I was able to visit the Southwest OH Planned Parenthood clinic.

I met with Ayla and Molly, both who were former patients and now employees.

At the beginning of the meeting they were a little hesitant to speak openly with me, but felt obligated to tell their stories about planned parenthood. We sat in the lobby of the building which was busy with people coming and going.

Molly has only been working at planned parenthood for two months and was hired when the federal and state funding was discontinued.  Molly's job is to help the fund raising department.  50% of their income came from funding

Ayla only would say that she was at planned parenthood for a long time, she grew up in southern KY since a very young age after her family moved there from the Philippines.  She was introduced to Planned Parenthood once she began attending Northern Kentucky University and saw that she needed a PAP screen, she did not have insurance and did not have lot of money so the University recommended Planned Parenthood.  She went to planned parenthood for birth control and a PAP screening and found that she cervical cancer.   Immediately a consular can in and spoke to her in a way that won her over, then she was set up with a financial consular who set up a plan that worked for her to have surgery to have the cancer removed.  Planned parenthood was able to do the first two of three surgeries and the last was performed by a local hospital which was coordinated planned parenthood.  She swears that planned parenthood saved her life.

I explained to them that I wanted to learn more about Planned Parenthood and gave the example of the extreme left person that attended the Trump rally.

The first thing Molly was said was the abortion was less than 1% of their business then Ayla jumped in and said less than 3%, which was kind of strange to me.  They did not want to talk about abortion.

They explained to me sex education, how they do work with local schools and colleges.  For colleges, they post peer training signs around campus and students come to them to learn more about it by taking the training.  The training teaches the students about consent, emotional and physical abuse and teach the students how to educate their peers.

They also explained to me the work they do with bars by training bar tenders how to identify potential emotional situations that could negatively affect their patrons which could drive away business by giving them a bad reputation.  They gave the example of the drunk guy hitting on a woman in the bar way too much.  Teaching the bar tender how to get involved the correct way to keep it pleasant for all.

PAP and Mam-o-grams - which they offer and push people to have these once a year whether you have insurance or not.

When I asked about their favorite part of their job they both said by giving back, they serve over 22,000 patients a year, men and woman and work on a sliding scale which you pay what you can afford.  Their goal is to not turn anyone away. They were excited about a fund raiser they had that night, which they were both dressed in 90's outfits and celebrating their 90th anniversary.

When I asked about the worst part of their job they said nothing, (at this point they were more relaxed) I told them they had to answer and Ayla said sometimes the protestors in front of the Catholic Church, which is across the street, they just mentioned the stigma of planned parenthood make them feel not so good about themselves or maybe more about what they do.  However they did say they respect them, they are very very persistent and most of the people that protest are there every day and some have been there for 40 years.  They then mentioned that back in the 80's the facility was bombed, then explosive devices where sent to the office and placed in the parking lot. They feel now a little concerned about all the publicity in the news that this may happen again.

I asked Ayla if the Catholic Church knew about what they did outside of abortion and she paused, she answered by we don't interact with them and that she had no idea if they would know of the other services they provide.

I expected a very pluralist group, after meeting with them I feel they are more orange/green, especially with their new challenge of raising funds to keep them from operating in the red.  They were very positive and said we will figure it out, they did not know how but they are two months into this and are making progress.  Achiever mind set.

Jim Wilhelm
Director of Sales
Phone: (859) 538-8113
Cell: (513) 702-6554
Email: jwilhelm@galerieusa.com<mailto:jwilhelm@galerieusa.com>
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