Melanie Repert: Help stop proposed gag rule affecting health care for women (Arizona Daily Star)

Saturday Jul 28th, 2018

The first time I visited the Baltimore City Health Department’s Druid Clinic, I was 17. I wasn’t going to the clinic for myself. A friend had told me she thought she was pregnant but was too nervous to go to the clinic to take a test alone, so I offered to go with her. When we arrived she was still nervous, so I offered to take a test as well.

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When I’ve asked experts about these approaches, it’s not that any of them are bad. It’s that they fall short. For instance, Leana Wen, the former health commissioner of Baltimore (and soon-to-be president of Planned Parenthood), said that the Support for Patients and Communities Act “is simply tinkering around the edges.”

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