West Virginia Families, Just Learning About Health-Care Access, Fear It Will Be Taken Away
In Vienna, West Virginia—just north of Parkersburg, along the Ohio River separating the two states—the only Planned Parenthood health center in the state sits among a scattering of gray and tan buildings beside the main road. A few days a week, women and men, older residents, families, and children, filter in and out of its doors, seeking medical care. This is where, in an office between a few patches of grass and long lengths of concrete, infections are treated, birth control is obtained, and cancer is discovered. This is where patients have returned for years, to be heard and to be cared for.
Rural women who have received care from Planned Parenthood of West Virginia went to the nation’s capital Thursday to voice their concerns about the bill now under consideration in the Senate, known as the Better Care Reconciliation Act, and to share personal stories of driving in from other cities—and sometimes across state lines—to be treated by Planned Parenthood staff and physicians.
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