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A native of New Jersey,
Harvey is a Fulbright Scholar and a Ford Foundation Scholar.
She earned her undergraduate degree in business
administration and her masters in business administration
from the University of Southern California and holds an ED.S
degree from George Washington University
Harvey takes over the
leadership role at PPGOH at a critical time. The national
organization has been beset by controversy for several years
due to a conservative outcry over its abortion activities –
activities that are a relatively minor part of Planned
Parenthood’s mission. By most accounts abortion revenues
comprise only about three percent of the organization’s
finances and no government funds are used for the
procedures.
In Ohio, the Republican
legislature has passed 17 measures affecting Planned
Parenthood, notes Harvey, with the intent of crippling the
organization financially. The legislation, along with
similar laws around the country, began last summer when
videos were released supposedly showing Planned Parenthood
employees discussing the selling of aborted fetus and fetal
parts.
Investigations in Ohio and
other states found no evidence of wrongdoing, but the damage
to Planned Parenthood’s image was done and state
legislatures went full-bore after the organization.
Federal courts, however,
have recently given Harvey reason to be optimistic about the
future prospects of her organization and its ongoing mission
to “provide reproductive health care to men and women.”
As it relates to Ohio,
Judge Michael Barrett of U.S. District Court for the
Southern District of Ohio ruled this summer that legislation
to defund Planned Parenthood by making the organization
ineligible for state monies that pay for health care
programs for the poor violated the right to free speech and
due process. The state law, ruled Barrett, hit programs that
had nothing to do with abortion or abortion counseling.
In other words, the State
of Ohio is seeking to punish PPGOH for giving advice and
counsel about abortion by limiting poor people’s access to
tests for HIV/AIDS and other STDs, Pap smears and other
cancer screenings, infant mortality prevention and sexual
health education programs.
“The ruling is quite
simple,” says Harvey. “You can’t limit our First and 14th
Amendment rights locally when it can’t be done nationally.
We are pleased by the ruling.”
The state will be
appealing the ruling to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of
Appeals. “Is this the appropriate way for our elected
officials to spend taxpayer dollars?” asks Harvey.
It would appear, however,
that given the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a Texas
abortion access law that sought to shutdown the state’s
abortion clinics under the guise of trying to protect
women’s health will give the Sixth Circuit pause in ruling
for the State of Ohio.
“It’s a good thing we’re
seeing the Supreme Court being active,” says Harvey. “Undue
burdens should be banned.”
However, as the district
court noted and as Harvey affirms, abortion is not Planned
Parenthood’s primary activity or even a significant portion
of its portfolio.
Reproductive health care,
breast cancer screenings, typical gynecological tests, these
are some of the tasks PPGOH undertake on a regular basis.
“Teens come in for counseling,” says Harvey, as an example.
“Maybe before going off to college or medical school and are
seeking contraception. We provide options, a variety of
family planning options.”
The advice, for example,
might take a young person into the direction of a
long-acting reversible contraceptive (L.A.R.C),
“contraceptives that have longer shelf life that give people
more flexibility,” says Harvey. That’s the type of counsel
that a typical obstetrician/gynecologist would not be likely
to offer, she adds.
Planned Parenthood, she
says, is the nation’s number one provider of sex education
programs.
“We have a high expertise
in family planning, fielding 300,000 calls a year with
personable, trained people,” offers Harvey. “We are full
service and first rate.”
Planned Parenthood
receives its funding from public and private insurance
programs, from those who self pay and as a Title 10
provider, can accept payment on a sliding fee scale.
Planned Parenthood’s
origin dates back 100 years to 1916 when the founder
Margaret Sanger and her sister opened America’s first birth
control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. “Her mission in life
was around bringing access to family planning to American
women,” says Harvey.
At that time, most women
in America could not vote, sign contracts, open bank
accounts or divorce abusive husbands. They most certainly
could not control the number of children they would have
because contraception had been made illegal in the 1870’s
Sanger knew the tragedy of
such a lack of knowledge first hand – her mother became
pregnant 18 times, had 11 children and died at the age of
40. Sanger, a nurse, had worked with immigrant families in
New York and witnessed the misery, illness and death that
resulted from unwanted pregnancy, a lack of proper prenatal
care and illegal abortion.
Sanger’s clinic offered
contraceptive advice, particularly to the poor. It was
raided by the police and the women were convicted of
disseminating birth control information.
Sanger marched on,
founding the Birth Control Review, the first
scientific journal devoted to contraception and, after she
appealed her conviction, a more liberal interpretation of
New York’s anti-conception ordinance took root.
She opened the Birth
Control Clinical Research Bureau in Manhattan in 1923 to
provide contraception to women and to collect accurate
statistics on the devices safety and effectiveness and in
that same year founded the American Birth Control League
that researched global issues of world population growth and
famine.
The two organizations eventually merged and became the
Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In Ohio, Planned Parenthood serves the public through its
expertise, says Harvey, in family planning and in preventing
and controlling the spread of infectious diseases – sexually
transmitted diseases in its 20 locations in north, east and
central Ohio. Twenty-six percent of the locations that do
such testing on STD’s are PPGOH clinics which conduct 50
percent of the tests statewide. “That speaks to our
capability and the trust and recognition that people have in
Planned Parenthood,” says Harvey.
Harvey, like Sanger, knows of the personal tragedy that can
befall a woman lacking accurate information on family
planning.
“My grandmother and grandfather had a child when they were
14 years old,” she recalls. “They were then high school drop
outs and had a second child at 16. Grandmother died on the
operating table. My uncle – that second child – suffered
from disabilities all his life.
“My mother, on the other hand, the first child, had the
ability and planned to have only one child. She could work,
she could be of service in her community and she could run
for public office.”
That personal story has taken Harvey full circle as she
leads her organization in helping others learn the lessons
her mother imparted to her.
“We are making sure people have a choice in how they
practice planning,” she says. |
