OPINION: Life in Trump’s America

Nov. 13--On a normal day, Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan fields nine calls from women interested in long-acting birth control like the intrauterine device. Wednesday -- the day after the presidential election -- Planned Parenthood's call center booked 37 appointments for women seeking IUDs. By noon on Friday, Planned Parenthood centers across the state had booked 134 appointments for long-acting contraceptives, along with appointments for screenings, checkups and other routine care, about a hundred additional calls each day, in total.

"The comments from the patients calling were the same," said Lori Carpentier, CEO of Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan. "They're worried they're going to lose their health insurance, or lose access to birth control."

Or lose access to Planned Parenthood itself.

They're not wrong to worry.

Planned Parenthood is under constant siege from Republican lawmakers eager to defund it, ostensibly because it is an abortion provider -- only 3% of its services are abortion related, for which no federal funds can be used; about 2.7 million Americans visit Planned Parenthood clinics each year.

The vast majority of Planned Parenthood's work is in aid of women's health -- screenings, checkups, testing and treatment for STDs, prenatal and obstetric care. And, of course, prescriptions for birth control: The Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's landmark health care reform, required insurance companies to cover birth control at no cost. Republicans in the U.S. Congress have tried to repeal the ACA, but their efforts have been beaten back by Obama's veto. When Republican President-elect Donald Trump takes office this January, that firewall goes up in smoke -- repealing the ACA is high on Trump's to-do list. Mike Pence, Trump's vice president-elect, is a staunch social conservative who has waged war on Planned Parenthood, access to abortion and access to contraception.

?Related: Trump suggests Obamacare's protections for the sick may stay

So with a Congress eager to act, and a president and vice president urging them forward, the ACA -- at least the parts of it that ensure women have affordable access to reproductive health care -- is most likely toast. Revoking insurance doesn't mean birth control, which nearly all American women use at some point during their lives, will disappear. But for some women, insurance is the only way they're able to afford contraception, and Planned Parenthood is the most reliable place to get it.

And that's why those women, the ones ringing Planned Parenthood's phone off the hook for birth control and medical care, are panicking.

"Folks sometimes say people aren't paying attention," Carpentier said. "I'm here to tell you these women are. They understand the threat to their well-being as it relates to reproductive health care."

So that's the reality some American women are facing: Lose coverage, or lose care entirely.

If it happens, Carpentier says, "Those women will go without care. And no amount of magical thinking by (vice president-elect) Mike Pence will change that. "There are not people who will pick that work up if we go away" -- an oft-repeated sentiment by legislators who'd like to see Planned Parenthood defunded.

Will any of this happen?

"Because the one thing everybody can agree on is that this will be one of the most unpredictable presidencies in the history of the country, we have no idea what to expect," Carpentier says. "Trump made all kinds of promises, some of which we know are not realistic, so I guess we don't know what he's going to do."'

(For what it's worth, it's unlikely that Roe v. Wade, the high court case that found women had a constitutional right to privacy that protected abortion rights, will be overturned, said Wayne State University law professor Robert Sedler -- in part because of a court standard called "societal reliance." In other words, the right to abort a pregnancy has become firmly entrenched in our society, and the court would have a hard time snatching it back. And the Supreme Court's Whole Women's Health ruling, Sedler says, curtails states' ability to limit access to abortion. But it's also worth noting that if a future high court were to overturn Roe, abortion would immediately revert to its pre-Roe status in Michigan, in other words, illegal.)

Right-wing lawmakers have worked intently to defund Planned Parenthood, despite its phenomenal popularity with Americans, for years. State legislatures have worked diligently to limit women's access to abortion services; the State of Texas made abortion so difficult to provide that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against such laws earlier this year, in Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstadt.

I can't imagine Republicans lawmakers won't take the shot.

___

(c)2016 the Detroit Free Press

Visit the Detroit Free Press at www.freep.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.