It was almost exactly a year ago that I first got to know Maine Family Planning.
The occasion was an email I received from the Christian Civic League with the subject “Prayer defunds abortion in Maine.” The hard-right religious group was mocking the clinic network for having raised less money than they had the year before during their annual fundraising drive. The email claimed that divine intervention was the cause.
I was amazed both by the League’s juvenile approach to women’s health care and the strangeness of their claim that God was speaking to us through fundraising totals. I figured the best way to respond was to make a small contribution to MFP and to write a blog post expressing my thoughts. Maybe, if enough others also gave, the League would consider, for just a moment, the basis of their opposition to women’s reproductive rights. After all, donations were the measure of sanction and approval that they themselves had chosen.
I didn’t expect what happened next. The blog post was picked up across the country, most notably by well-known sex-advice columnist and progressive activist Dan Savage, who made the clinic network’s case to the huge, international audience of his Savage Love podcast.
Contributions to Maine Family Planning skyrocketed. Almost 1,500 contributors from every state in the nation and from countries around the world pushed their total raised from $5,000 to $60,000 in just a few days.
This change in fortunes doesn’t seem to have affected the position of the Christian Civic League. They have protesters out in front of Maine Family Planning clinics again this year, harassing and intimidating Mainers seeking abortion, birth control and other health care services with posters featuring graphic images of aborted fetuses and with shouted lies (like the false claim that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer in women).
The past year has, however, helped to deepen my understanding of the importance of the work that Maine Family Planning does. I’ve watched, as a proud, first-time, small-dollar financial supporter, as they’ve pushed back against underhanded attempts to limit abortion rights in the Maine legislature and help to pass a bill bringing reproductive health care to 13,000 more Maine women.
They stood with Planned Parenthood as a voice for reproductive justice in the face of a national campaign against women’s rights.
They sued Gov. LePage’s Department of Health and Human Services for trying to shirk its responsibility to cover services for pregnant women considering abortions, and they joined with the American Civil Liberties Union, Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in filing a lawsuit challenging Maine’s broader prohibition of MaineCare coverage for abortion care.
Their position is that women of all economic backgrounds should have the same reproductive choices and access to the same care.
Just last month, they announced they were expanding medication abortion services to 16 more health clinics through telemedicine, greatly increasing access for women in rural Maine.
Just this week, their board president, Dr. Connie Adler, was inducted into Maine’s Women’s Hall of Fame.
They did all this in an incredibly difficult political environment and while continuing their mission of providing high-quality health care and education across Maine.
I’ve been impressed, to say the least.
As a guy, for whom issues of reproductive health care and access to abortion aren’t necessarily so top-of-mind, I’d like to thank the Christian Civic League for prompting me to pay closer attention to all of these important advancements and to Maine Family Planning’s dedicated work.
These issues should be a focus for all of us, regardless of our gender, geography, or family or economic status. Access to safe family planning and abortion services isn’t just an issue for women. It’s a basic prerequisite for the future prosperity of our state and country.
Whether or not women have control over their own bodies is an issue that affects all of us. Most women who are trying to prevent an unintended pregnancy do so because they’re trying to provide for their families, hold down a job, or finish a degree. A majority of women who access abortion services are already parents who know their family finances and know they can’t afford another child.
One of the best ways of strengthening our economy is to make sure that all women have safe access to a range of health care and reproductive services and are able to do what’s best for their families.
Thanks to the continued hard work of Maine Family Planning’s staff, donors and dedicated volunteers, more of these rights have been protected and we all live in a better, more just state than we did one year ago.
Mike Tipping is a political junkie who works for the Maine People’s Alliance. He can be contacted at:
writebacktomike@gmail.com
Twitter: @miketipping
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