Dear Mr/Ms. President,

My name is Molly Loughney and I am a sixteen year old girl living in Westport, CT. This being the last election I can’t support my issues with a vote, I wanted to write to you to talk about the importance of Planned Parenthood. Being a young woman I care deeply about the health services Planned Parenthood provides and the constant threat of it being defunded worries me greatly. Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an organization dedicated to women and their health, a service that is underrepresented elsewhere in our society. There is a lot of misinformation that is spread about this organization and so I want to present my view that the services that Planned Parenthood provides are vital to the communities it exists in and defunding it would increase rates of STD’s and abortions.

Despite popular opinion, Planned Parenthood does not only provide abortions. In fact abortions make up only 3% of its annual services. The biggest service planned Parenthood provides is STD Testing and Treating which makes up 42% of its annual services followed closely by Contraception Services at 34% according to a report published by the organization in 2014, and research done by the CDC shows that communities where Planned Parenthood is underfunded or does not exist experience an uptick in STD’s and unplanned pregnancies as people lose access to contraceptive devices like condoms and birth control. Having Planned Parenthood in a community actually lowers the amount of abortions and STDs as it is able to educate and provide people with means for contraception that they otherwise might not be able to access. People are going to have sex whether they can make it safe or not and by defunding Planned Parenthood we would only serve to make it harder for safe sex and contraception especially for women. Also, even if Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics are shut down, the abortion rate does not decrease, instead the procedures just become more dangerous and are done in less sterile environments. As well, 20% of services Planned Parenthood provides are women's health and cancer screening. By defunding Planned Parenthood and depriving women of these vital services, we say that women's health does not matter to us. Planned Parenthood provided 10.6 Million services to 2.7 Million clients in 2013 and to deny these people the health care that they need would simply hurt us.

Secretary Clinton, you have shown how you care and have fought for women's rights throughout your career and through your work with your foundation and to fund Planned Parenthood would continue this fight for greater equality in our society. Supporting Planned Parenthood would represent what I hope to be one of your core values of equality, especially in healthcare for everybody. Mr. Trump, recently your actions have caused me and many others to believe that you do not possess a certain level of respect for women. By funding and supporting Planned Parenthood as president, you could have a chance to prove to the American people that you do respect and care about women and that your past comments do not speak to how you act as a leader.

I want for Planned Parenthood to continue to provide the vital services it does for our American communities and as a future voter. I want to support leaders who recognize and protect this organization. I believe that the existence of Planned Parenthood is an asset to our country and provides safety and security to millions of women, like me. To defund it would be to say that women's health is unimportant to our country, which I think both of you would agree is untrue. We can’t let fear and misinformation decide how our country is run. Whoever wins this election will be president for at least the next four of my life, so I appeal to the fact that the policies you enact in this term will affect me in my formative college years. This is a large responsibility that you are taking on and as a citizen and a future voter, I hope that you will not disappoint the American people.

Sincerely,

Molly Loughney