The Review Editorial Board

Recently the local Planned Parenthood closed down, leaving many students without the timely and inexpensive options that the clinic offered. 

Places like Planned Parenthood are an important part of college life. They provide quick ways to stay healthy. This can be from giving women the opportunity to have cheaper birth control to anyone getting tested for STDs in a timely manner.

However, since McMinnville’s Planned Parenthood has closed, the campus desperately needs something to take over this role for students.

It’s true that students have the option to go to the campus’s Health and Wellness Center, but often times it’s not the most convenient option. The center is only open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. which is not when most emergencies happen. 

Also if you do get there when it’s open you have to make an appointment that can take from one to three days. If a student is truly concerned about something with their body it doesn’t help to wait multiple days. 

The office also isn’t very discreet when paying. The center either charge your Linfield account, insurance or they send you bills to your mailbox. 

Many people don’t feel comfortable about their whole family knowing that they went to the Health Center, but there’s no avoiding that once they see the monthly bill. 

There is also no way for students to get a discount on their birth control anymore, whether that is pills or condoms. 

The closest place that students can get their birth control is Walgreens, but that can cost from $30 to $60 dollars for just 28 days while a standard box of condoms is approximately $10-$15 for 10 in a pack. Most college students can barely afford to spend money on food, let alone birth control. 

Also many students don’t want to stare down some random 7/11 cashier while buying some condoms. Being able to go somewhere that has people that won’t judge or be thinking “I know what they’re doing tonight” can be the difference between people being safe or not. If the school had something that always had birth control in it, it would make the students much safer.

Students will continue to do the same things with or without a Planned Parenthood, but the college needs to find a new way to provide students with the options that they had before. Every student has to deal with these situations one way or another, so it would be money well spent if the school provided better options for its students.