The Culture of Family Planning - An HCET LearningLink On-line Training Module

3. Options & Choices

Family Planning is access to “the” full range of reproductive health care services that women need to manage their lives.

- Deborah Hobbins Regional Vice President Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Inc, Madison, WI

A fundamental philosophy of family planning is that women have the right to make voluntary decisions about their own bodies with the strictest confidentiality, access to the best information, and the availability of all possible options.

We specialize in reproductive health. We become experts in the contraceptive methods and choices available to women.

- Donna Hays, Program Director, Community Action, Inc. First Choice Women’s Health Center, Janesville, WI

There is a wide selection of reproductive healthcare options available for family planning clients. Some of these methods include pap smears, breast exams, colposcopy services, natural family planning and a variety of contraceptives.

Family planning is often narrowly associated with being about abortion. By providing contraceptive healthcare family planning clinics are actually working to prevent more abortions from occurring.

Family planning provides pregnancy counseling to those who do become pregnant and helps them to find the resources they need to deal with their pregnancy.

- Judy Shipshock, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Waukesha, WI

Family planning provides access to a wide-ranging selection of reproductive healthcare, including all-options counseling to pregnant women. Abortion is only one of the many options provided. Family planning gives women and men the choice to decide which method best suits their own reproductive goals based on their own basic values and culture.

Professionals involved in family planning are devoted advocates for quality healthcare for women. At the core of this principle is a woman’s right to manage her own body with involved participation in all the resources presented to her and with the non- judgmental, confidential support of the family planning facility and it’s staff.

I believe family planning providers are committed to providing quality healthcare to women. I believe they are incredibly accepting of where people are at. They don’t put themselves in a place of judging decisions or choices people have made regarding their sexuality.

- Janet Kusch, Executive Director of Options in Reproductive Care

Providing a variety of services, which meet the client’s needs, is a major part of family planning. Family planning professionals, their staffs, and others involved with family planning are advocates for people to be able to have the access to open, confidential healthcare resources.

When a woman comes in for contraceptive care she is taught how to give a breast self examination, she is given a pap smear to screen for pelvic cancer and uterine cancer. There are other things that are looked at in family planning clinics other than the direct issue of contraception or infertility. That is the way it should be because for many people a family planning clinic is an entry point into a healthcare system that they may not have been a part of before.

- Dennis Detlef, former Deputy Executive Director, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin

I would say about sixty percent of our clients (PPWI) are below the poverty level. We are talking about clients who have no insurance, who have very little money. If we were not there to provide them with their basic healthcare of a Pap smear/ breast exam they wouldn’t be getting care anywhere else.

- Maria Barker, Multicultural Programs Manager-Community Education Department, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin

Since the early nineties, many states have been granted waivers by the Department of Health and Human Services to expand Medicaid coverage of family planning to low-income women who otherwise would not qualify for Medicaid.⁹ In Wisconsin, the Medicaid Family Planning Waiver Program went into effect January 1, 2003.¹⁰ This program provides family planning services and supplies for women ages 15 to 44 that are at or below 185% of the federal poverty level.¹¹

The medical assistance family planning waiver has certainly influenced our ability to provide care and break down some barriers.

- Michele Geiger-Bronsky, Nurse Practitioner, Wellness Center of Door County

The Medicaid Family Planning Waiver strengthens the four core fundamentals that form the culture of family planning. The Waiver increases access to the confidential care and education that women of reproductive age receive through family planning clinics and assures confidentiality of all minors seeking contraceptive care. The Waiver program does not discriminate, and it creates options for women that otherwise lack the resources to have those options.

Family planning clinics are often in the heart of the communities that they serve. They represent a safe place for all women—not just those who have health insurance or a private physician. And all women use family planning clinic services, you see Medicaid patients alongside those with insurance.

- Nicole Safar, Public Policy Analyst, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin