On Friday afternoon, a crowd of Planned Parenthood Action Fund supporters lined the halls of the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to hand-deliver over 87,000 #StandWithPP petitions to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s office. Yesterday, Ryan confirmed that the GOP would move to “defund” Planned Parenthood as part the reconciliation bill they plan to introduce soon to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known colloquially as Obamacare. Ryan reportedly sent six security guards to block the delivery of the petitions by the pink-T-shirt-clad Planned Parenthood volunteers, who waited in the halls to make their delivery of the petitions, which ask Ryan to protect funding for Planned Parenthood through Medicaid and Title X. The security guards ultimately blocked the volunteers from being able to deliver their petitions, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood told Teen Vogue. (And now, of course, there's a #PaulRyanSoScared hashtag going around on Twitter.)

In this photo, you can see the security guards standing with the volunteers in the hallway:

Planned Parenthood

The thing is, the federal government doesn’t actually “fund” Planned Parenthood. There’s no big check or bag of money that goes to the reproductive and sexual healthcare provider and their affiliate clinics throughout the country each year. Rather, the federal funds that do go to Planned Parenthood all happen in the form of reimbursements for services rendered through Medicaid, the federal and state program that provides health insurance to the working poor, and Title X, the federal family planning program for low-income Americans. Furthermore, because of the Hyde Amendment passed in 1976, no federal funding can in any way go toward abortion services; abortion is the only medical procedure explicitly banned from Medicaid coverage.

And if Planned Parenthood is eliminated as a provider for these programs, millions of Americans stand to lose access to health care. In two-thirds of the 491 counties in which they are located, Planned Parenthood clinics serve at least half of the women in need of publicly funded contraception. In one-fifth of these counties, Planned Parenthood is the only such provider of these services.

Teen Vogue talked to Planned Parenthood volunteers waiting to deliver petitions at Ryan’s office this afternoon about why they #StandWithPP and what they’re most concerned is at stake for access to healthcare in their communities and across the country, should Planned Parenthood be blocked from receiving Medicaid and Title X reimbursements.