Democratic Leaders Blast Local State Senator's Amendment to Cut Planned Parenthood Funds

Connecticut Democratic leaders characterized Republican state Sen. Len Suzio (R-Meriden) as out of touch and “extremist” at a press conference in Meriden Thursday morning, for proposing an amendment that would eliminate $2 million – nearly all state funding – for Planned Parenthood over the next two years.

State Senate president Donald Williams (D- Brooklyn) and House Speaker Rep. Christopher Donovan (D-Meriden) joined Planned Parenthood employees and local elected officials at the health organization’s Meriden clinic to denounce Amendment LCO 5775, which Suzio hoping to attach it to the state budget bill that was signed into law Wednesday.

Though the amendment never made it to the floor of the Senate during the body’s discussion of the bill, Democrats and Planned Parenthood officials said they are concerned that it heralds a coming attack by state Republicans on contraceptive services and subsidized healthcare.

“I think we need to be worried – because we saw on the national level that we have a House Republican caucus that’s proposing this…” Donovan said. “There appears to be a movement in our country and here in Connecticut to say ‘let’s take away Planned Parenthood services.’ We need to be ever-vigilant."

Key to defending Planned Parenthood is helping the public understand the importance of the centers to those they serve, said Judy Tabar, President of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England.

"We are here today to try to educate Senator Suzio on the role that Planned Parenthood plays on the lives of women in this district so that he will think hard in the future about taking away these critical services from women and families who need them," she said. The freshman senator was not invited to the press conference.

Speakers shared facts about the clinic and its services.

“I think this is an agency that people associate simply with abortions,” Meriden City Councilor Dante' Bartolomeo said as she addressed the crowd with fellow Councilor Hilda Santiago. “I’d like to point out that in this particular agency, only 5 percent of the patients here come here for abortion services.”

The other 95 percent of clients at the Meriden site use the clinic for routine pelvic exams, breast and cervical cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and obtaining contraception. Two full-time nurse practitioners perform the bulk of the services.

Medicaid is accepted at the clinic, and those without insurance pay on a sliding scale based on their salary. According to staff, the clinic had approximately 4,400 patients in 2010, who together made 7,800 visits. Twelve percent of clients were men, most of whom, according to a nurse practitioner, came in for STI testing and treatment. Overall the clinic reportedly provided more than 7,000 STI tests and more than 1,000 HIV tests last year.

"It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to us," said Matt Vinikas, director of the Community Health Center in Meriden, which works in conjunction with the clinic, referring patients to them and taking referrals from them, "defunding Planned Parenthood is the equivalent of shutting off power to a whole section of healthcare in the city."

Santiago said she used the clinic’s medical services when she first came to the city more than 25 years ago.

“This was my healthcare services, and this was where I came to get regular checkups. And at that time, on a sliding fee scale, this was what I could afford,” she said.

Santiago added that Suzio’s opposition to Planned Parenthood showed a “disconnect” from the needs of his constituents – the working poor and the disenfranchised.

Suzio sought to counter that claim in a phone interview Thursday afternoon, saying that he is uniquely aware of the needs of struggling area residents. For 14 years, he and his wife Kate took in local low-income pregnant women for months at a time through the Red Cross and pro-life faith-based organizations like Catholic Family Services and . The couple stopped taking women in when they had their fifth child in 1991, but Kate Suzio still counsels pregnant women at Birthright.

Suzio said he filed the amendment because Planned Parenthood's funding level was untouched in the proposed 2011-2012 budget that cut into many organizations' budgets in the theme of "shared sacrifice."

"It’s legitimate to ask why was Planned Parenthood was exempted from that," Suzio said, "They should share in the sacrifice – they appear to be a sacred cow."

He said he didn't intend to start a frenzy over Planned Parenthood, but does welcome a debate on the subject of public funding for abortion.

"There's a lot of people who have moral qualms about (abortion) – whose tax dollars subsidize that," he said. "I don’t think we should be indifferent to the moral objections of many Connecticut citizens."