On Wednesday, NH voted to withdraw nearly $650,000 of state funding from Planned Parenthood. Even the pro-choice legislatures of our state have long chafed against funding the top-heavy, corrupt, inefficient monolith of Planned Parenthood — not because we love babies, but because we hate wasting money.

Naturally, people concerned about the poor are upset about the vote to defund, because Planned Parenthood is like the classic abusive boyfriend: They’ve got us convinced that we need them, we’re going to be lost without them, we’re no good without them, we’ll never make it on our own.

Yes, well.

New Hampshire is actually a pretty good state to be a poor woman in (it’s rated 7th in the nation for the quality of its healthcare).

I should know, having been a poor woman in New Hampshire for the last forty years, give or take a few sojourns north and south. I have always gotten free, excellent prenatal care and postpartum care, free pap smears, free breast exams, free STD testing, and — well, I’ve been offered free birth control, if by “offered” you mean bombarded with non-stop, wall-to-wall, relentless harangues about how important it is for me to get my free birth control now now now. Even when I told them I didn’t want it, they put a bag of condoms in my suitcase at the hospital anyway.

I have gotten all of these things for free. And I have never set foot in a Planned Parenthood.

But what would we do without Planned Parenthood?

NH has offered free medical care to children, pregnant women and the elderly and disabled for years, and it recently expanded Medicaid to cover all poor people. Here is a pdf of the handbook that lists (starting on page 15) all the services which are free to poor people. It includes preventative care, including regular wellness check-ups, and all prenatal care, including nurse midwife services, pregnancy related services, services for conditions that might complicate pregnancy, lab work, birthing centers, family planning, medically necessary hysterectomy, prescription drugs, and a myriad of programs to help you have a healthy pregnancy. They literally pay you to take care of your baby, offering cash incentives for well-child check-ups.

But what would we do without Planned Parenthood?

New Hampshire will take the $600,000+ they were going to give to Planned Parenthood and instead will distribute it among the Concord Feminist Health Center, the Joan G. Lovering Health Center on the Seacoast and Weeks Medical Center in the North Country.

But what would we do without Planned Parenthood?

New Hampshire’s Let No Woman Be Overlooked Breast and Cervical Cancer Program offers

women’s health exams, mammograms, pap test, and pelvic exams to women age 21-64 who have no health insurance or have insurance that does not pay for screening tests and with family incomes at or below 250% of the Federal Poverty Level.

Here is the list of sites which offer free mammograms and pap smears:

Berlin Coos County Family Health Services – North 752-2900

Colebrook Indian Stream Community Health Center, Inc. 237-8336

Concord Concord Hospital Family Health Center, Concord 227-7000×2921

Conway White Mountain Community Health Center 447-8900 x305

Derry Women’s Health Associates 421-2526

Franconia Ammonoosuc Community Health Services 444-2464 x0

Franklin Health First Family Care Center 934-0177

Gorham Coos County Family Health Services – South 466-2741

Groveton Weeks Medical Center 788-2521

Hillsboro Concord Hospital Family Health Center, Hillsboro 464-3434

Keene Cheshire Medical Center 354-6679

Laconia LRG Healthcare 524-3211 x2940

Lebanon Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center 653-9321

Littleton Ammonoosuc Community Health Services 444-2464 x0

Manchester Catholic Medical Center 626-2626

Manchester Elliot Hospital 668-3067

Manchester Manchester Community Health Center 626-9500

Nashua Lamprey Health Care 883-1626

Nashua St. Joseph Hospital 882-3000 x67188

Newmarket Lamprey Health Care 659-3106 x7455

Newport Newport Health Center 863-4100

North Conway Memorial Hospital 356-5461 x2388

Peterborough Monadnock Community Hospital 924-1795

Plymouth Speare Memorial Hospital 536-1104

Portsmouth Families First of the Greater Seacoast 422-8208 x222

Raymond Lamprey Health Care 895-3351 x7390

Somersworth Goodwin Community Health Center 749-2346

Warren Ammonoosuc Community Health Services 444-2464 x 0

Whitefield Ammonoosuc Community Health Services 444-2464 x 0

Wolfeboro Huggins Hospital 569-7500

Woodsville Ammonoosuc Community Health Services 444-2464 x 0

But what would we do without Planned Parenthood?

Uninsured people can get STD testing, pregnancy tests, counselling, and ultrasounds at these clinics around the state. My daughter volunteered at one of these clinics. It’s a few blocks away from Planned Parenthood, and unlike Planned Parenthood, but like many of the other clinics around the state, it also offers things like free diapers and baby clothes, car seats and strollers, parenting classes, and help navigating social services.

Without $650,000 from the state.

But what would we do without Planned Parenthood?

Here is a list of FDA certified mammography facilities. It includes nearly 9,000 places where women can get mammograms. Planned Parenthood is not one of them. Not one. Because they don’t offer mammograms, but only referrals (i.e. a piece of paper with an actual doctor’s address on it) for mammograms.

But what would we do without Planned Parenthood?

The truth is, most of what Planned Parenthood offers is abortion. That’s their cash cow. The reason they say it’s only 3% of their business is because they count everything that goes along with abortion as an individual service: you go in because you’re pregnant, and they give you a pregnancy test, and an STD test, and an abortion, maybe some antibiotics, and a box of birth control pills. Guess what? Planned Parenthood just provided five services — and abortion was a mere 20%. Now mix in a bunch of teenagers who stop by to get free condoms, and it’s pretty easy to get that number down to 3%.

It’s a stupid game, but it works. And it makes people think,

What would we do without Planned Parenthood?

We would do fine.

We would do fine.

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Mammography image by Rhoda Baer (Photographer) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons