Planned Parenthood - A Latina Lifeline Under Fire

Planned Parenthood is the leading provider of reproductive health services in the United States, and now the most misunderstood and attacked. The crisis is vivid in Florida, home to the country's largest Caribbean Latino population.

- Raquel Reichard

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The Planned Parenthood health center in East Orlando, Fla., opens its doors at 10:30 a.m. on Thursdays, and this morning, its first patient walks in hurriedly as soon as receptionist Gloria Mier unlocks the front door.

“Do you have an appointment today,” asks Mier, who is puertorriqueña , in slightly accented English.

“No, I don’t. I’m here for a pregnancy test.”

“OK, have a seat,” Mier says cheerfully.

The East Orlando center helps some 6,500 patients a year, many of them low-income Latinas from the Caribbean islands and coastal countries like Colombia and Venezuela. Like today’s first walk-in, more than 1,000 patients request pregnancy tests annually, but most often people come here for other reasons: 10,227 sought testing in 2014 for HIV/AIDS and other STDs, while birth control pills accounted for 3,695 visits. Fewer than 1 percent of the center ’s patients—132 in all— underwent abortions.