Temporarily thwarted in their efforts to build a clinic in Auburn
Hills, Planned Parenthood will be opening a clinic in a different
location in Oakland County, Michigan, one of the Detroit area’s northern
suburbs. Scheduled to open the first week of April, the new clinic in
Ferndale will not offer abortions at this time, although abortion minded
clients can be referred to the Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown
Detroit which does offer the abortion pill.
The clinic planned for Auburn Hills was to be somewhat of a joint
venture between Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan (PPMSM) and
local, state, and federal governments (see April/May 2010 NRL News).
The Auburn Hills City Council met in December of 2010 to discuss plans
to direct $200,000 in state funds to open new 17,000 square foot
Planned Parenthood facility in the area so that federal family planning
dollars would not go elsewhere (Detroit News, 12/9/10).
Local opposition to the clinic ended up in court after owners of a
hotel adjacent to the property who claimed that both city ordinances and
a covenant signed prior to purchase of the land prohibited its use as a
medical facility (Detroit Free Press, 6/24/11). Though a judge upheld
Planned Parenthood’s right to build at the Auburn Hills location in
January (Detroit Free Press, 1/11/12), the hotel owners have appealed
the decision.
While the Auburn Hills project languished in legal limbo, PPMSM
looked around for other “opportunities” in Oakland County. “It’s not
either or,” Desiree Cooper, spokesperson for the local Planned
Parenthood told the Ferndale Patch. “With Auburn Hills, we prefer to
think of it as not happening yet. We just have to wait for the legal
process to lend its way before we can go forward” (Ferndale Patch,
3/26/12).
City and county officials were very supportive of Planned Parenthood
and the clinic’s opening. Craig Covey, Ferndale’s previous mayor and
currently an Oakland County commissioner, said on his blog that Ferndale
was “proud” to be the new location.
Covey said that “Political pressure from religious
ultra-conservatives had kept Oakland County bereft of a formal Planned
Parenthood presence for years.” Covey repeats the popular Planned
Parenthood mantra that 97% of its services are for “essential
life-saving cancer screenings, pap smears, breast health services, STD
treatment, health counseling, and education, but neglects to tell people
how abortion is the huge money maker that keeps Planned Parenthood in
business. Covey says that “We are thankful that an organization like
Planned Parenthood provides health care for so many people. The
alternative is much higher health costs in emergency rooms and for
advanced disease that would be borne by us all” (Ferndale Patch,
3/26/12)
Current Ferndale Mayor David Coulter says that the clinic’s opening
is “good news,” pointing out that Ferncare, the free local clinic, has
been overwhelmed, with a waiting list that is months long. That free
clinic does not provide any ob-gyn care, says Ferncare board president
Ann Heler, though she says that women ask for help with mammograms, Pap
smears and birth control “all the time” (Detroit Free Press, 3/26/12)
That the new Ferndale clinic, like other Planned Parenthoods, will
not actually offer mammograms, but only referrals for mammograms, that
they will refer for abortions, that they will either charge clients for
services or bill the state or federal government, so that taxpayers pay
for the services, does not seem to trouble the clinic’s local allies.
What PPMSM saw in Ferndale, Auburn Hills, and Oakland County was an
economic opportunity. Its clinics in surrounding communities were
already seeing what the Free Press called “about 5,000 Oakland County
residents” (3/26/12) PPMSM spokesperson Desiree Cooper told the
Ferndale Palch that “Oakland County does have a particular reputation
for (higher incomes),” but argued that there were many pockets of the
community that “have really been suffering a really long time”
(3/26/12).
According to a PPMSM factsheet, its clinics performed 1,333 surgical
abortions and 991 chemical abortions in 2010, for a total of 2,324 (see www.plannedparenthood.org/midsouthmi/files/mid-south-michigan/FactSheet_PPMSM_v3.pdf).
Does anyone really expect that number to go down with a new Planned
Parenthood clinic in the area referring (for now) for abortions and a
new clinic slated to go up at the other end of the county as soon as the
remaining legal hurdles are overcome?
--written by Randall K. O'Bannon
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