I urge you to preserve all Public Health Family Planning and STD services in King County. While it is clear that the county must make significant cuts to balance the budget, eliminating Family Planning is a short-sighted decision with devastating long-term impact. Closing Public Health Family Planning Clinics will ensure that poor women do not receive these vital services, and will ultimately cost the taxpayers more money. That fact is that for every $1 invested in family planning, we save $4 in longer-term care. Access to birth control and STD services is the single most effective way to reduce unintended pregnancies, to reduce state-supported births and abortions, and to contain the spread of STDs. Additionally, these services function as a critical entry point into broader medical care and social services for low-income women and their families. To cut these critical services is not only ignorant, it is unethical. I urge you to restore funding to the family planning clinics at White Center, Columbia (Columbia City), Renton, North (Northgate), and Northshore (Bothell), as well as family planning and STD services at juvenile detention, in the 2009 budget. I will support you and the state legislature in identifying long-term, stable funding for these critical public health services.
