Clinic director: Birth control drive-through censure off base

By Rick LaFrombois

Clients of Family Planning Health Services, including teenagers, now can obtain birth control through a drive-through window on Wausau's west side.

The agency, a private, nonprofit reproductive services clinic, opened the drive-through to make it easier for women, especially those with children, to pick up their birth control, said George Million, a member of the organization's board.

Family Planning, 719 N. Third Ave., held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday to celebrate the drive-through opening. The agency serves more than 2,500 women in Marathon County and more than 10,000 women through its seven locations in north central Wisconsin. Its services are funded in part by grants, but mostly through fees charged to clients.

Not everyone thinks the event was cause for celebration.

Pro-Life Wisconsin opposed the opening, saying in a statement that the drive-through window "cheapens love on St. Valentine's Day."

"(The) new birth control window has made love a commodity as cheap as a cheeseburger. Will girls be asking, 'Can I get fries with that patch?'" Pro-Life director Peggy Hamill said in the press release.

Family Planning Executive Director Lon Newman of Wausau said he found Hamill's comments humorous.

"That's pretty clever," Newman said. "I'm happy to have a little fun with this."

But he said he thinks women have a right to convenient access to birth control. More than 90 percent of women in the United States use birth control at one time or another during their reproductive years, he said.

"These are working women, college students, friends, neighbors, wives and sisters," Newman said. "There's nothing cheap about them. That's the denigrating part of (Hamill's message).

"Women who are taking responsibility for when and when not to have children and who are protecting themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, these are empowered women who are participating in society, and they don't deserve to be belittled or condemned."

Family Planning spent $200,000 on the drive-through and an addition to its Wausau clinic that will expand its ability to store bulk pharmaceuticals in a climate-controlled warehouse.

Clients are encouraged to call ahead when they need to fill a prescription so that Family Planning staff can have it ready when they drive up to the window.

Family Planning has provided free condoms to those who stop in at the clinic, including teenagers.

That practice will continue at the drive-through window, Newman said.

"A person who might be planning to have sex already gets a condom," he said.

Distributing birth control to anyone who requests it helps prevent unwanted pregnancies, abortions and sexually transmitted diseases, Newman said.

"If you're pro-life, you ought to be out there handing out condoms with us," he said.

On the radio -- http://www.wpr.org/news/newsstories.cfm (scroll down to 2/15 to the "Birth Control" story)

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