 To think tech on Spectrum OC 16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Lisa Anderson. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. In our show this week, we'll attend the opening ceremony for Planned Parenthood's new state of the art health center in Honolulu. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is a nonprofit organization that provides sexual health care in the U.S. and internationally. Planned Parenthood was founded over 100 years ago on the revolutionary idea that women have the right to access the information and care that they need to live healthy lives. And today the Planned Parenthood Action Fund fights to protect that right, often in the face of extreme politicians trying to take it away. Over the years, Planned Parenthood staff and supporters have been pioneers in reproductive rights, choice and self-determination. Today we see the fruits of their labor and their resolve. Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest provider of sex education. An estimated one in five American women visits a Planned Parenthood health center in her lifetime. And Planned Parenthood's more than 600 health centers deliver high-quality, supportive health care to 2.4 million people each year. Many of Planned Parenthood's patients are people who have historically faced barriers to quality health care. Often those patients are people of color, people who live in rural areas, LGBTQ people, people of low incomes, and people without health insurance. Throughout Planned Parenthood health centers, many of these patients may have no other place to turn to access safe and legal abortion or preventative care like birth control while woman exams and life-saving cancer and STD screenings. Planned Parenthood is determined to protect access to care at the Planned Parenthood health centers that so many people across the country depend on. And to make sure that the people of this country can access reproductive health care no matter their zip code, income, sexual orientation, race, religion, gender, country of origin, or immigration status. Planned Parenthood's Action Fund is a non-profit, non-partisan group that advocates for inclusive sex education, STD and unplanned pregnancy prevention, and the right to a safe and legal abortion, all without government interference. The fund is backed by 11 million activist donors and supporters working to advance access to sexual health care and defend reproductive rights. While the fund works at the national level, local Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations defend reproductive rights across the country. The fund fights back when anti-abortion politicians and their extremist allies try to outlaw abortion, take away access to affordable birth control, and block patients from care at Planned Parenthood health centers. It fights back when the basic human rights of Planned Parenthood's patients, volunteers, activists, and staff are under attack. The fund educates and organizes the public. It registers, informs, and mobilizes voters. It promotes policies that help people access health care. It works with reproductive health champions in federal, state, and local legislatures. During elections, it promotes political candidates who advocate for reproductive rights, and it stands in solidarity with social justice partners to fight against hate and discrimination. The Fund's political action committee is committed to supporting candidates for federal office, Congress, and the White House who support women's health, health care access, and reproductive rights. As we all should know, the Trump administration has been attacking those rights. It has been trying hard to undermine and reverse Roe v. Wade, reflected again in Trump's campaign to have Brett Kavanaugh confirmed on the Supreme Court. True to form, Kavanaugh recently voted against overturning the Louisiana statute that would have reduced the number of abortion clinics in that state to only one. Happily, Kavanaugh was not in the majority on that case. Chief Justice Roberts voted in favor of overturning that statute, and thus the statute was overturned. However, Roe v. Wade supporters may not be as fortunate next time. It remains that reproductive health and rights are under attack like never before, and the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to undermine and reverse Roe v. Wade and systematically deprive women of their right to choose are aggressive and relentless. In this ongoing attack, the Trump administration recently started forcing private health insurers to issue separate bills to policyholders, one for abortion coverage and one for everything else. This maneuver requires insurers that cover abortion to offer identical plans without abortion coverage. Does that sound messy, complex, unnecessary, and confusing? Well, it is. The Trump administration is trying to make it so expensive and burdensome for insurers to cover abortion that they'll stop covering it altogether. And every time we single out abortion like it's not just health care, we further stigmatize it. Planned Parenthood supporters delivered more than 30,000 official comments responding to this maneuver, vigorously opposing Trump's action and emphasizing how unpopular and dangerous any attack on abortion access is to so many people in this country. ThinkTech has had several talk shows with Planned Parenthood over the years. The show we had about a year ago was notable. It was called Planned Parenthood 100 Years Strong. In that show, Chris Charbonneau of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands, that is the Planned Parenthood regional organization that covers Hawaii, discuss Planned Parenthood's mission and history and the services they provide. Planned Parenthood is 100 years old this year and 50 years old here in Hawaii. What was the initial mission on it and how has that changed, if at all? Well, Margaret Sanger and her colleagues smuggled diaphragms into New York City 100 years ago. Against the law? Yes. Absolutely against the law. In pickle vats. They labeled them pickle. I love the story. I know. So that nobody would know what was in there and it was illegal to use them, is illegal to sell them, is illegal to educate about them and talk about them. So good many women, middle and upper class women interestingly, went to jail to prove the concept that women really needed to be able to do this and it was not obscenity that it was actually part of the mainstream. Thanks to all the supporters of Planned Parenthood over the many, many decades, now using contraception has become incredibly normative. It's part of the Affordable Care Act. All the insurance policies include it now and it's seen as part of what creates a healthy society. We merged about three years ago and of course, being an old time board member from the Hawaii board, there's always some trepidation and some territorial protection, cultural competition. Any merger has that in here. But I would say it's been so positive in every way and the main thing is that you want to deliver the best possible health care services to your patients and we're really headed in that direction and its economies of scale in terms of converting over to electronic medical records when you've got four states sharing and all in one system. Implementation and maintenance is so much more central. So things have changed. Oh, absolutely. We have a wonderful education program where folks in Planned Parenthood in Hawaii are available to go out to schools and provide information on reproductive health. And in fact, there's no constraint about that. No. There's no separation from the educational side. People are invited. People are invited by schools. So it's up to the schools to invite. And this program actually won the Apple Award, which is a significant education award. We wish. It's an education award within Planned Parenthood. And so we're very proud of this really excellent program. More recently, ThinkTech presented Planned Parenthood with an award for Outstanding Service to the Community for their courageous and continuing commitment to defending, supporting, and advocating for the reproductive rights and health of women, men, and children at a time when those rights are being systematically undermined in our country. We also offered them congratulations on their new Planned Parenthood Honolulu Health Center. We are presenting Planned Parenthood at the Great Northwest Hawaiian Islands, Marjorie Al and Ray Sanchu are here to accept the award. And we are going to present it now. Thank you very much for honoring the clinicians, staff, and volunteers who've kept Planned Parenthood going for the last 50 years. And as Jay mentioned, we're opening a new clinic on Baratana Street in February 2019. So we look forward to serving the community for at least another 50 years. Thank you very much. Thank you. To add my thanks to ThinkTech and to Jay for his vision and of course Carol, Mon Lee, my good friend for many, many years, for keeping the program going and her perseverance and patience. Indeed, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands and campaign co-chairs Marjorie Al, Dr. Thomas Kosasa, Ray Sanchu, and Richard Turbin celebrated the opening of their new State of the Art Health Center on February 23rd and ThinkTech was there. We heard the comments by Planned Parenthood's officials and walked the floor to talk with the people who were there. I'm doing a guest appearance as Lieutenant Governor. I remember my days fondly being a ThinkTech host and I'm here with Jennifer Allen from Planned Parenthood. Jennifer, introduce yourself. Hi everyone. I'm Jennifer Allen. I am the CEO of Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest in Hawaii. We are the part of Planned Parenthood that does advocacy and political work so that everyone can access the health care they need. Jennifer, can you tell us about the breadth of your job? Are you in this state and many others? How does that work? Yeah, I am actually in this state and many others. We are very happy and privileged to be able to work with our friends in Hawaii here. We also work in Washington, Alaska, and Idaho. What is your message to the people of the city and county on the issue of Planned Parenthood? The message is that we welcome them, that we invite this organization here to help all of us, help all women and men to be better in their everyday lives. And what is your message to the Supreme Court on the legal issues surrounding Planned Parenthood? Leave Roe vs. Wade alone. It's an excellent decision that Justice Brennan wrote. It should stand. It stood the test of time. Let's not reverse course and go back to the 1950s. Well, it's an absolutely directed attack at Planned Parenthood specifically. He doesn't like that we are a politically powerful organization in addition to being a great health care provider for women and he would like to see us rubbed off the face of the earth. And I think that standing here in this building we're saying we're here to stay. And we're also obviously going to directly take those rules to court. They're unethical and states like Hawaii have already weighed in on the fact that it will be unacceptable in the state of Hawaii to require rules of that kind. And we already have legal and legislative pushback planned. We're advocating for women's health today. They have built a beautiful clinic downstairs that respects our women's needs for whatever health services they may require, may want, may desire. That's what we are about in Hawaii. We're about taking care of people and to have ever left any women's health availability on the table or in another state or another part of our state is unacceptable. We had a really great response. The show was about an hour and then we opened it up for Q&A and our Q&A was about an hour. And that was really cool to have the community talk about those issues I think because we have gotten so vulnerable in our own stories that the community started to get really vulnerable and we had really tough discussions about how can we bring the men into the discussion, how can we get better with personal boundaries, how can we get better with communication. And so just to have those on like a community scale was like a group therapy with like the entire town. So it was really fun. Good decisions should not be partisan. They should be on both sides of the aisle and for a woman to be able to choose when she wants to have a child or if she wants to have a child. 95% of what Planned Parenthood does is contraception. The only thing people like the protester out front, the only thing he talks about is abortion. There's a lot that is done with Planned Parenthood to help women plan their parenthood. He wanted to say that he shares in the mission and in the goals and in the work that you do for our community for family planning. Back in the day when I was growing up I thought for a place like this it was only in service for women but even men get to get educated over time and we find out over the years that this is a place for family planning and for quality healthcare services that needs to be provided in spite of what is happening in Washington D.C. 5,000 miles away with an administration that is trying to impose a gag rule. As we gather to commemorate this special event we also reflect on pioneers like Margaret Sanger who are advocated for an individual's right to reproductive healthcare services. Because of Margaret and those that follow in her footsteps today we are able to provide much needed services and benefits both nationally and globally. The opening of a health part right here in the heart of Honolulu will provide accessibility for so many from birth control, annual exams, HIV testing, sex education guidance and so much more. Strong women all across our country like my grandmother and not just strong Democrats and believe me she was a radical left-wing Democrat but many of her friends who are strong Republican women also fought for Planned Parenthood and I think that that's something that we shouldn't forget that in spite of our political travails today with the Washington government and the administration there are women all across the country who want to fight for the same cause and that's universal access for healthcare, reproductive rights, abortion rights, planning for all of our families it is just too important. So many things have happened since Planned Parenthood started over 50 years ago and you've made a lot of progress. The same time I have great fear that given what's going on in Washington DC and in other parts of our country that some of that progress is being pushed back and we need Planned Parenthood more than ever and we need Jew women more than ever and we need the men in this room also. When I had the experience at one point I was trying to work with officials in Alaska, I'm going to go over to the elevator, officials in Alaska to talk to them about the gonorrhea and chlamydia outbreaks that they're having there and you know they didn't want to talk about it. They were afraid of what it would do to their tourism and all that kind of thing. I called the health officials in Hawaii to talk about Zika to make sure that we could form a team in case that ever came here and they could not have been more open and interested. It's the kind of people that are here on the islands. They want to get things done, they want to solve problems. They're not worried about how it looks, they want to make it better. Will you be greeted by actual people sitting at all these desks waving at you and you come up and be able to very discreetly talk about why you were here? We designed the front desk so it's noise dampening so that your business remains your business and it's quite a ways away from the seating area so people aren't sitting right there listening to the story you tell. All the visual images you see are people from Hawaii so if you recognize them they're probably your friends and neighbors. We wanted to make it possible for the clinician to be facing the patient all the time. So this has to move. So even if you're typing, you're looking somebody in the eye. This is about your care. We want to know what questions you want to ask and we're not going to be some anonymous person with their back to you faced away from who you are. You can see going down the row that we have eight exam rooms that triples the size of what we had at our old King Street location because people in Hawaii need that much care. We need to be able to see that many people simultaneously. This is our nursing station where the medical personnel write up their notes and do things. They are also here to answer last minute questions. We have a couple of laboratories as one does in a healthcare facility. When we have signs on things that say that something is dirty and it's clean, it doesn't actually mean it's dirty. It means it's possibly contaminated with the samples that are there. The clean side is separated so that it is not. You see various ways of cleaning things. Autoclave is to heat and sterilize equipment. Medical fridge, we don't keep anything with your lunch. We wanted to acknowledge the Native Peoples of Hawaii. We had an indigenous inclusion committee work with us on this building. And they structured this room. And we were given this art collection by Lori Sumier. This is our quick recovery room that people can sit. The curtains are for privacy of each individual person and they can be open in the front so that our medical personnel can make sure no one's fainting or anything. They can see everybody, make sure everybody has juice and cookies just like giving blood. So we have educators and public policy staff and other people who work here. We're still labeling that, the fundraising team and whatnot. But we were very grateful that Peggy Hopper, the renowned artist here in Hawaii, wanted to give some of her artworks. And she gave enough artwork to fill this entire room. We also had a talk show with some of them to discuss the background and benefits of this project. It's very exciting. I think it was initiated over two years ago by Christine. So she said, well, she's going to look for some property because Ilease was coming up and, you know, and we just can't continue to exist in that space. It's too small and, you know, of course, Ilease was going up too. And so she said, you know, I have never regretted buying a piece of real estate. So she said, I'm going to do it. And then all of a sudden, you know, she said, we've closed. We own it now. The next step, of course, is to improve it. It had already been a medical clinic, a scrunk clinic for many, many years. And it already had small examining rooms and a lot of various sinks and, you know, support staff. But she said, no, we're going to start all over again. We're going to do it right. So it will last another 50 years. And then yesterday was the grand opening. Really, what we want to say as pan-parent is we are here. We are not going anywhere. Our doors are open. And just in this moment in time, when you think of all that's going on politically, we're still thriving. We open in a brand new building. We own it. We're in our community and we're going to stay here for our community and we're going to continue to expand. We're never ever thinking about plan-parenters and affiliate and a federation. We're never ever thinking about how we're going to close. We're thinking about how we're going to thrive and continue to grow. And now, let's check out our Think Tech schedule of events going forward. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to ThinkTechHawaii.com slash audio. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and livestream and YouTube links. Or better yet, sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our shows, contact shows at ThinkTechHawaii.com. If you want to pose a question or make a comment during a show, call 808-374-2014 and help us raise public awareness on ThinkTech. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTechHawaii. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands and in this country. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's think together. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. OK, Cynthia, that wraps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. You can't get enough of it just like Cynthia does. For additional times, check out OC16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com. Be a guest, you're a host, a producer or an intern and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii. And of course, the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it, including the defense of reproductive rights. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important ThinkTech episode. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Cynthia Sinclair. Aloha everyone.