By Hope Keenan
Reader Contributor
Dear Commissioner Korn,
After consuming the Reader’s article on the Panhandle Health District audit presentation to our county commissioners, I was left with the impression that you could use a grounded perspective and factual information from someone with a serious, vested interest in this topic — a uterus-containing Bonner County resident with young female children.
This audit discovered that 70% of the clinic’s current clientele is female and that the “niche that we’re currently serving” in North Idaho is “women’s health care, gynecology, [and] family planning.”
As the Jan. 15 article outlines, these services are filling a void left by the migration of women’s health professionals out of this area, as a direct result of legislative restrictions dictating how those professionals could and could not practice medicine, which took effect in 2022.
The need is clear.
The audit’s goal, as stated by PHD Medical Director Gregory Pennock, was to better understand how to cater to the local needs going forward. The goal of PHD itself, as found on its website, is to “deliver vital public health services to keep every member of our community well.” Lovely. Health Districts in Idaho were created by our state legislature in 1970 to “ensure all Idahoans have access to local public health services.”
The goal of PHD is clear.
Commissioner Korn: For those of us with uteruses, pap smears, contraception and breast exams are not luxuries that we can afford to toss out the window because one of our county commissioners doesn’t “want to be responsible at a county level to look like we’re funding a Planned Parenthood service.” PHD does not perform abortions. These are basic healthcare services.
Please refrain from whipping up fear-based paranoia and be willing to face the reality that although I and the 50% of humans walking around with vaginas in this area may not enjoy going feet-up for a pap smear or surrendering our breast tissue for examination, we respect that accessing these health measures helps identify and combat cervical cancer and breast cancer (the latter being the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women). It helps us plan when we will have our next child so that our bodies, psyches and financial lives are at least somewhat ready for that sacred undertaking. These services are basic and indispensable.
You are a man of action. Being a county commissioner, I can imagine, is not a particularly easy job nor one that comes with adulation, and I respect the service you have given yourself to. Please, as my commissioner and as a human being, see the need and help defend my rights, the rights of my daughters and the rights of all other bodies with uteruses in our county to live in a place where they can access basic health care services.
Hope Keenan is a Bonner County resident.
