half again my age, but as far as men were concerned and as far as voluntary sex instead of rape was concerned, I was very much a virgin. K. was only the second man ever to kiss me, that's how inexperienced I was. So K. introduced me slowly, gently, and with great care to various sensual and sexual experiences, never once pushing me for anything. I did want to share sex with him after most of a year, so we decided to have intercourse for the first time after I turned 17.
We were both aware that caring for a baby or a toddler would make college next to impossible for us both, and wanted to find out about effective contraception and have a chosen method already in hand when we first had sex, and took mutual responsibility for making sure we did. I had no real income of my own; I was not working, since I was in high school and didn't have a paying job, just volunteer opportunities and the chance to occasionally earn a penny per snail gathered from my mother's garden. Collecting a hundred snails took a good couple of hours at the least, so this was no way to earn enough to pay for much of anything.
We resolved to go to Planned Parenthood, which was in downtown Oakland and had an excellent reputation among our sexually active peers. Back in those days, the greatest worry wasn't AIDS, since the discovery of that was still quite a few years off; for women, especially, the greatest worry was getting pregnant. K. and I had talked about this at length and he offered that if, despite choosing and using effective contraception, I got impregnated, that he would cover the full cost of an abortion. I thought that both of us needed to be involved in the selection of a method of contraception, and he concurred. We planned a trip to Planned Parenthood one afternoon and took the buses to downtown Oakland. Both of us were there as the nurse explained to us, in private, about the different contraception methods, how effective each was, the pros and cons of each method, the way to use each, and how much each was likely to cost.
I didn't trust myself at that time to be able to remember to take a pill at the same time each day, and an IUD needed to be implanted and had risks that I didn't want to face. Condoms by themselves weren't reliable enough when the failure percentage was discussed. I knew K. had only ever had sex with one person, a woman two years older that I whom I knew, and knew that she had only ever (at the time) had herself had only one partner: K. I also knew that he was completely monogamous, both with me and with her when they were together a year or so before we started dating. I trusted him and knew (since he'd been tested) that he had no STIs, so neither of us saw much point in supplementing a method for women with condoms. I wanted to be able to experience all there was to experience in sex with him, so given everything, the method that made the most sense to both of us was a diaphragm and contraceptive creams. The nurse told us the failure rate wth both a diaphragm used alone, which was too high, and a diaphragm used with a contraceptive cream, whiXH had a much lower failure rate. I was fitted for a diaphragm of the correct size and both of us were shown how to use it, then had to demonstrate that we could use it correctly and practiced until we got it right, both of us. All of this took place in a clinic room and the session lasted over two hours. Neither the nurse nor any other Planned Parenthood staff member or volunteer ever tried to hurry us up or chivvy us out of there.
When we left to catch the bus later in the afternoon, I had a new diaphragm of the correct size for me and a tube of contraceptive cream. Neither item had cost us a penny, and the lengthy clinical session hadn't cost us anything either. K. left a donation to help defray the cost of someone else receiving the excellent care and contraception at no initial expense that we had just experienced.
No one at Planned Parenthood tried to lecture me about being too young to have sex, or K. being too old for me. There was no shaming from anyone there. The appointment was in private, all of it. And I should mention that when I called them to find out about getting an appointment, I was told that we could just walk in and we'd be seen.
My experiences at Planned Parenthood have been wholly positive except for the time a clinic was surrounded by protesters, whom I ignored quite pointedly. They made it possible for me to have sex with my fiance without the fear of getting pregnant; we used our chosen contraception method each time and each time it successfully prevented me from being impregnated.
Thank you, Planned Parenthood, for being there for me each time I've needed your services. I hope that you can continue to provide health care for women of all ages and have called my Congressman and both Senators to tell them this story and ask that funding for Planned Parenthood not be cut, let alone eliminated.
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Do you have a personal story you'd be willing to share about experiences you've had with Planned Parenthood? I hope you'll do so in a comment.
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