 Well, good afternoon, everyone. I am Dr. Val R. Kush. I am chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. And I would like to welcome you here to Montgomery County and to our Montgomery County Community College for a very, very important discussion. I have a number of honored guests that I'll be introducing shortly. Before we do that, though, I would like to acknowledge two of our state representatives that are here with us today from the... Three. Oh! He slipped in. From the... Representing the 153rd District, Representative Madeline Dean. Representing the 148th District, Representative Mary Jo Daly. And Representative Matt Bradford, representing the... Seventyth. Seventyth District. Thank you. Absolutely. So I am, as I said, Dr. Val R. Kush, and I am a physician, and I am so excited to be here today because in addition to having the great honor of leading Montgomery County, I spent over 20 years taking care of patients. I'm an anesthesiologist that specialized in obstetrics, and so most of that work during those clinical years was on the labor and delivery floor, helping moms and their families during childbirth. So I am... It's just so passionate about women's health and the need for women to have the ability to make their own healthcare decisions. For many, many years, I took care of women who use Planned Parenthood, and they use Planned Parenthood for three very important reasons. Ones I think we can all relate to. When any of us are trying to make a healthcare decision, we are looking for providers who make us feel like we're safe and that respect us, that understand where we're coming from, and hear us clearly. And finally, give us information that's factual and up-to-date. And Planned Parenthood does all three of those things for all of the women here in our region. So I'm particularly happy to have the opportunity today to talk a little bit more about what Planned Parenthood does here in Pennsylvania and here in Montgomery County and have this wonderful panel to discuss these issues even further. So let me introduce... I'll start immediately to my left with our First Lady, Frances Wolfe. First Lady Wolfe was the daughter, is the daughter of an American diplomat. And so she grew up as a young person in many different countries around the world. And when she was a teenager, she spent some time in Pakistan. And there she saw firsthand what it can mean for women not to have access to the freedom to make decisions, to a good education, to a lot of accurate information about healthcare. And that experience as a teenager really fueled her passion for women's health and making sure that women have access to all proper healthcare services. Next to her is our Governor who needs no introduction. Governor Wolfe has been a longtime advocate and supporter along with First Lady Wolfe for Planned Parenthood. Not only were they early financial supporters, but most importantly they volunteered as patient escorts at a Planned Parenthood clinic in York, Pennsylvania. And I think everyone here is so grateful for that service and we look forward to hearing more about that. So thank you Governor so much for being here today. Next to the Governor is Sunday Golden. Sunday is a medical assistant in our Norristown Planned Parenthood clinic. And she is also a student here at the Montgomery County Community College. Sunday is a Montgomery County resident and we're very, very happy to have you with us today. And then finally we have Danitra Sherman. Danitra is the Senior Regional Field Director for Planned Parenthood. That means that she's in charge of organizing and advocacy for the organization. She spent her early part of her career in Atlanta at Planned Parenthood there. She started out as a public policy intern there and that made her a passionate advocate ever since. She has a really fantastic background for this work. She has a bachelor's degree in cellular molecular biology. You could have been in med school with me. She has a master's in public health from Hampton. I'm sorry, from Morehouse School of Medicine and Health Policy and Management. And she's now working on her DPH, her doctorate in public health with a focus in health policy at Drexel. So Danitra, thank you so much for being here today too. Alright, so my first question is for Sunday. And I wonder if you could just share with all of us what the average patient is like, who comes to Planned Parenthood and maybe share a little bit about why they come to Planned Parenthood and why it's so important for them. Well, we do recognize when a patient walks through our door that they have many options. And for them to come into our building says a lot because there's something about us in our care that we provide and lets a patient and a person know that you are human and no matter what you may say or tell us that we are empathetic, we will give you the best care from the time our door is open and from the time they close. So I think they recognize that and the quality of care that we have, you know, that we give our patients. And something that sits well with me is when a patient says to me at the end of the day, I didn't know what to expect from you, but I'm glad I came here and I'll be back because how you made me feel as a human being was everything and people need that today. And that's what one of the things that Planned Parenthood offers. We offer empathy, quality of care, and no matter what insurance you may or may not have, we're opening our doors to you. That's great. Thank you. Denitra, could you pick up on that and talk about some of the numbers in terms of how many patients Planned Parenthood treats around Pennsylvania? Definitely. So across the state, we have three different affiliates and we serve 90,000 patients across Pennsylvania. In addition to that, we have about 32 health centers and of those health centers, about 50% of those locations are located in the areas that are medically underserved because we want to ensure that people have a place to go and we're going to continue to fight to make sure that our doors stay open to serve the people who need us the most. Are some of those medically underserved areas, rural areas around the state? Yes. Those are in some rural areas as well. Yes. Because often a place that really has trouble getting any kind of help. Is the rural area. Correct. Absolutely. Okay, well with that, we would like to open up to the audience to ask some questions. The microphone is over here, so we're going to ask each person to come to the microphone as you can see this is being recorded, so it's very important that you come to the microphone. And if you could just identify yourself, tell us where you live if you wish, and then please direct your question to whomever your question is directed to. So who would like to go first? Thank you. Hello. My name is Vanessa Bender, and I'm from Norworth, Pennsylvania. Prior to living in Pennsylvania, I lived in New York for 20 years, and I'm glad to be back. Welcome home. Welcome home. Oh, thank you. I actually didn't grow up in Pennsylvania left and then returned. My question is for you, Governor, how is it that we live in a state where the majority of people are pro-choice with many more Dems than Republicans, but a legislative that is heavily Republican and anti-choice? Great question. No, I've been in politics now for a little over two and a half years, but the electoral maps, I think, the gerrymandering is what has led to this. As you point out, we do have more Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania, and I believe you're right, the majority of Pennsylvanians are pro-choice, and yet that's not the way the legislature looks, and I think it's because of the way the electoral map is drawn. So one of the things, and I'm selling here that's important about these elections, last 2015 the Supreme Court elections were really important because they're the tiebreaker on the state senate and state house electoral map, and the governor is the tiebreaker on the U.S. House electoral map. And if we just have a fair map, and I understand that we are still looking for that mathematical algorithm to determine what's fair, but if we just had close to the proportion of Democrats to Republicans in Pennsylvania and pro-choice to anti-choice people in Pennsylvania, we'd have a very different general assembly and a very different U.S. House delegation. Thank you very much. Next question. Hi, my name is Frank Ewing. I'm from Glenside, PA, a student here at Monco. I have a question for Danitra. If Planned Parenthood is defunded, where will the patients go? That is also a very good question. We will often hear time and time again from elected officials that, oh, it's okay. The neighborhood can close its doors and people can just go to fairly qualified health centers or neighborhood community centers, and that is false. It's incorrect. And a lot of folks have come out to say that federally qualified health centers are already at capacity. How are they going to be able to take on more patients that they can't even handle now? And in addition to that, when we think about defunding, because a lot of that defunding comes to the place when we talk about Medicaid, we will not be able to get reimbursed for Medicaid patients on the back end. From my own experience and just even thinking about some of the patients that we serve and we do serve a high percentage of Medicaid patients, a lot of private offices and doctors don't want to take Medicaid patients at all. We had a patient who has been with us for a while. She's also a patient advocate. She shared her story with us and various venues, plenty of times. But one of the things that stood out to me when she told her story was that she actually had insurance. She had a family physician that she went to most of her life. When she graduated, she couldn't find a good job. She worked multiple jobs and she had jobs where they were not able to provide her insurance. And she had to get Medicaid. She went to a place that she thought was her home, was her safe place, and said, hey, I want to let you know that I updated my insurance. I have a new insurance carrier. They said, oh, okay, we can do that. What's the insurance carrier? She told them that she had Medicaid. They said, oh, I'm sorry, but we cannot help you. You're going to have to go somewhere else. And that story alone shows us that it's not that simple and it's not that easy in our patients, especially the 90,000 people that we serve in Pennsylvania just don't have another door to go into. Can I just add something to that? In Pennsylvania, we're trying to create policies that actually make healthcare more accessible. And obviously that's underserved areas throughout the state in urban and rural areas. And one of the things that we focused on is in urban areas, at least there's a density of healthcare providers. In rural areas, you don't have that. And so there are a lot of areas of Pennsylvania that are struggling, where people are struggling to find access to healthcare. Medicaid has actually helped that. So if you defund Planned Parenthood and you defund Medicaid, I'm not sure where people are going to go. I mean, I really, in those rural areas that are underserved as we speak and the urban areas that are underserved as we speak, what's going to happen? I think it's an open question. Thank you. Next question. Hi, my name is Jill Carlson. I'm from Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. And my question is for Sunday. Hi. What do people in the community you live in say about Planned Parenthood? Well, in the community that we live in, some people aren't aware of a lot of things that we offer. So sometimes, depending on who it is, I explain to them that we are just more than what you hear. You know, we do offer screenings for sexual transmitted infections. We do offer reproductive care. We do set women up for mammograms. You know, it's so much broader than what people think it is. So sometimes I have to take a minute out and explain to them. It's not just what you think, you know, they say Planned Parenthood and they automatically think abortion. We offer a lot of advocacy for teenagers and getting the men and talking to them about their bodies and helping them move forward, birth control. So I think it's a matter of just getting the word out to them and helping them better understand what we really do and instead of what you think we do or what you've heard we do. So, yeah. Thank you for all you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'd just like to pick up on that. And the prior question, too, from my experience as a physician, I found that Planned Parenthood is a place that people feel very safe, particularly younger women who may not feel comfortable going to a family physician who they know as good friends with their parents. They may have concerns that they don't want to get back to their parents necessarily. Do you find that to be a common? Quite often. Quite often we do because there are times that they're not able and it could be as simple as just wanting to come in and get screenings but that's something that they can't relay as you said because if they relay the message to their parents it's a bigger problem now. What are you getting screenings for? And we don't want to give any of our patients, especially the young people, any type of feeling that they can't come and talk to us about and taking care of themselves, you know. We want them to have a good step forward into the future and this is one of the things as far as taking care of themselves and knowing that we're here to support you. It's one of those safe places. Yes, yes ma'am. What you were talking about? Definitely. I had a question from the audience. Hi, my name is Katie Muth and my question is for Governor Wolf. Do you have any specific plans for the upcoming 2018 election to get more pro-choice women elected because there's a lot of them running so I was wondering if the party has discussed any specifics? Yes, and one of the people is you. She would be a great addition to the state senate. Thank you. Was that a loaded question? No. Many people wanted me to ask it. We need to have more women in our state legislature in both the senate and the house and we need more pro-choice women. I don't think that most Pennsylvanians are against broadening people's choices and so the irony is that in the case of things like standing with Planned Parenthood, there's a reluctance to do that because I don't think they understand what that means. We need more people in Harrisburg who get that everybody needs to be able to make decisions affecting their own health, their own lives and we ought to be broadening rather than restricting those rights and I think women, pro-choice women especially, get that better than anybody else. The party is working to recruit candidates as you know and we're looking to find anybody willing to take the leap that those three I took and that we're asking you to take. Thank you. I'd like to first say 30 minutes ago I was eating lunch and I had no idea this event was going on. Thank you. My name is Reza Zurgani. I'm a student here at Montgomery County Community College. I'm also a volunteer firefighter for the Four Wash & Fire Company. Something that we talk about and fortunately I haven't seen, not yet, but are there opioid epidemics that we see every day from overdoses and everything like that and to the major use in Narcan but what is the role of Planned Parenthood in the fight against the opioid epidemic? This was to... Sorry, the question was a motion towards Governor Tom Wolf. My apologies. I probably forgot to say that. I was looking at that. I'm sorry. Let me... I think for the Planned Parenthood, just the state has a role to play. You know, I think on a bipartisan basis we got the state legislature, Senate and House, to agree to do some really good things, I think, to equip first responders with Narcan. And in my budget in February, I actually asked for more to make sure that every first responder had free access to Narcan. But as we all know, that's only the first step. As you know, because you might see more people who come back after you've resuscitated them with Narcan and they're back with an overdose, we need to take the folks who have been brought back to life from an overdose and make sure they get the treatment for this chronic disease that they deserve. So the state has a big role to play, I think, in helping folks who do what you're doing. Thank you very much for your service. And I think Planned Parenthood is there, too. So let me turn this over to you guys. Well, I'm going to set it up, and then I'm also going to invite our executive director of our state office, Sarah Stevens, to come up. But I will say when it comes to Planned Parenthood and something that we have been working very diligently to do is to really shift the culture in how we do the work and who we show up for. We understand that reproductive health and rights is a very important issue, but we also understand that in order for us to be a true advocate and to fight for those people who come through our doors, we have to step outside of our lane and show up and support other community members, other community partners on issues that aren't specific to reproductive health. So whether that's racial justice, economic justice, immigrant rights, we understand that we have to do more and we have to do that in order to really fight for the people who come through our doors. And I'm going to let Sarah speak to the work that we're doing when it comes to the opioid epidemic. Hi, I'm Sarah Stevens. We are right now looking at including Narcan in the screening process in our intake forms with our patients. We looked into it and realized we have a role. I'm sure there's an overlap in our patient population. We see 90,000 patients and they all have families. We can have this medication in our health center. We're already screening them for other addiction problems and how much more likely are you to tell somebody behind a closed door who you're already talking to about STDs and sex that you have someone in your family who needs help rather than at the pharmacy where you might see your neighbor. So we think it's a win all across the board and we're in the process of rolling that out and hopefully we can have an event at a health center to talk about it in the future. And that's also a great opportunity to partner with a county like ours, which has really been on the forefront of work to fight the opioid epidemic. And so, for instance, we could provide our two clinics here in Montgomery County, one in Northtown and one in Pottstown, with all of our information about county take-back boxes to dispose of unneeded medications where people can get Narcan in this county without a prescription. There's a standing order that we have that covers the county and then the physician general under Governor Wolf's leadership has also written one for the state, so there's a lot of places people can go to get Narcan, just literally walk up to a pharmacy and get it. We have all kinds of information on how to connect people to treatment resources. So this would actually be a great partnership that we could work on to make sure that all of our Planned Parenthood clinics have access to all that information, certainly here in Montgomery County. Yeah, great suggestion. Yeah. This is a vertically challenged. Marie-Lena Mata, ambassador for Run for All Women Movement. Recently, we ran from Philadelphia to Harrisburg to raise funds for Planned Parenthood. And so one of the issues that I struggle with is what is the best ways to fight to make change. And calling our representatives isn't always practical for those of us who work nine to five and can't get away from our work. So the question is for Governor Wolf, what are other ways that we can help in the fight as a constituent to make change? Well, and I'm sure that you'll echo this, but actually petitioning your representative is really important. But second, just talking to people when you're with friends or your family or anybody, just saying this is what you think, that's really important. But the most important thing is to run, do what Katie's doing, run for office. I keep thinking about what Benjamin Franklin said to Mrs. Powell when he was leaving the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in September in Philadelphia. And she said, so what's it to be a monarchy or a republic? And he said, it's a republic if you can keep it. And the way we keep this and the way we actually get people to vote, the way we want them to vote is not just to sort of lay out a proposition and say, doesn't this make sense to you. It's to actually run. It's to actually stand up and fight for something, actually stand for something, and go up to places like Harrisburg and say, I want to put my vote in to make sure that we have the commonwealth and the republic that we really need. And that's why what these four have done, what I did is really important, what you ought to be doing. So writing to people, writing to people, petitioning your representatives is great and telling your friends it's really important. But ultimately it is this is a citizen-based system of self-government, and we can't leave it to somebody else to run our government. And I think if more of us thought that way, we can't leave the government that looks pretty much like us. And if I could actually add to Governor Wolf really quickly, and when he mentioned talking to people. So one thing that we do often, we do a lot, not just doing community outreach and engagement and going to community events, but we're big on what we call house parties. And that's actually where we get folks within the community to get their friends, family members, colleagues, co-workers to really come to a common space, have some food or wine if that's your thing, to really talk about what's going on because what we have found doing a lot of organizing and outreach is that there are people who really don't know what's going on and don't know the information. So if we could gather at least 10 people each, even us in this room, to really bring people into our space and talk to them, that would definitely make a world of difference. I agree. In our early years together, we have friends who were involved with Planned Parenthood. We've been married a long time. But friends who were involved with Planned Parenthood in York and they were passionate about it. It's an educational process, so I'd heard about it, but it was sitting down and listening to the stories they told of their involvement, and they were the ones who said, come and be an escort. Come and see. You can read something, but it doesn't have the emotional impact that it was, for example, to be an escort and to see what patients coming in, what they had to endure, of these barricades that they had to come through. It was a privilege to see that. But you're right about keep telling the story. We can operate on this level, but we can operate on the domestic level as well, on the day-to-day level. And I think that has an impact to, each of us here should be advocates on a daily basis. So let's start that right here. So there's a lot of misinformation about what happens in Planned Parenthood clinics. And so maybe Sunday, could you just walk us through if someone comes in for a well-women visit? Yes. What's that experience like? Well, when they first come in, we get information from them here, they fill out, you know, a little bit of information about their medical history. Once we take them back into the room, we speak to them about the steps that we're going to take as far as preparing them when the clinician comes in, anything that they want to tell us, medication-wise, health-wise, we prep them for when the clinician does come in. And it entails, sometimes they add birth control. It will entail a table visit where it's a pelvic exam. There's the pre-breast exam that they do, and we set them up for their mammograms. And we get to actually know a little bit more about the patient in detail. You know, they may want to talk about something that they felt within them. You know, whether it's something irritating their body, you know, they come in and they're able to express what's going on with them at this particular annual visit. It's not just you're in and out. We want to know the ins and outs of you before you leave the building so we can place you where you need to go if need be. So, yeah, that's what we do. Our clinicians are really proactive about women's health and making sure that these women come in, women come in for their annuals, and well-women and pap smears. They are very important because if you don't, then it could lead to other things possibly, as, you know, cancers and things like that. And that's what we try to prevent at the forefront while we want these women to get in at 21, getting their pap smears, then your visits, your annual visits, they're very important. And it's imperative that you do do follow-ups because if you don't, we can't give you what you need. And that's why we're so adamant about that. Yeah. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Hi. My name is Anna. I'm from Douglas Township, Montgomery County. I'm currently working as an ER nurse. I just graduated with my nursing degree and I also have a public health degree. All this healthcare is very close to my heart. My question speaks to underserved women. So it's well-documented that low-income women, especially women of color, have mortality rates during pregnancy that are three to four times higher than that of white women, which is a huge shame. So, and most of these we're finding now are from preventable causes. So how can we improve health education and primary care with OBGYNs to these populations? Particularly a person you want to start with? I think it can probably be answered from policy health care and public health standpoints or whatever. I'd like to just... I mean, I think what you're talking about is one of the paradoxes of American health care. We have, in many ways, the best system in the world that we pay more for than most other developed countries and we get less in return. And what we get less is that the poorer you are, the less your access is to that great health care system and that's the problem. So we have to work on that and that's what makes suggestions that we repeal without replacing the Affordable Care Act or that we defund Planned Parenthood. These are organizations, these are efforts in society that try to actually address that issue that you brought up and to see anybody stand up and try to condemn that in any way seems to me to be especially in light of what you just said that there's so many women who simply because they're in poverty, children as well as adults that they can't have access to this health care system just is wrong. I can go ahead and add to that and just thinking research shows that when it comes to health care, that preventive care saves far more money down the line than secondary or tertiary care and when we think about how funds and resources are allocated it kind of goes back to budget because not only are we talking about health care and people have access to health care but we're also talking about different programs that are put in place to help people especially those who are already marginalized and impacted to like a greater negative degree than most folks. So for me it's just in my role and we're doing our part on the ground working with elected officials, working with individuals like Governor Tom Wolf and community partners to really do what we can to impact and influence policy change because that's kind of like where a lot of it starts and like determining what goes where and what goes to resources and I will just say that it's important for us to make sure that we are doing our part and that we are fighting to we can't fight anymore to make sure that there isn't a disparity when it comes to women of color as compared to white women that there is a gap and we are going to do what we can to fix that gap and especially me being a person of color I definitely get it, I understand it I see it when it's with myself and family members but we definitely have to do more and change how we do things and if we have to call elected officials office every single day we're going to do it, we have to send postcards every single day, we will do it if we have to go and send someone's office and refuse to leave until we get an answer we're going to do that to make sure that we're really pushing and creating the change that we need and that we want to see I think this area is one where Planned Parenthood can be really helpful both on the prenatal care to make sure that people have great education about good nutrition make sure blood pressure management is done well before pregnancy and in the early part of pregnancy and then the other piece of this which is so important which is as I'm sure you probably know most maternal deaths actually happen after delivery and so for women that get Medicaid which is what will happen to many uninsured women that cuts off after that first postnatal visit so their child may still be covered but the moms frequently lose their insurance after that first postnatal visit today it's gotten a little better because of the governor's leadership in expanding Medicaid here in Pennsylvania but there's still women who lose their insurance after six weeks and a lot of those women probably end up going back to Planned Parenthood because that's where they're comfortable with the opportunity to think about how to work together to make sure that providers at Planned Parenthood are actually looking for the warning signs of problems in the postpartum situation because we have pretty much third world maternal mortality right here in the United States and it's all across the country so it's something we could all work harder at thanks for asking that question next question yeah go ahead you're welcome hi my name is Manny and I'm a concerned Pennsylvania citizen and this question excuse me is for the commissioner okay so are there particular challenges faced by Montgomery County residents that dovetails with the role of Planned Parenthood in serving low income individuals across the country yeah thank you for asking that there are some really unique situations here in Montgomery County and that we have some of the wealthiest neighborhoods and zip codes in the commonwealth and some of the most challenged and so sometimes I think people look at Montgomery County from the outside and think oh everything's fine in Montgomery County look at the average income there but we have a lot of people that have a very difficult time accessing health care we have a fair amount of food insecurity here in the county because it costs a fair amount to live here and a lot of people who are food insecure by the end of the month make too much money to qualify for SNAP which is the food assistance program and so I think Planned Parenthood can play a role in being a resource for where in Montgomery County people can get access to services we have a very robust set of services through the county that can help individuals with food insecurity with all sorts of things housing insecurity but they don't always know how to connect to it and so this is an opportunity to work together to make sure that all those resources are readily available at the clinic so no matter where anybody goes for care they can get that very necessary needed information thank you thank you hello so my name is Mary Donahue I live in South Philly and this is another questioner for Governor Wolf so greatly appreciate your support of Planned Parenthood and the critical health services they provide I have a hunch though that you probably get a lot of pushback because of your outright public support of Planned Parenthood so I'm curious how you handle that well I'm very confident that I'm right I know well there it is yes so that helps but seriously I think and I think this is the point that we've got to keep making the supporters of Planned Parenthood that all we're trying to do is provide more options and more choices for human beings our fellow citizens I'm sorry how's that wrong and we're actually trying to improve the quality of life for our fellow citizens we're trying to do good things here and I think that point can't be made enough and so the pushback that if I get pushback I think people are pretty clear where I stand so I maybe don't get as much pushback from people who don't agree with my position as maybe it would otherwise but when I do it's fairly easy just to explain and describe what Planned Parenthood does and say tell me how you're against that and it's hard to really oppose the good things that go on in Planned Parenthood clinics thank you I'd love to hear from both Sunday and Denitra both of you are on the front lines in a different way but what keeps you going how do you handle the criticism you know I kind of block it out some days it's harder than others but I know what we stand for I know that it is important for us to be here I sit in the heart of Norristown and I see people come in on the best of both worlds and then sometimes their world is sometimes falling apart and they're not able to get what it means that they need to go to other doctor's offices so they come here and they're not even sure if we're going to be able to help them and that's fine because we will get you where you need to go if we can't but our first step is to see what you need from us so we can do what we can to help you and I come in every day because it's worth it I want to continue to have a choice and I don't want anybody to take that from myself or the next generation and if you take away Planned Parenthood you're taking away so many people's choices and what they need from us so we're needed and I would say for me I have a variety of reasons that you know I stay in the good fight and I'm a part of the Planned Parenthood family for me my mother was 14 when she got pregnant 15 when she had me so I understand and I was able to see firsthand what life is like when you are a young teenage mother you don't have support yes you may graduate from high school but you don't have a college degree and you have to work a job barely making minimum wage and to provide for your child and yourself and make sure that your child has a life and that maybe you didn't have and to want to give them better in addition to that my mother being a teenage mom my grandmother was a teenage mom kind of like the different cycles and even like abuse that was attached that I knew like I want to do better this is something that I don't want to do then in college I was dealing with this guy who wasn't the best person to possibly deal with at the time but it took some hard times to like wake up and come to my senses about it but I actually ended up getting pregnant and I knew for me it was important for me to break a cycle and to be able to go to school and live my life and do things that I wanted to do and then have a child when I was ready I went to a Plain Parenthood in Virginia Beach, Virginia to go and have an abortion and I knew that it was the right decision for me but also going into those doors the staff there they were just awesome like there was no judgment I was able to have a wonderful support system if I had questions they were there when I needed consoling they were there and then even in that seeing older folks outside with their science telling me that I was going to hell I'm like, okay well you done pissed off the right person and I'm going to make sure that I do what I can that people don't have to feel ashamed about the decision that they make when it comes to their well-being and their overall life and how they want their life to be and so for that that has set with me for such a very very long time I'm understanding that me being in my position I'm able to help make a difference and keep doors open for people that look like me to have access to services that is kind of hard for them to get and they just don't have a variety of options and then we talk about our stories a lot because I mean there are times where we get tired y'all can't see today because I have on my glasses and I actually put on makeup today but you know being able to connect with the patients and you know being on the front line that's what really keeps us into the fight to know that while I'm tired as hell you know I am doing this for a good reason I'm in this fight for a reason I understand that by me being here I'm able to keep these doors open and serve a purpose for people who need us and have needed us and will continue to need us Thank you for sharing that story First Lady would you like to make any additional comments about your passion for Planned Parenthood It's I can talk about having two daughters it's important I think you know when they were first born and you know Tom and I waited before we had children six years we were married so that we had time to grow up to I have that was all about me and you know so we had the privilege of time to learn about ourselves to have children and they happened to be daughters there was a sense at that point when we started volunteering at Planned Parenthood and supporting it throughout the years I think I even gave a painting for one of their auctions to support it I felt quite proud they were interested but as time goes on it's more than our daughters being able to to see this as a place that they could go to at some point it's part of a larger context of women and families health and it's not just the challenges to Planned Parenthood that I'm concerned about but the challenge to health care generally it's part of a larger picture a larger context and when we talk about what's going on at the federal level it's there's a mindset that is attacking health care generally specifically and it's going to be the impact on Planned Parenthood I think is that more acute and that's why I'm here to lend my support in any way possible but to draw attention to this to these points I'm concerned and I'm scared of what's going to happen and the challenges and of what's going on at federal level I find it everyone's being polite but it's irresponsible to all of our care and not just for us as individuals as parents as mothers but as families whole families are going to be affected and not in a good way and that's why I'm here Thank you so much I think you raised some very interesting points about issues of economic stability in families that are able to plan pregnancies and space pregnancies appropriately how important that is to the economics within a family and it's also medically the right thing to do there's tons of data that show that planned pregnancies are the healthiest pregnancies and for all of these reasons I think this work is so important and at the end of the day I think it's impossible for any of us to stand in anyone else's shoes and understand at any given moment that they're making and to limit that choice for anyone at any time I think it's just not what this country is about it's one of our most fundamental rights that we each get to decide what happens to our own bodies and so I just want to thank all of you so much for being willing to be here today and standing up for Planned Parenthood which is so important obviously to all of us and to all of the folks here in the audience and I'm going to turn over to Danitra because she wants to announce a new project that Planned Parenthood is kicking off with I believe the governor and he may give us some selfie action too today what they can do next Danitra? Yes so a question came up about what can we do to make a difference and you heard me mention a lot about stories as I was speaking today because that is very important in the work that we do we can talk about data, statistics and numbers all day long but by having those stories we're able to humanize those numbers and show like it's not just the X amount of percentage but these are people who are really being impacted and affected by what's going on not just at the federal level but also at the state level here in Pennsylvania so one of the things that we are going to do and we've been planning to do pretty much like a little storytelling kickoff and we're going to have videos recorded by supporters our volunteers community members Governor Wolf so that we can send these videos to elected officials so they can know that we have power and numbers behind us and that we are going to hold them accountable for them to do their job while we may not have voted for certain people they still represent us and they are going to be held accountable for doing the right thing and caring about the people that matter the most and those are the constituents and so we're going to take this time to like really get it kicked off first we're going to try to like do like a little selfie video with Governor Wolf with you all in the background showing I'm happy to do it if I can make this work all of his wonderful support for playing parenthood and also to the question that someone put out about Governor Wolf being able or taking the heat from people who may not be in line with him standing with us just know that we got your back always so we're here to fight the good fight with you can I get can I get you in this yeah so yeah we're going to yeah you're going to turn around we're going to have the whole do you want me to I can video do you want me to video take you I got a selfie all right aren't you going to stand here with me oh oh take my glasses off okay so I'm Tom Wolf this is my wife Francis Wolf Governor of Pennsylvania and we're here at Montgomery County Community College the Planned Parenthood event to make sure that everybody knows that we support Planned Parenthood and we believe that women everybody everybody should have the choice to make their own decisions when it comes to their own health care proud to be supporters of Planned Parenthood right absolutely all right did it record I don't know I might have screwed up I didn't I didn't it was a dresser it was just a dresser okay one more time okay no take two all right I want to get this right all right here we go okay okay all right I'm standing on the wire all right all right okay I'm Tom Wolf now so you can see everybody back there and now we're recording and this is my wife Francis and we're at Montgomery County Community College at a Planned Parenthood event and I just want to say we want to say that we are strong supporters of Planned Parenthood we believe in the right of everybody everybody make their own choices over their own health care for their own bodies and Planned Parenthood and very proud to be here today absolutely okay that one work that one work and I will say before everyone leaves today as Governor Wolf is doing this as our kickoff to our Planned Parenthood videos and just kind of like a Planned Parenthood 101 I really encourage all of you today if you have the time like we can record some videos before you leave but if you don't to make sure that you record this video you can put it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram you can email it to us I can make sure you have our information so that we can uplift these stories and make sure that the folks who need to see it see these videos absolutely