Today, New Hampshire Women’s Foundation CEO Tanna Clews issued the followed statement:
“We are outraged that four of our five Executive Councilors voted this week to withhold funding for family planning and reproductive and sexual health care including birth control, cancer screenings, gender-affirming care and STI testing. We are ashamed that the State of New Hampshire has turned its back on Granite State women and girls, in particular low-income and minority women who stand to lose the most with the Council’s defunding of these clinics.
“The contracts the Executive Council denied this week would have covered testing and treatment for 80% of the patients in the NH Family Planning Program, which means the Council’s decision to withhold funds disproportionately impacts low-income Granite Staters. Equally alarming is that our latest research, from our soon-to-be released Status of Girls in New Hampshire report, shows that from 2014-2019 there was a 36.2% increase in Chlamydia cases for New Hampshire girls age 13-19. Now is not the time for the State of New Hampshire to turn its back on women and girls who need access to reproductive health care.
Now more than ever, we must ensure that New Hampshire women, girls and marginalized genders are able to receive the care they need, and we call on the Executive Council to right this wrong and restore funding to these health care providers.
“In the meantime, as a show of support for these reproductive and sexual health providers, we are immediately sending $7,500 grants to each of the providers defunded this week: the Joan G. Lovering Health Center*, the Equality Health Center, and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
“As a pro-choice statewide community foundation, we support — and will continue to invest in and advocate for — access to a full range of reproductive and sexual health care for all who need it.”
*Our community grants program awarded $7,500 this month to Joan G. Lovering Health Center and we are matching that grant with $7,500 each to Equality Health Center and Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
