Pro Planned Parenthood

As a Southern woman, with a strong Christian mother, what I’m about to say might surprise you, but I’m a full-fledged supporter of Planned Parenthood.

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I was raped during college, my first sexual encounter ever, and turned to Loving Choices for help.

Instead of receiving compassionate care after my traumatic experience, I was asked if I believed Jesus could forgive ME. After this uncomfortable experience, I left feeling numb, betrayed, alone and hurting. I had gone to Loving Choices looking for compassion and support, but I got wrong information and condemnation for a sin that I had no consent in.

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After some time, and looking for new health services without judgment, I turned to the local Planned Parenthood. I sat in the waiting room with the other women feeling a sense of community and support.

The staff was respectful, helpful and really cared about my well-being. When told I might be pregnant due to an error in birth control usage, I broke down in tears. I was broke, alone, far from family and had just broken up with my significant other. My doctor treated me with kindness and respect and asked if I had resources available to me if I decided to continue the pregnancy. She gave me resources, emergency contraception and hope that I would have options and affordable and accessible health care.

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Unlike Loving Choices that only offered Christian forgiveness and condemnation as a solution, Planned Parenthood offered real compassionate care and solutions to the problems I faced.

Contrary to the attacks that many politicians might use, Planned Parenthood helped me take control of my health and life. Defunding Planned Parenthood is a mistake.

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Marie Quinn

Bentonville

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From the web

In response to “Rapert wary heartbeat rules not implemented” (Oct. 1):

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Whether or not a woman hears a heartbeat, whether she knows one exists, whether she knows there is a good statistical chance she can carry to term, whether she is forced into watching an ultrasound (which in some cases is the sheer height of cruelty), it has been statistically proven over and over and over again to make no difference and have no impact whatsoever on any woman’s decision to abort. Radical right-wing belief to the contrary, women do NOT make this decision lightly. They don’t go to get their hair or nails done and pass a clinic and go in on impulse. They don’t schedule an abortion because pregnancy will ruin their “look” at a formal social event. They don’t terminate because they are going backpacking in the Rocky Mountains or skiing in Colorado. (I’ve heard all of these spewed from anti-abortionists parroting “LifeSite News.”) 

Rapert is not pro-life. He isn’t even pro-fetus. He is pro-forced birth, no matter what the cause of the pregnancy or the state of the woman’s health or the state of the health of the fetus, and will use any means he can to force women into childbirth. And it has nothing at all to do with being “pro-life” and everything to do with slut-shaming women for ever having sex in the first place. Pregnancy and childbirth are punishment for having sex and any women who gets out of that, either by aborting or by taking contraception, is escaping her just desserts. And it’s double down if she is aborting because the pregnancy either threatens her life or is because the fetus has congenital deformities, because then she obviously deserved that punishment.

Cait McKnelly

I would say that Rapert is Arkansas’s biggest embarrassment, if not for the competition from the likes of Duggar and Harris. But he’s trying hard.

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Doc

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