Planned Parenthood was there for me where my education and family were not. Raised Catholic and attending Catholic school for all of my formal education until college, I was woefully unprepared to take responsibility not just for my sexual health but my health generally.

By 23, I had never had a breast or cervical cancer screening. Simple, life-saving preventive care. These routine exams were not ever part of the conversation growing up. It was an unspoken idea that you only go to the gynecologist when you are sexually active. The conversation that I could be susceptible to cancers or diseases that had nothing to do with being sexually active was not even a consideration. Birth control was abstinence, end of story.

So, by the time I was ready to make my own choices, even as an educated and informed woman by that point, I was terrified. But at Planned Parenthood, I felt heard and cared for, my questions answered and nothing was off-limits. I felt un-censored and empowered. I was taking my health into my own hands. Years later when I was laid off during the recession and lost my health care, Planned Parenthood became my trusted low-cost provider once again, providing a stopgap to make sure that I was still receiving any type of medical care in a pre-Obamacare world, where I had virtually no affordable options.

Inside Planned Parenthood, I felt no shame, no fear, and pride in making my own choices and putting my well-being first. I continue to and always will be proud to stand with Planned Parenthood and all providers of safe reproductive health, for they have stood with me.