This post is made possible with support from the Mission List. All opinions are my own.
Have you ever wondered what direction your life would have taken if you would have chosen a different path? I just watched a powerful video by Joss Whedon about how different people's lives would be without Planned Parenthood and felt compelled to share my story.
I had just gone through a bad breakup when I was 19 years old, so like a responsible sexually active teenager, I chose to visit a Planned Parenthood for a low-cost STD test to make sure that everything was ok in that department. While I was there, I opted for a Pap smear, HIV test... the works. I wanted to make sure that I was ok.
Two weeks later I got a call from them.
"Jamie? We're going to need you to come back in to discuss your test results."
Crap.
I knew that that bad boy I just had to be with gave me some kind of funky gonoherpesyphalitis or something and I was scared to death to go back in. "Please be something that penicillin will cure," I thought to myself as I walked back into the waiting room.
The results weren't exactly what I was expecting. Although I did have an STD, it wasn't like I was imagining. The doctor found "abnormal" cells in my cervix from my Pap smear and I informed me that I had HPV. They ran the genetic typing and discovered it was HPV-16, the one that causes cancer. Not exactly how I wanted to kick off my summer.
Because of Planned Parenthood, I knew to continue getting regular Pap smears. At 20 years old, I had my first colposcopy. "Cervical changes," is what the doctor said, but not to worry. After having my son at 22, I received scarier results from a second colposcopy: I had carcinoma in situ.
The doctor called it "pre-cancer" and told me that if not treated soon that it could pass through the membrane and become actual cancer. I asked for a hysterectomy since I already had my son and was convinced that he was my one and only. He talked me out of it, saying that I didn't need such drastic measures and that he would perform a cone biopsy to remove the carcinoma in situ cells.
The surgery was successful and all of the pre-cancer cells were removed. Two years later, we welcomed my baby girl into our family.
How would my life have been without Planned Parenthood? That I can't say for sure, but I would imagine I wouldn't have caught the HPV before it turned into cervical cancer. Maybe then I would have found out in time to have a hysterectomy and cancer removed, but maybe not before it metastasized into something else. I probably wouldn't have my beautiful daughter. I might've not even had the chance to see my son grow into the wonderful man that I know he's going to be.
That's why I stand with Planned Parenthood.
If you don't know by now, legislation to “defund” Planned Parenthood will hit people who rely on federal insurance and public health programs. Planned Parenthood isn't just an abortion clinic - they do so much more for men and women.
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