The credibility of Planned Parenthood was challenged with a display and presentation by Students for Life of America, SLA, and Pro-Life Aggies in Rudder Plaza Tuesday.
The display compared Planned Parenthood to Federally Qualified Health Centers, FQHCs, and encouraged  passersby to support the organizers’ cause of defunding Planned Parenthood.
Katie Martin, a Southwest region coordinator for SLA, brought the display. Martin said FQHCs are a far more viable option for women, pregnant or otherwise.
“We’re trying to expose [Planned Parenthood’s] marketing for what it is — a bunch of propaganda,” Martin said. “What Planned Parenthood really makes their money off of is abortion. They claim that they have all these other services, and if you look at the list, it’s really not that much besides abortion.”
The displays SLA brought with them listed services FQHCs offer in-house that Planned Parenthood doesn’t, such as mammograms and immunizations. FQHC does not offer abortions like many Planned Parenthood clinics do. The displays also claimed that FQHC serves significantly more women than Planned Parenthood per year as it has 12,300 more facilities around the U.S.
Carly Burke, philosophy senior and public relations chair for PLA, said Planned Parenthood’s current funding can be used to expand FQHC’s coverage, and that abortions could still be viable for those who choose if the organization disappears.
“Right now over half a billion dollars in taxpayer money is going towards funding Planned Parenthood,” Burke said. “A lot of people feel like if we get rid of Planned Parenthood then we’re rid of not only abortions but women’s health care . . . We feel that our tax money should go towards funding these organizations to provide better services, rather than an organization that performs abortions, which some people are against.”
Laura Reid, psychology senior and president of Feminists for Reproductive Equity and Education, said that many of the claims SLA’s display made are false and unrealistic.
“Planned Parenthood serves a lot of low income and minority women and their families,” Reid said. “For these populations there are areas where other clinics simply don’t exist. The myth that these [other] clinics provide services that Planned Parenthood doesn’t, or that they could take on that population if Planned Parenthood was defunded has been debunked.”
Reid said the abortion rate won’t drop if Planned Parenthood is defunded. Rather the rate will stay the same, but the practice will become less safe, said Reid. She said this idea is reflected by the fact that abortion rates have dropped consistently since 2011 without the defunding of Planned Parenthood, according to the Center for Disease Control.
“If their opinion is that they want to reduce abortions, what they should be doing is promoting services that offer birth control, contraceptives and provide outreach through sex education,” Reid said. “There are still people on our college campus that don’t understand sex or pregnancy. How are they going to understand where they can and can’t go for services?”