Dear Planned Parenthood

Dear Planned Parenthood,

Whatever it is you’re selling, I’m not exactly buying it. I’ve never made an appointment at one of your clinics, or consulted with your counselors…because I’ve been fortunate enough to have really good health insurance, so I’ve always had more options for safe, reliable reproductive healthcare than I knew what to do with. Let me give you broads and non-broads a piece of my mind and say something I don’t think you hear very often:

Fucking thank you.

Thank you for all the thankless shit you do for us – abstinence-only-sex-educated millennials; pregnant people who want to be pregnant; pregnant people who do not want to be pregnant, or who can’t carry their pregnancies to term; teens who plan on losing their virginities in exactly three months and want to be prepared; the parents and grandparents who relied on Planned Parenthood way back when for safe, non-judgmental healthcare; and everyone else with genitals who has ever walked through your doors.

I think I speak for all parties above when I say:

Thank you for finding our tumors, giving us prenatal care, educating us about the importance of sex toys with flared bases, and laying out all of our options so that we feel informed.

Thank you for the birth control, the STD treatments, and all of your other incredibly valuable health services.

Thank you for providing safe, legal abortions to the people who need them. Yeah, we know it’s only 3% of what you do, but we still really appreciate it.

Thank you for giving financial aid (and often, a money-flying-away-emoji amount of it) to patients who need it.

Thank you for being the option we know we can always turn to, especially if we lose our jobs or change insurances. Navigating healthcare is really difficult, so it helps to know that we can count on you when everything else is falling apart.

Thanks for forming partnerships with organizations big and small, from national groups like NARAL to local and community organizations and abortion funds, to better serve your patients.

Thank you for your incredibly kickass, informative website. It has helped me make educated decisions about my birth control options. It also helped me explain IUDs to a room full of people on multiple occasions (who probably all have IUDs now, as is the nature of IUD evangelism).

Thank you for all 8+ email newsletters you send out almost every single day. I get somewhere between 3 to a dozen emails from y’all every week, and I think I have managed to join every single mailing list you have. From one content creator to another, I don’t know how you guys wrangle up that much new material every day but goddamn it, you totally do. (Note: I counted them up after I wrote this post. I am subscribed to 18 different Planned Parenthood newsletters). 

But for real, though, you guys.

Thank you for keeping your doors open for nearly a century, in spite of the increasing threats of (and acted-upon) violence your staff and volunteers have to deal with every single day.

Thank you for protecting us from asshole protestors and gristly, misleading images of fetuses by sending your clinic escorts to keep us safe.

Thank you for all of the super cheap and free condoms.

Thank you for the FREE IUDS (at least here in Austin).

Thank you for pushing back against the douchecanoe politicians that tell bald-faced lies about your services to benefit their campaigns and careers.

Thank you for somehow keeping your cool through all of this misleading fetal-tissue-secret-video-bullshit. Watching Cecile Richards school a room full of legislative dum-dums is truly a gift from above.

Thank you for taking in patients who believe that their abortion is the only moral one and will almost certainly join the rest of their congregation in front of your clinic the next day.

Thank you for keeping your doors open, even though anti-choice legislators have been shutting down clinics, rolling back your funding, and lying about your finances for years.

Thank you for mobilizing thousands of volunteers and activists to take up the fight for reproductive health.

Thank you for turning me into an activist, and teaching me how to fight for changes in my community and my state. (Also: thanks for the voting reminder tweets. I would have missed many early voting opportunities if not for those).

Thank you for all the million other things your brave and fearless staff does every single day that I forgot to mention or don’t know about.

Sometimes, this gradual rollback of reproductive health and freedom feels too big or too scary to fight. It’s hard not to get overwhelmed and exhausted. But somehow, in spite of threats, violence, and Ted Cruz, you guys are always there for us when we need you. So for the record, let me speak for a bunch of us and say one last thing: Thank you for caring, no matter what.

Your pal,

CC