About Planned Parenthood

New Jersey has five Planned Parenthood affiliates: Planned Parenthood Association of the Mercer Area, Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey, Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey, Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, and Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey.

Our non-profit agencies operate 31 health centers around the state that provide high quality, affordable reproductive health care and primary care services to approximately 76,000 patients each year. These services include comprehensive family planning services and birth control, HIV testing and counseling, pre-natal care and cancer screenings. Additionally, Planned Parenthood conducts an active advocacy program in the New Jersey Legislature and in the United States Congress in support of reproductive choice and other health care initiatives.

Right to Choose

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Roe v. Wade that the state could not interfere with a woman’s decision to have an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy. Additionally, the court held that the state could regulate abortion during the second three months if the regulation was narrowly tailored to protect the woman’s health and the state can bar abortion in the last three months except when the procedure is necessary to preserve the life and/or health of the woman.

Planned Parenthood gives women information and counseling to make responsible choices. Planned Parenthood works to ensure that abortion services include medically accurate information on the nature, consequences, and risks of the procedure, and counseling on the alternatives. Women deserve access to all reproductive health care options. It is essential that a woman has the information necessary to make an informed and responsible decision concerning the continuation or termination of pregnancy.

Decisions about child bearing should be made by a woman, in consultation with her family, her doctor, and her conscience. At Planned Parenthood, we work to ensure that no one is denied abortion services solely because of age, or economic or social circumstances.

Contraceptive Equity

Planned Parenthood helped pass state legislation in December 2005 to provide equity in insurance coverage for contraception by requiring health insurance plans already covering prescription drugs and devices to include equal coverage for prescription contraceptive drugs and devices. New Jersey legislators passed the bill 57-14-5 in the Assembly and 27-11-0 in the Senate.

As contraception is a basic health care need, this coverage should apply equally to all employees regardless of their employers’ religious beliefs. Every year, women of childbearing age spend 68 percent more out-of-pocket for health care than men, primarily because their health insurance won’t cover prescription contraception. A woman who wants two children will have to use contraception for more than two decades of her life.

Wanted pregnancies lead to healthier pregnancies, children, and families. Birth control offers multiple health benefits, including prevention of certain cancers, endometriosis, and anemia.

There is widespread public support for contraceptive coverage – 71 percent of voters agree that the government should require health insurance policies to cover contraceptives and birth control. When a reference to the number of policies that cover Viagra is added, that support rises to 77 percent of voters who agree with contraceptive coverage. To date 24 states have adopted Contraceptive Equity legislation.

Emergency Contraception

Emergency contraception (EC) is the best way to prevent unintended pregnancy in cases of rape, incest, or contraceptive failure. EC is a concentrated dose of birth control pills that can prevent pregnancy if taken within 120 hours of unprotected sex. Often called the “morning after pill”, emergency contraception does not cause an abortion but instead inhibits or delays ovulation; it is not effective if the woman is pregnant. In 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of emergency contraception as safe and effective. Both the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have endorsed the widespread availability of emergency contraception.

In many New Jersey hospitals, victims of sexual assault were not provided with information on or access to emergency contraception. These policies placed an unfair burden on these victims who are often in post-rape trauma and stress. Since a woman must take emergency contraception within 120 of unprotected sex, it is crucial that sexual assault victims be informed about the availability of emergency contraception when they are being treated at the hospital.

New Jersey legislators passed the EC in the ER bill by a vote of 77-0-0 in the Assembly and 37-0-0 in the Senate. On March 21, 2005, Acting Governor Richard Codey signed into law a bill requiring all hospital emergency rooms to offer information on and access to EC to survivors of sexual assault.

Pharmacist Refusals

The New Jersey Legislature is considering legislation that says that “A pharmacist shall not refuse to dispense or refill a prescription or medication order solely on the grounds that to dispense or refill the prescription or medication order would contravene the pharmacist's philosophical, moral or religious beliefs”. This bill was introduced in January of 2006 in the NJ Senate and Assembly. The primary sponsors of the bill are Sen. Madden, Sen. Vitale, Rep. Stender, Rep. Cohen and Rep. Green.

An increasing number of pharmacists across the country are refusing to dispense birth control of emergency contraception to customers based on moral or religious reasons. This is a disturbing trend that can jeopardize a woman's reproductive health. Denying women their rights to timely access to health care is an act of discrimination that could lead to an increased number of unintended pregnancies.

A pharmacist's personal beliefs should not take precedence over the individual healthcare decisions of customers and their doctors. Decisions about childbearing should be made by a woman, in consultation with her family, her doctor, and her conscience.

Family Planning Funding

Subsidized family planning services provide women, mostly the uninsured working poor, with the ability to plan or prevent pregnancies and to remain economically self-sufficient. Funding family planning helps prevent unintended pregnancies, lower rates of abortion and sexually transmitted diseases, substantially decrease the risks of infant mortality and provide essential screenings for breast and cervical cancer, hypertension and diabetes. Additionally, adequate funding for family planning reduces state costs for pre-natal and delivery, abortion, welfare and social services. For every public dollar spent on family planning services, an estimated $3 is saved in Medicaid costs. New Jersey ranks 42nd out of 50 states in family planning funding.

Familiy planning promotes healthy families by preventing unplanned pregnanies and the need for abortion. Information and access to familiy planning enables people to make personal and responsible choices about the number and spacing of their children.

International Family Planning

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), world population will grow from 6.3 billion to 8.9 billion by 2050. The United States is the fastest growing industrialized nation in the world. Although Americans constitute only five percent of the world’s total population, we consume 25% of the world’s resources and produce 75% of the planet’s hazardous waste. Therefore, any increase in our population can have adverse affects around the world. Our efforts to recycle, conserve energy and water, or protect land and wildlife habitat from development will be thwarted, if not totally undermined, if we do not also work to curb population growth here and abroad. Women and men in many parts of the world lack access to family planning services - an estimated 350 million couples. In addition, the largest cohort of young people in history is entering their childbearing years.

International Family Planning Assistance
- promotes the advancement of women.
- lowers mortality among women and children.
- helps reduce abortions and deaths from unsafe abortion.
- helps prevent sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.
- slows population growth which alleviates environmental stress.
- creates resources to support an improved standard of living and economic growth.

The U.S. is not doing as much as it could and should to help support international family planning initiatives. The U.S. currently gives nearly one quarter less than we contributed in 1995 and much less than we committed to donate in collaboration with 178 countries in 1994. In relation to our wealth, that’s the lowest contribution among all industrialized countries. Planned Parenthood supports substantial increases in international family planning funding as well as the repeal of the Global Gag Rule (Mexico City Policy). According to the Global Gag Rule, international family planning agencies may not receive U.S. funds if they provide abortion services, including counseling or referrals, or lobby to make or keep abortion legal in their own country, even with their own non U.S. funds.

Sex Education

There is currently legislation pending in New Jersey that would reverse ‘stress abstinence’ and permit the teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education that discusses both abstinence and contraception. The bill A901 was introduced in 2004 by the primary sponsor Rep. Gusciora. The bill requires all boards of education to offer instruction in comprehensive family life education.

The New Jersey Legislature recently passed legislation that requires family life education classes in public schools to ‘stress abstinence’ rather than provide an age-appropriate, medically accurate sexuality curriculum.

Only medically-accurate sex education allows for responsible decision-making and disease prevention. Politicians and government should not deny teens the comprehensive education that they need to protect themselves.

Violence Against Health Providers and Patients

In recent years, a campaign of violence, intimidation, and harassment has been waged against reproductive health care providers, patients and their families. Tragically, this campaign has resulted in several deaths including the 1998 murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home in Buffalo, New York. Other violent attacks by abortion opponents have included death threats, stalking incidents, assaults, kidnapping, bombings, arson, clinic invasions, blockades and butyric-acid attacks at health care facilities.

In 1994, President Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) that makes it a federal crime to use or attempt force, the threat of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with providers of reproductive health care services or their patients. It also outlaws damaging or destroying the property of a reproductive health care facility. FACE provides for both criminal prosecutions and civil enforcement.

Confidential Health Care Services for Minors

Recently, the New Jersey Legislature attempted to restrict minors’ access to confidential health services by requiring parental notification before a minor could receive treatment for a pregnancy related condition. In other states, attempts have been made to require parental notification or consent before minors could receive contraception.

Planned Parenthood strongly supports communication between parents and their children, however, requiring parental notification or consent would reduce the number of minors seeking reproductive health care services. A Journal of Pediatrics study found that only 15 percent of teens would seek care for sexually transmitted disease if parental consent or notice were required. This number jumps to 50 percent if treatment were confidential. Efforts to restrict confidentiality jeopardize a minor’s health, since teens who are forced to inform their parents will often delay pregnancy related care and avoid testing for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV.