As a double major in Public Health and Gender Studies, it makes perfect sense that I would end up interning at Planned Parenthood this summer. I believe in feminism, in gender equality, in sex positivity, and in safety, responsible choice, and decision making, so this office just made sense for me. There are so few organizations out there that not only care about these rights and issues, but makes it their fight and their number one priority. Planned Parenthood is a wonderful place.
My involvement and love affair with Planned Parenthood, however--particularly with the affiliate I am now working with--began a long time ago. As a kid who had jumped from a conservative Jewish day school to a predominantly uninformative health class in high school, Planned Parenthood gave me my first real sex ed. They came into my gym classes and taught us about relationship communication, about protection, about contraception, and, yes, about different types of sex and their benefits and disadvantages. I was completely spoiled--I thought that everyone knew this information that I knew, that everyone was as informed as I was about sexuality and their own bodily autonomy.
Evidently not. Between the ages of 15 and 18, so many of my friends ended up having pregnancy or STI scares or were sexually abused or in unhealthy relationships. No one ever seemed to know what to do, so they would come to me and we'd talk about their options and their resources, and first on my list was always Planned Parenthood. We'd walk down the street during walk-in hours to get tested, emergency contraception (back before it was legal to purchase over-the-counter), or counseling. Planned Parenthood moved from being a place of education to a resource and a health service. And it changed me from being just a naive kid to someone with some real, valuable education who wanted to make sure everyone had the same. It turned me into an advocate.
So now I'm back here again, this time hopefully helping the community from the inside rather than the out. Although most of my background and my own experiences with Planned Parenthood have been educational or health related, now I'm sitting at the other end working with the political landscape of Pennsylvania to try to create pro-women, pro-choice change. I didn't think doing the stuff I do all day--phone banking or knocking on doors or stuffing bus pass holders with condoms and information--was ever something I'd willingly do. I don't think I ever really grasped how much I could learn from it. But beyond just the comparatively simple lessons like how to keep people from hanging up even when you call during dinner, or how much work goes into planning an outreach event like Pride, or how rewarding it is to see a fully-completed petition page, spending my time doing this work, and listening to the people who have actually made this their living, I've learned that this sort of grassroots advocacy work is exactly the right step for me right now. Planned Parenthood rests on pillars of education, health services, and political action, and all three are so important and so interrelated. It's not hard to be compassionate when calling voters for hours to support sex ed when you have witnessed how it can positively influence the health and well-being of kids growing up. And marching up and down streets all day asking people to support a pro-choice candidate becomes a lot easier when you know that their one voice can be the pressure that helps to improve reproductive health care and access in Pennsylvania.
So now, with the vote for the Healthy Youth Act coming so soon, we get to keep pushing to see if the work we've been doing so far will create good change. I hope it will.
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