Editor’s note: This commentary is by Abigail Hagler, MD, a retired physician who lives in Craftsbury.
[I] would like to comment on Planned Parenthood. Not just the abortion issue — this is what gets all the press because it is lurid, and people love to read about lurid. Planned Parenthood performs many other services.
I am a retired physician, and while in practice I saw women without the means to afford basic, preventive services: Pap smears, mammograms, blood tests, vaccines. Most of these are expensive, and without insurance, unaffordable. Planned Parenthood does these, and cares for pregnant women. Nutrition and education are a large part of their care.
A Pap smear in most clinics costs hundreds of dollars, which includes the pathologist’s reading in the lab. Paps are necessary because cervical cancer is fairly common, and completely treatable if caught early. The cancer is caused by a virus, transmitted by the man to the woman. The more exposure to this virus there is, the more likely cervical cancer will occur. Planned Parenthood also provides condoms, which prevent the virus from reaching the cervix in the first place.
If a cervical cancer is picked up by a Pap smear, it will be treated or removed quickly. If not, it will grow. It can grow downward into the vagina, up into the uterus, or sideways through the bowel and urinary tract. I saw that once.
If a cervical cancer is picked up by a Pap smear, it will be treated or removed quickly. If not, it will grow.
A woman came in with an enlarging shiny red opening in her abdominal wall. It was cervical cancer, growing the way it will if untreated. She had lost the chance to live. A Pap smear would have saved her.
I also saw a woman with untreated breast cancer. Have you ever thought of what would happen if a breast cancer were allowed to grow, untreated? It grows into the breast wall, the ribs, the muscles, the lungs, and it metastasizes to the brain and liver.
This woman had multiple openings in her chest where the breast cancer had grown. It hurt to breathe, because the cancer had shot through the ribs. She too had lost the chance to live. A mammogram would have prevented this.
Planned Parenthood also cares for pregnant women who want be pregnant. They provide nutritional education and routine care, and refer high risk pregnancies to an obstetrician.
And they do, or refer out, an occasional abortion. Many abortions can be accomplished with two pills, so surgery can be avoided. Babies are not ripped from wombs. Fetal remains are treated with respect, in spite of what you may have heard from unreliable sources.
One woman, whose case I will not forget, was from Bahrain. She had become pregnant from rape. If her country had found out, she would have been stoned to death, after giving birth.
You decide which is the greater evil.
Sadly, some people have been taught that suffering is God’s will, or that cancer and rape are God’s will, and that all of these issues should be left in the hands of God. I think this neglects to remember that for all the major religions the underlying rule of living is to treat your neighbor as you would wish to be treated. Ask yourself: If you developed cervical cancer, would you just let it grow?
