Media Contact: Sara Finger
(608) 251-0139 x1
Madison, WI – Women’s health advocates welcomed today’s news regarding the expansion of reproductive health services in Sheboygan. This expansion of services is the result of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s (PPWI) reopening of a new health center that will provide crucial, preventive reproductive health services to women and men, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, well woman check-ups, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment, testicular exams, medically accurate sex education. The clinic will also provide referrals for prenatal care, adoption, and cancer treatment. In addition to these other important services, the clinic will offer endometrial biopsy and polyp removals, miscarriage management services, and medication abortion services.
“The Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health (WAWH) believes that every community in Wisconsin deserves to have access to the comprehensive range of services that will be offered at the new Planned Parenthood facility in Sheboygan,” said Sara Finger, Executive Director of WAWH. “Ensuring that patients have access to comprehensive reproductive health care is especially important given the unprecedented political attacks on access to such care that have taken place in Wisconsin the past seven years, which have greatly reduced women’s access to these essential health care services.”
“The opening of this clinic is also timely given the recent increase in STI rates in Sheboygan County,” said Finger. “Wisconsin communities desperately need access to this broad range of services, and I hope that this today’s good news about the Sheboygan clinic will someday become a norm—rather than an exception—for communities across our state.”
The inclusion of medication abortion services at the new facility is particularly important, given the lack of access to abortion services in northeastern Wisconsin. Medication abortion is a safe and effective option to end a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks of gestation. Many women prefer medication abortion to surgical abortion because it is noninvasive and can be completed in a patient’s chosen setting, including at home. Medication abortion uses a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol and was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000. For more information about medication abortion, see this informational page from the Guttmacher Institute: https://www.guttmacher.org/evidence-you-can-use/medication-abortion.
