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Choice Words is Pro-Choice (with Amanda Skinner)

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Amanda Skinner, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England joins Sam to talk about how running a Planned Parenthood is like landing a plane while gassing it up at the same time. They talk about what it’s like working in an “access state” while getting surges of patients from other states, and how the crux of what they do is providing preventative care to keep people stay healthy. They also talk about how they’re probably the only healthcare organization that gets positive patient comments, why STI testing is so expensive and so in demand, and why the need for the care they provide will never go away—especially over the next four years.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Samantha Bee, Amanda Skinner

Samantha Bee  00:00

Okay, this one is really personal for me uou guys, it’s been a tough week for about 75 million people. It’ll be a tough four years, too. And you know what I usually do when I’m feeling like I need to pick me up, and videos of baby goats fainting that I watch on repeat on my phone just aren’t cutting it. I have Coca Cola, full sugar, full caffeine, glass bottle Coca Cola, which is why I have some serious choice words for the pros at Coca Cola, who decided to fall in line with seemingly the rest of the business community and Siddha Donald Trump in his inauguration, the CEO of Coca Cola was all too happy to personally present Donald Trump with a custom glass commemorative inauguration bottle of Diet Coke, I guess, hoping it would curry favor with the coke guzzling president, even though he self sabotagingly called for a boycott of coke in 2021 come on coke. Don’t ruin the one thing I have in this world. I mean, okay, Haley prefers Diet Coke, but still, it’s nothing sacred anymore.

 

Samantha Bee  03:52

This is Choice Words, I’m Samantha Bee. My guest today is my good friend and colleague, Amanda Skinner. Amanda is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of southern New England, and she is exactly what you want in a president. Believe me when I say Donald Trump could never we recorded this interview before Cecile Richards passed away, but Cecile will always be a huge part of Planned Parenthood’s legacy, and she will be missed dearly. So take a listen and make the choices.

 

Samantha Bee  04:33

We just for. If anyone didn’t listen to that first blurb that I said, Amanda and I work together. Amanda is the most incredible CEO of PPSNE, and we’ve known each other for a couple of years now, right? A couple of years, Amanda, don’t be nervous about being on this podcast. I swear to god, you’re so equipped for this. There’s never been anyone more. Equipped. You are not the pilot of the in airplane doing a flap sweat. You’re the pilot. You’re in charge. Yes, you’re landing the jumbo jet.

 

Amanda Skinner  05:15

It actually feels like that a lot of the time that we are up in parenthood trying to figure out ways to land the jumbo tat so.

 

Samantha Bee  05:23

Actually, something that you said to me very early on, it might have been like, it kind of like as I was being taken on as a board member, like, however long ago that was, it probably was a year and a half ago or something. It feels like something like that. I don’t know what it was, and you said to me that running a Planned Parenthood affiliate is like fixing the plane and gassing the plane and doing like tinkering with the plane and making the plane run while also flying the plane full of passengers. Yes, and I thought it was such an incredible metaphor for everything that you do. So really wanted to have you on choice words. I mean, I know that the show is generally all about choice, but it’s not often that I get to be so literal about it.

 

Amanda Skinner  06:10

I haven’t thought of that. But yeah, that is,  this feels very right on.

 

Samantha Bee  06:16

This feels very right on the time. The timing couldn’t be better worse. What does that mean? It’s the time to talk about it. It’s it’s really the time to talk about it, kind of non stop. So I do think that a lot of people think that they are familiar with the the extent of what Planned Parenthood does, mostly from hearing Republicans attack it. But can you talk a little bit about what the scope is of what Planned Parenthood actually does? There are, am I getting this right there, 49 affiliates across the country. They’re all separate, but they’re come under the Planned Parenthood umbrella. You are the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of southern New England. Just first of all, how does the organization work? If you should just explain that a little bit.

 

Amanda Skinner  07:10

Yeah, and thanks for the opportunity to talk about that, because I do think there’s some misunderstanding of Planned Parenthood out there in the world, and definitely there are like relentless efforts to format misinformation about Planned Parenthood. And I just want to say actually before I dive into this, because I’m going to talk about our structure that you know today, right now, there are frontline Planned Parenthood staff in LA and in the Palisades area that are showing up for work and taking care of patients who need care. And I just want to send a little shout out to them as they face, you know, the devastating fires in California. So the way Planned Parenthood is structured, there’s no other organization like us really in the country. First of all, we are a national footprint health care provider. We provide essential health care services to people who often struggle to access care. And we are, you know, affiliates across the country, independent organizations, along with the national office, and we all sort of sit under that Planned Parenthood umbrella. And it’s really that affiliate structure, those 49 affiliates that you mentioned, that are, I think, the front lines of Planned Parenthood, it’s at the affiliates that we provide health care in our communities, to people who we live near and go to the grocery store with. We are providing on the ground education to young people who go to schools in our communities and making sure that they have the best possible information around how to make decisions for their own health and well being, and we’re doing that on the ground, you know, boots on the ground, advocacy in our communities to advance access to sexual and reproductive health care. So the way I think about those three parts of our our mission, and the work that’s really done at the affiliate level. We provide health care. We are educators and we are advocates, and these things are so necessary to do together, because what good is access to health care if you don’t have the right to access the health care, if we haven’t really done the work in our communities to ensure that the policies and systems support people in accessing that care. But having rights is not meaningful if there’s no actual healthcare provider that you can go to see to make those rights actualized in your life. And then, of course, for both of those things, making sure that people are educated and have really good, high quality information about sex, about sexual health, about reproductive health, about health care, more broadly, about how to be advocates for themselves, whether that’s an advocate as a patient or an advocate as a member of their community. And that’s all the work that we do at Planned Parenthood in the affiliates. And then the national office placed this really quickly critical sort of national role, advancing national policy, strategy and agenda and and really being that front face of the organization.

 

Samantha Bee  10:12

Right, so the affiliates, kind of like our individual they’re independently run, right? And then you’re collected under the umbrella of the larger national organization that’s kind of working on policy and legal stuff, but you’re operating into it. So how many patients do do you serve at PPS?

 

Amanda Skinner  10:40

So people might think, you know, when they’re hearing this podcast, like, oh, you know, Planned Parenthood of southern New England, our affiliates responsible for Connecticut and Rhode Island, those are small states, right? So people might think, oh, that’s like, gotta be a really small affiliate, but actually, it’s a little boutique, right? Yeah but actually, we provide a tremendous amount of health care. Last year, we saw over 60,000 patients in our health centers. We are on track this year to provide over almost 120,000 visits to our patients. That’s a lot of health care right to a lot of people who are relying on us to be there for them. So we actually have a tremendous amount of impact in our communities in terms of of that frontline health care provision and that health care that we provide. You know is we’re like busting myths over here today. Yeah, we are proud to provide abortion care to our patients. We are proud to provide gender affirming care to our patients. The large majority of the care that we provide is preventive health care. It’s necessary health care that helps people be well and healthy in their lives, whether that’s cancer screenings or birth control or STI tests, STI testing care.

 

Samantha Bee  11:55

Because STI is of like they’re off the charts, right? I mean, right. There’s been an explosion.

 

Amanda Skinner  12:02

I mean, the pandemic had such an impact on people’s ability to access healthcare. People deferred care that was necessary, preventive care. People feel not as safe in some ways going back into the healthcare system, and there are lingering impacts of that and the exponential rise in STI rates is just one other things that we’ve seen as a consequence of that.

 

Samantha Bee  12:26

The story that is told about Planned Parenthood out in the world is so powerful and people’s brains have so much misinformation disinformation about Planned Parenthood. Are people surprised often when they learn about the health care mix? You know, what is actually on offer? Because I imagine for a lot of patients, it is probably the only health care provider that they might visit in a year.

 

Amanda Skinner  12:57

Yeah, I mean, for the majority of our patients, the large majority of our patients, from what they tell us, we’re the only healthcare organization that they see. We’re the only healthcare provider that they see. And it’s funny that you ask if people are surprised, because on the one hand, sometimes people are surprised. On the other hand, at least, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, one in three women in the United States has received healthcare at Planned Parenthood? Yes, right. So a lot of people have been to Planned Parenthood for care. So if 33% of women in the United States have gotten care to Planned Parenthood, they have a line of sight into who we are and what we do. I’m not sure if there’s any other organization in the country that can say one in three people have gotten care there, yeah.

 

Samantha Bee  13:43

Yeah, it’s very weird for me to say the next phrase that I’m going to say, but the amount of the brand awareness is very high, yeah. And the work is incredibly critical. And I feel like we just are facing four years of who knows what, confusion, chaos, I don’t know, just question marks. I mean having just come off of inauguration, beautiful Inauguration Day, just a celebration, just a celebration of life. How are you looking at 2025, and how are you I don’t even know what to say about it. What is your perspective going into this? Just a lot of too many unknowns to even talk about probably.

 

Amanda Skinner  14:34

There are a lot of unknowns. I’m doing a lot of deep breathing. You might have just heard me take it, right? I did. I’m doing a lot of deep breathing. We really don’t know exactly what’s going to happen next. Here’s what we do know. I think we know a few things. First, we know that this administration has made clear that they are interested in taking away people’s actions. Access to care and taking away people’s rights, they have made no bounds about that. When the you know, leaders of the new Department of governmental efficiency, or I don’t know how we’re saying that, are we saying it doge, I don’t know how we’re saying.

 

Samantha Bee  15:15

I don’t  I feel physically ill when I say, Doge, so maybe we’re not there. I can’t do it.

 

Amanda Skinner  15:22

But they said they articulated Planned Parenthood as an agency that they wanted to come after. And we are at this like critical moment in our country where they are saying they want to defund Planned Parenthood, that they want to strip away people’s ability to receive care and services of Planned Parenthood take away people’s rights to control their own bodies, but Planned Parenthood is here to make sure that that doesn’t happen, that we are really fighting for people’s ability to get the care they need. We are fighting for people’s rights to access that care. We are built for the fight. We have faced these kinds of challenges before, and we, you know, are, if nothing else, we are built for the fight to stand up for our patients and our communities and the people who are counting on us. Because I also think that this election showed us very clearly that, as it turns out, people want to be able to control their own bodies.

 

Samantha Bee  16:28

They really do. There’s more Choice Words in just a moment.

 

Samantha Bee  18:26

When I attend these meetings, which is I learn something literally every time, and I sit in awe, actually, of how mission focused everyone is, how completely mission focused. Everyone is and I feel so I feel that the affiliate is so safe in your hands, because you I do. I mean, I don’t know what, but what is safe? I mean, what does safety even mean? Because every affiliate has struggles. Every affiliate is probably struggling right now. Can you. Speak to that a little bit. What does that look like? What does that mean? I think that people honestly take Planned Parenthood for granted, somewhat. People support it, but they also just sort of assume that it’s always going to exist and be as comprehensive a health care provider as it always was. You know, it’s like a touch point for a third of women in this country, as you mentioned. But what is the actual truth? What is as you see it, what are the challenges?

 

Amanda Skinner  20:31

The healthcare part of what we do is the large majority of what we do at Planned Parenthood, and when you look out at the whole sort of healthcare landscape in this country, it is in crisis. So this crisis in health care, is not unique to Planned Parenthood. We are facing a lot of the same challenges that all other health care providers are facing. Like literally yesterday in Connecticut, there was another news article about the owner of three hospitals in Connecticut filing for bankruptcy. So this is not a unique issue to Planned Parenthood. What’s unique to Planned Parenthood is that while we are facing those issues, we are also fighting for the lives of our patients. We are facing relentless, hostile political attacks. And this is really because the lives of our patients are politicized, and I think that is what makes us different. And when we think about how those play out, they really are different at each Planned Parenthood affiliate, because the context that we’re operating in is really different. So you know, as we said, there are 49 affiliates across the country. Our political environments are different. The demographics in our communities are different. As a health care provider, even the insurance structures vary from state to state. So we are all navigating very different external forces in the same menu of them, but they’re playing out differently. So for an affiliate like ours, people might be thinking, oh, you know, you’re in Connecticut and Rhode Island, everything is fine there. And I think, you know, we have worked really hard, for example, to advance a policy environment that is really protective of sexual and reproductive health and rights. At the same time, we are facing a really challenging environment in terms of reimbursement for the services we provide, because sexual and reproductive health care is devalued in the health care system. And so you know, just as one example, we are receiving the same reimbursement today for abortion services from Medicaid in the state of Connecticut, and 40% of our patients are on Medicaid in Connecticut, 40% of our Connecticut patients at Planned Parenthood, we’re receiving the same reimbursement rate for abortion services today as we were receiving in 2008 that’s almost 17 years of frozen reimbursement. And you can’t out strategy that.

 

Samantha Bee  23:24

Wow, reimbursement rates from 2008 and you’re not turning away patients because they can’t pay.

 

Amanda Skinner  23:31

We don’t, I mean, you mentioned turn away, right? That mission commitment. I mean, we exist as part of the healthcare safety net. The people who are counting on us for care are people who struggle to access care someplace else. They’re coming to us because they count on us and as we, as we talked about, for most of our patients, we’re the only provider they see. They feel safe with us. They feel respected when they come in our doors. They feel seen, they feel valued. They have long standing relationships with their provider at Planned Parenthood. So we are really committed to keeping our doors open. We say we provide care no matter what. So we’re really committed to living up to that highest promise of our values and who we say we are in the world, and that includes not turning people away based on their ability to pay. But that means that, you know, we really are facing some significant challenges to be able to keep doing that.

 

Samantha Bee  24:34

The cost of providing health care keeps rising, especially post pandemic, really right, especially post pandemic, and those reimbursements are not meeting that, and that’s in a state like Connecticut, which is very focused on on on choice, very amenable to women’s health care.

 

Amanda Skinner  24:53

Right, exactly. And you know, we’re in Rhode Island as well, but facing the same challenges there. We. Are super proud of work that we have done that we think really again, sort of focuses on this idea of doing what’s right for our patients and communities, even if we think it might present some challenges for us. So you know, one of the pieces of legislation we just spent a lot of effort working on, and had that had passed in Rhode Island ensures Medicaid coverage for abortion care in Rhode Island, and also removed these unnecessary restrictions for state employees. So that meant that I think 90,000 people in Rhode Island were able to get insurance coverage for abortion care that they were prevented from accessing before, and that’s great right at the same time, the Medicaid reimbursement for abortion in Rhode Island is the lowest in the country. So we are really focused on doing what’s right for our patients and our communities, but sometimes it presents an operating challenge for us.

 

Samantha Bee  26:01

Yes, that’s an operating challenge. I didn’t realize it was the lowest reimbursement in the country. Oh, my goodness. And a very surprising thing that I learned is how expensive STI testing is. I did not realize that. Do you I mean, you do so much work in a sexual health and wellness for young people, but there’s so much misinformation like direct I mean, you’re doing a deep breath again. I can see you deep breathing as you think about this. But like, the amount of misinformation on Tiktok is actually mind blowing. So how do you how are you trying to make sure that people learn about consent and sexual wellness in places other than?

 

Amanda Skinner  26:49

Yeah, so one of the beautiful things about Planned Parenthood, and I think it’s because we are the most trusted provider of sexual and reproductive health care services, is that we are also the most trusted source of high quality information on sexual and reproductive health care. We have at Planned Parenthood of southern New England. We have an education and training team, and their work is really centered on like youth engagement and youth empowerment and and educating and training with young people. So we have programs both both like real, in person programs that we do, and also virtual programs that we do, and those are ways that we can try to combat that, right? So that’s that’s one thing we have, just as an example. We have an awesome program called Beyond the birds and the bees, and that’s a virtual sex ed program for young people, teenagers, that they can sign up to participate in and check our social media right? And that’s the other thing that we really focus on, is making sure that we use our communication channels, whether lots social media opportunities like this, right? You to make sure that what we’re putting out into the world is evidence based high quality, accurate information, in a world where there’s just so much noise and so much misinformation.

 

Samantha Bee  28:19

And there’s peer training, right? So it’s like peer to peer communication too. Like, you’re like training young people to talk to other young people. So it’s not necessarily like a middle aged woman like Sam B trying to tell her.

 

Amanda Skinner  28:34

Right, like, who do young people want to talk to their questions.

 

Samantha Bee  28:37

Not me, young people? Right? Yeah, nice.

 

Amanda Skinner  28:43

So, yeah. So one of our other programs is called the stars program. And the star stars stands for students teaching about responsible sexuality, and these are peer educators. So we train young people who are high school age students, and we train them to be peer educators. We equip them with good information, and then they are out in their schools and communities as a resource to their peers and their friends, a resource that has good, accurate information, and maybe also condoms.

 

Samantha Bee  29:20

Maybe also a big basket of, like, I, I mean, my kids go to school in New York City, and you think, like, oh, New York City, like, very, just very on top of it, just very, like on it. Everybody’s freely talking about things in the schools, but they took the sex education class, which we had to sign up for, and sign a whole consent form for, and then they talked about, I think they put a condom onto a banana, and watched two episodes of Malcolm in the Middle. And I’m not even joking.

 

Amanda Skinner  29:49

Well, they should participate in beyond the bird and the Beast.

 

Samantha Bee  29:51

Yes, they should. That’s a great idea. I don’t know why I haven’t signed them up, but I will.

 

Amanda Skinner  30:01

All on our Instagram account, PPSNE for anybody.

 

Samantha Bee  30:08

Thank you. PPSNE always does. PPSNE any handle patients who are coming in from states with abortion bans or not so much because we’re kind of in a little pocket.

 

Amanda Skinner  30:23

yeah, no, we do.  I mean, we every state that is an access state right now has seen a surge of patients coming across state lines right and there are, again, sort of a variety of factors that inform that, like ease of transportation to that state and access to resources, because abortion bans so explicitly harm certain people. If you don’t have paid time off of work, if you don’t have financial resources, if you don’t have a car, right, if you have all of those things, an abortion ban is truly terrible and constrains your ability to control your own life. On its face, if you don’t have those things, it’s even worse. And really like they are so targeted, and it’s just so terrible. One of the things that we’re really proud of that Planned Parenthood that we’ve really tried to do is make sure that we’re also providing the supportive resources that people need to get the care that they need. So at Planned Parenthood of southern New England, we have an abortion Navigator, and that navigator’s job is to work with patients, whether they’re in Connecticut and Rhode Island, because at the same time, we need to remember that even in our own communities, there are people who struggle with those issues. Right? 82% of our patients live at or below 250% of the poverty level. But also outside of our communities, there are people who are contacting us saying, you know, I need to come for an abortion. I’m not sure how I’m going to get there, and we need to make sure that we have the supports to help them find transportation if they need it, help them find a place to stay, help them find resources to cover the cost of their abortion if they don’t have access to those those resources themselves, and really wrap around them all the support that they need to be able to come to us for care.

 

Samantha Bee  32:22

Do you ever feel like there will ever be a newer, better Roe? Because it’s not like Roe was the best and people had terrible challenges to access, even when we had roe in place. Can you speak to that a little bit?

 

Amanda Skinner  32:40

Listen, Roe was not the ceiling, it was the basement and, you know, as we talked about a little bit earlier, having the right to something doesn’t mean that that right is accessible in your life or meaningful to you. If it’s not accessible, even think about like some of these wild voting rights law, like having the right to vote, but not having a location near you should go vote, or being able to have a bottle of water while you’re in line, that right is not as meaningful to you if you have to, you know, drive 20 hours and wait in line for hours and can’t have a glass of water. And the same is true for sexual and reproductive health and rights and abortion rights. You know, roe had constraints in that, that constrained the ability of healthcare professionals, really, to make judgments. And I think there is a future state with a durable, meaningful right to access abortion care that situates abortion, I think, properly as what it is which is a healthcare procedure. Abortion is healthcare, and there is no point at which, no time when a politician is better equipped than a woman and her health care provider to make a decision about whether or not she should continue her pregnancy or whether or not abortion is the right choice for her. There is no time when a politician is better equipped than you, Sam or I am, to make those decisions for my life. And I think what we have seen as there are more and more efforts to constrain access to abortion, is a groundswell of people realizing that that is not what they want, that they don’t want the government involved in their personal decisions. And I think as we continue to see that movement grow and build, that positions us for a future state where we actually do see a post roe world that is better than the world that we were in with. It’s just that we have to get through this really terrible time first.

 

Samantha Bee  34:54

Yes, getting through the terrible time is, you know, obviously it’s like from. Front and center in all of our brain? Well, that thought more Choice Words, after one more break.

 

Samantha Bee  35:11

I like now how we talk about abortion as health care. I like to conclude every speech, everywhere I go by saying, abortions, health care. Good night, everybody, because it is and I love you for that. Oh, my goodness. It’s the funnest way to end everything. It’s a good sign off. This is why I’m not on TV anymore. Anyways, how do we get people to understand that, like when they go then they need a DNC, it’s the same thing as an abortion, that the two are the same, that the language that we use modifies everything, but it all goes into the same bucket, and it’s all healthcare, and it’s all necessary to save lives and save mental health, right?

 

Amanda Skinner  39:22

Well, you hit the nail on the head, right? What we need to do is keep talking about it, right? Talking about it. I’m talking about it. And I think you know, we need to be relentless in our efforts to destigmatize abortion, because when something is stigmatized that allows people, it allows hostile politicians, it allows anti abortion forces to use shame as a tool to advance their agenda. And the way you break that apart and bust it up is you talk about it and you normalize it, and you recognize that you know, one in four women in the United States had an abortion. And we need more people who are willing to share their stories, and that’s actually something that we do. We have abortion storytellers, people who have either shared their stories with us. We have like a little online mechanism for people to share their story with us if they want to, but we also have volunteers who are connected to us in some way. One of our former board members is an abortion storyteller for us. I’m an abortion storyteller for us. And when we talk about abortion and we talk about the impact that an abortion might have had on our life without any embarrassment or shame or, you know, no perpetuating of the stigma. I think that’s when we really start to, you know, change the narrative around abortion, like the truth is everybody loves somebody who has had an abortion, and right? Somebody else coined that phrase. Her name is Renee racy Sherman, and I want to give her credit, but, but it’s true. You may not know that you love someone who had an abortion all of you listeners out there, but everybody loves somebody who’s had an abortion. And we are equipped to be able to make those decisions for ourselves and know they’re the right decisions for us, and we don’t need the government’s help to do that.

 

Samantha Bee  41:25

I think, though, one of the things that I also am so impressed here’s a compliment, incoming compliment, put your ear muffs on. Another thing that impresses me deeply about the work that you do and the work that you’re I want to give credit to the team around you, because, I mean, they are a goddamn force of nature, like it is. They are marvelous. Your clinicians, the people on your executive team, like the whole, oh my god, the whole board, I just again, sit in awe, but like what you’ve paid so much attention to is not only providing the healthcare, but providing the care in a way that makes people feel seen. They feel like they have a voice in it. And you’ve made such a concerted effort to change, I mean, for lack of a better, better terminology, because really, I’m just an actor like patient satisfaction, so that when patients come in, they feel like time was spent with them, they were listened to, they got the care that they needed, so that when they walked out the door, they felt that they were held by someone. I feel this in your work, and I think that based on like, kind of like patient surveys, after the fact, satisfaction levels have risen so much. But, I mean, that’s very important. I feel like you have such a mission to to hold and really care for the people you care for.

 

Amanda Skinner  43:10

So first of all, I My professional background is that I’m a nurse midwife. I am a healthcare provider myself, and I feel, I feel deeply connected at a really personal level to that part of our work, because I know the impact I had on the patients that I saw and the people that I had the privilege to help take care of when I was in that part of my career, and I want to give a lot of love to our health center staff and to all of our staff who are out in community, our educators, our organizers, but focusing on patients for a second, to our health center staff who, you know, really understand the lives of our patients in many ways, because our frontline health care staff live in the communities that they’re working in, and right you know, they share things in common with our patients. They are sometimes patients themselves, and they’re showing up every single day knowing that our patients, who are disproportionately people of low incomes, Black, Latino, members of the LGBTQ plus community, again, people who disproportionately don’t feel welcomed or safe in other or sort of the more traditional healthcare system that we have an obligation to create that environment for them. And this is so dorky, but if you’d indulge me for a moment, I actually right here some comments from patients.

 

Samantha Bee  44:40

Oh, my goodness.

 

Amanda Skinner  44:43

Because, I think it really speaks to the experience that we try to create for our patients. But one of our patients said, I cannot express enough how respectful and compassionate the staff were. I have anxiety and other life experiences that make medical appointments challenging […] but this was quite possibly the safest I felt at a doctor’s office. Like, I just, I get like, all like, I can barely talk about our staff or the impact we have without getting tearful. I mean, it’s pretty embarrassing. I cry really easy because I get so like, moved by it. That’s just one voice in 1000s of people who have come to Planned Parenthood and felt seen and validated. And then we also really try to bring it like a trauma informed lens to our work, and that feels important now more than ever, I just feel like we’re living under like the collective cloud of trauma, and we bring that to everything from how we engage with patients in the services we provide, but also our physical spaces. And we really think about making sure that our health centers physically feel welcoming, comfortable, bright. Like a place where you can go and feel safe physically in the setting and that that you’re, you know, it’s not like dreary or dark, because I think sometimes that’s something people picture too.

 

Samantha Bee  46:16

Yeah, like green walls and like between you and the receptionist.

 

Amanda Skinner  46:21

Yeah, and our health centers are, like, beautiful and, you know, comfortable for our patients, and respectful. And I think that’s really important too, is to think about how critical it is from a health equity perspective, when you are primarily serving a patient population that that really is the like the people where all of these social determinants of health, issues of health inequities are affecting them and causing disparities and outcomes, everything from the services we provide to those spaces we provide them in need to be focused on addressing those structural inequities so that we can improve health equity outcomes.

 

Samantha Bee  47:05

I love that so much. I do really beautiful. I really affirming, yeah.

 

Amanda Skinner  47:13

Like, this is hard work. It you know, healthcare is hard work and movement work is hard work, and we know that people are counting on us, whether they’re counting on us to come for healthcare, or they’re counting on us to create a world that we all want to live in. And that’s, you know, that’s a heavyweight to carry for our team, and it’s really important that we invest in them and that and honor and appreciate them, while recognizing that this is really like this is about people. When we talk about Planned Parenthood, it’s not about Planned Parenthood. It’s about the people we serve. It’s about the people who work here and do the work. It’s about the mission that we exist to make real in the world.

 

Samantha Bee  48:06

What is something that you would love to see planned, Planned Parenthood be able to do in the future, if there were ever a time where you weren’t simply fighting for your life? So here’s what I think. I have a vision. Okay, I do that. You would.

 

Amanda Skinner  48:24

We are fighting for our lives in so many ways. And you know this is not possible. What I’m about to say is not possible in every community right now, but we have, in my opinion, here in Connecticut and Rhode Island, at Planned Parenthood of southern New England, both the opportunity and the obligation to do everything that we can to advance a world where reproductive freedom is a reality, and what that means is that people have full sort of liberated opportunity and ability to make decisions about their own bodies, to make decisions about their own lives, and to have the systems and structures in place to make that possible for them, that we have policies that make it possible for people to have paid time off of work, that people can build and grow and create the families of their choosing. And I think here we can do that. And so my big vision for Planned Parenthood of southern New England is to be one of the Planned Parenthood affiliates that is making that world a reality. Because I think that’s the world all people really do want to live in. And when they can see what that world looks like, when they can see that be realized, people in other areas of the country where that’s not as possible, like the people who live in those communities, will be like, oh, like, educational outcomes would be better. Economic outcomes would be better thriving communities like it might sound a little like wildly aspirational.

 

Samantha Bee  50:08

This isn’t I work at Planned questions, so I’m yeah, you I do know yes.

 

Amanda Skinner  50:13

So like, Planned Parenthood is central, in my opinion, and the work that we do, the world that we’re trying to create is central to a world that is truly thriving on all fronts for all people, no matter who they are, no matter where they live, no matter who they love.

 

Samantha Bee  50:33

That’s a amazing vision of the future. I want to live in that future.

 

Amanda Skinner  50:38

Yeah, I want to live in that future too.

 

Samantha Bee  50:40

Want to live in that, right? Oh, boy. I mean, it’s very challenging that I think people in blue states often do kind of not think about Planned Parenthood in any type of crisis. They kind of, they just kind of go, it’s fine. I don’t have to think about that right now. But what is my big last question, and it is a big question, is, you know, what do you what is a thing that listeners can do today, right now that will make a difference?

 

Amanda Skinner  51:11

Yeah, there’s so much that people can do. And I think, you know, we have talked a lot about the healthcare side of our work, but I want to talk just for a moment about that advocacy side through this lens, which is that if you engage with Planned Parenthood in any way, then you are an activist for the world that you want to live in. And there are so many different ways that people, sort of, no matter who they are, can engage in creating that world. So there are simple things. People can follow us on social media and engage because that helps get the message out. It helps get out good, high quality information around sexual health. It helps get the message out around our healthcare services. So we really need people to follow us on social media and to like, watch the videos, click the like button, share, share things. So that’s one thing. People can come to us for care. You know, we are a provider for all people. And you know we are primarily, you know, majority of our patients are people who struggle to access care, but you can come to us for care no matter who you are. And so come to Planned Parenthood for care, because we are there for everybody, no matter who they are. And imagine if we create this safe, welcoming environment for people who often don’t feel safe, that environment will feel amazing to anybody of course, we need financial support right now for our affiliate reimbursements for the services that we provide cover only 51% of the cost of delivering rad care. And we need our incredible, amazing, awesome donors to keep stepping up for us and for the patients who are counting on us and and really, you know, be there for us. So of course, philanthropic support is so important, and I do want to sprinkle a lot of love all over our like awesome supporters, because they they are truly incredible and and so so dedicated, and they know the difference that they make in people’s lives when they show up for us. You can share your story of how you were impacted by Planned Parenthood. You know, people can whether it’s an abortion story or it’s that you the first time you you got birth control, it was at Planned Parenthood. I went to go see a new healthcare provider myself recently for for a specialty that is not provided at Planned Parenthood. And I went to go see this person. There were an immigrant, and they immigrated to the United States when they were a teenager, and when I told her where I worked, she immediately started sharing with me what an incredible difference Planned Parenthood had made in her life, and that she is a doctor today because she went to Planned Parenthood and got on birth control when she was a teenager. So like, we need more of those stories to be told. So I think that’s a way people can get involved. Pay attention to your local politics. Pay attention to what your legislators and your state administrations are doing. I think sometimes we can get lost in the noise of the federal picture, but especially in light of the Dobbs decision, what is happening in the States is so important right now, right like that is where it is at, and we have each as individuals like so much more power and ability to create change in our own communities and our own states.

 

Samantha Bee  54:59

Right.

 

Amanda Skinner  55:01

So like, do that pay attention and get involved. And we’ll be providing for people to get involved in our lives.

 

Samantha Bee  55:11

Pay attention to the pay attention to the reimbursement rates in your state. Very important.

 

Amanda Skinner  55:17

You know, you didn’t ask this exactly, but I’ll throw it out there. We need the leadership in states that stand for reproductive rights. We need the leadership in states that support access to reproductive health care and sexual health care, including abortion care. We need the leadership in those states to reflect that, not just in policy, but also in practice. And that means investing in reimbursement for the services that Planned Parenthood provides, investing in sexual and reproductive health care providers and making sure that they can still be here. You know, today, tomorrow, 100 years from now, the services we provide, the need for them is never going to go away, right? It’s never going to go away. So if it’s never going to go away, if people are always going to need cancer screenings, if people are always going to need preventive health care, and people will always need abortion care, we want that care to be safe, accessible and in their communities. And the way to do that is to invest in those services, and one of the ways to do that is for leaders in the States to do that.

 

CREDITS  56:26

We need our state leadership to live the values that they espouse. Oh, Amanda, I don’t think I ever met anyone who lived their values with more clarity than you, and I just thank you for allowing me to interview to you today. That was Amanda Skinner, and I had no choice but to look up one thing. She was talking about, the rise in STIs in the country. And I was curious what the numbers were. Well, there are a shocking 2.4 million cases. Oh, my Lord, stay safe everyone, even in retirement homes. All right, thanks for joining us. I am Samantha Bee. See you next week for some more Choice Words. Thank you for listening to Choice Words, which was created by and is hosted by me. The show is produced by […], with editing and additional producing by Josh Richmond. We are distributed by Lemonada Media, and you can find me @realsambee on Instagram and X, follow Choice Words wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.

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