Local Planned Parenthood in health plan crosshairs

March 19--MANKATO -- A provision in the Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act that would cut funding to organizations providing abortions could hit home in the Mankato area.

Mankato's Planned Parenthood does not provide abortions, but it can refer patients elsewhere. The proposed Republican health plan would essentially cut off federal Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood regardless of which services its patients receive -- federal funding already cannot legally cover abortions.

The impact on the Mankato clinic's patients could be significant, said Sarah Stoesz, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

She said about 40 percent of the 3,700 patients each year in Mankato rely on Medicaid to cover medical costs for things like birth control, cancer screenings and testing for sexually transmitted infections. If Medicaid funding doesn't cover care at Planned Parenthood, the women would have to go elsewhere to clinics that don't specialize in sexual health, Stoesz said.

"It's very wrongheaded to think that telling women they can't get their health care at Planned Parenthood is in any way having to do with abortions," Stoesz said. "It's only going to hurt the patients."

Similar federal cuts in 2011 led to the closure of six Planned Parenthoods in Greater Minnesota, including ones in Fairmont, Owatonna and Albert Lea. Eighteen in Minnesota are still listed on the nonprofit's website, with the next nearest being in the Twin Cities area.

Stoesz said it's too early to say whether Mankato would follow suit with 2011's six closures, but the newly proposed cuts feel similar.

"I'm not saying we would close the clinic -- I don't know what we'd do -- I'm saying people who come there wouldn't be able to," she said.

For reproductive rights advocates, the cuts feel like a systematic attack on women's health, said Laura Harrison, interim chair of the gender and women's studies department at Minnesota State University. Harrison said she volunteered at a Planned Parenthood in Bloomington, Indiana, while in college and also received care there.

Especially in rural areas where care options are more scarce, the cuts could have a particularly negative impact, Harrison said.

"Often in rural communities there is not an elsewhere where women can go with the options available that Planned Parenthood has," she said.

Opponents of abortion see it differently. For them, happenings in Washington feel like positive momentum for a cause they've long fought for.

Sister Candace Fier, director of the office of family life with the Diocese of New Ulm, said cutting funding to abortion-providing organizations could open up more funding for other clinics that provide all the same services -- except abortions. She called the proposed cuts a "welcome step."

"I think the money can be channeled to organizations that do provide services that are truly providing women's health care," she said, adding abortions shouldn't be considered health care.

The fact Planned Parenthood doesn't receive federal reimbursements for its abortion services shouldn't matter, she said, because the funding it receives for other services can free up money for the abortions.

Mary Flanagan, campaign director for Mankato's 40 Days for Life, helped organize prayer demonstrations outside Planned Parenthood last fall. She said the recent proposals to cut funding shows her group's voices are being heard.

"I really feel that for those us in the faith community who have been advocating for this our entire lives ... it feels like an answer to a prayer," she said.

Flanagan said she and many other anti-abortion advocates based their Election Day votes on the abortion issue. To see their passion for the issue now potentially lead to action to end abortion is exciting, she said.

"This is on a lot of people's hearts and minds," she said. "All of us voted the way we did for this issue."

Despite differing views, Flanagan said she'd feel for anyone at Planned Parenthood who lost their jobs due to the proposed cuts.

"I'm not hoping that people don't have income," she said. "I just stand for life and believe abortions are not good for women."

Harrison said removing abortions from a woman's continuum of care would be even worse for women.

"If they didn't have access to the safe termination of pregnancy, then really dangerous options become their only outlet," she said.

Stoesz said it's hard not to feel singled out by the proposed health plan. She reiterated that Planned Parenthood is like any other clinic that doesn't receive federal reimbursements for abortion procedures. Yet they're the ones who risk losing Medicaid reimbursements for unrelated care, she said.

The positive in all of this, she said, is support for the nonprofit spikes after each new federal threat. Even locally, Planned Parenthood supporters outnumbered abortion protesters during a planned demonstration in February.

Harrison said the recently proposed cuts should be a reminder that advocates can't wait to have their reproductive rights protected by their legislators.

"We need to continue to reach out and make this is a widespread coalition against these attacks," she said. "If anything, the election should tell us we can't sit back and wait to be protected."

Follow Brian Arola @BrianArolaMFP.

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