I'll delete this if someone else has already written about it.
According to Memphis' The Commercial Appeal, the Shelby County Commission voted 9-4 to award the contract to provide Title X funding for family planning to Christ Community Health Services. Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region was providing services on a temporary contract.
Planned Parenthood does provide the legal abortion, CCHS does not.
"It is about abortion. That's why so many people are here," said Jeff Drzycimski, a Catholic deacon and one of several abortion opponents who spoke at Monday's commission meeting. "We want our tax dollars not to fund Planned Parenthood, not to fund the killing of children."
While CCHS does not provide emergency contraception, they said they will refer patients to another provider. Because EC is more effective the earlier it is taken after unprotected intercourse, it is unclear how this extra delay will affect the drug's effectiveness.
Because of lack of funding, Planned Parenthood says it may now have to charge for contraception. Maybe poor women should pray they don't get pregnant.
Many people in the audience wore pink Planned Parenthood T-shirts and spoke to commissioners. One of them was 24-year-old Mary Phillips, who said she'd been a patient at both Christ Community and Planned Parenthood, where she received a plastic box of birth control pills that she held up before the audience. She said Christ Community provides high-quality medical services, but that they sometimes come with a "sermon."
She said that she had once been told: "If only my relationships with people and God were right, I would have fewer health problems."
This is just another roadblock for women to access their legal right to abortion and contraception. And these people are worried about Sharia law.