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Community Corner

Opinion: Moorpark Teens Need Planned Parenthood Type Services

The Susan G. Komen Foundation mixed politics with health care in deciding not to fund the health services organization.

Some years ago, when my daughter was a student at , she told me that so many students had given birth that there was a daycare center on site so the young mothers could attend school. I’m talking about pregnant, as in having and keeping the baby.

I was aware of a few cases of her peers who had become pregnant, including one who was only 15 years old. I was horrified, truly.

I went to school a couple hundred years ago and back in the Stone Age when the pill was not generally prescribed for teens, I was not aware of anyone in my class of 621 students who came to school pregnant or mysteriously disappeared for a year. Abortion at the time was still illegal in Illinois. Teenage access to birth control was spotty at best.

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We had been raised to have a great life and to meet and exceed our individual potential. For some girls, it meant marrying well. For others, it meant meaningful and successful careers or living a life dedicated to others. The next step for 98.5 percent of my class was college.

Sex education? None through the school. Abstinence? Doubtful. Birth control? Absolutely and with the support of our mothers and/or doctors. Fathers were generally left to believe their little girls would never, ever grow up. We were told if you are going to engage in adult activities, you had better act like a responsible adult. No religion, no preaching, just common sense.

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Apparently, this common sense is harder to find in Moorpark and Ventura County. Despite the encouraging news that the rate of teen births in Ventura County has dropped below the state average, there were 7,378 teenage girls who gave birth here last year.

An item that has been in the news the past few days is the dust-up over the Susan G. Komen Foundation refusing to send funds to Planned Parenthood, as it had been doing every year. Why would a prominent breast cancer non-profit, the pinkest place you could find, aside from Mary Kay, single out Planned Parenthood for deletion and then, when women howled with rage, reverse itself the next day?

Can’t be certain, but it sure looks like it has a lot to do with abortion, the fully legal and medical procedure of terminating a pregnancy at the behest of the pregnant woman. It is the politicizing of women’s health.

Komen chose to  mix poisonous politics into the non-political reality of breast cancer screenings and other health care services offered by Planned Parenthood. This group lets you walk in and get the care you need. Even poor women, even teens.

Is there another organization that does so much good, that fills such a desperate need, that steps up to the plate where the government has utterly failed to preserve the life and health of its citizens? Is there another group of health care providers, from the doctor to the receptionist, who risk their lives daily so that other women will not suffer?

My final word here: Had there been a Planned Parenthood clinic in Moorpark, a city of 35,000 residents, perhaps the teenage ignorance of the obvious could have been prevented. The future of a girl is discounted when she has a baby before she becomes a woman. Not so for boys.

The closest Planned Parenthood clinic to Moorpark is in Thousand Oaks, 8.66 miles away. The next closest is 17.86 miles away in Canoga Park. And the third closest is 19.60 miles away in Ventura. For many teens, they may as well be on the other side of the world.

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