I agree with Paul Schmitt (Sept. 25) that it is a sad day when nonprofit women’s health practitioners feel that they need to hide their identity in order to offer their needed services.

Yet I disagree with him that Planned Parenthood should therefore shut its doors to women and men who need affordable reproductive health services.

In Champaign, Planned Parenthood offers sliding scale fees, based on income, so that women can afford to obtain necessary services like Pap smears, prenatal services, and access to emergency contraception. For women who are uninsured and have a medical card, Planned Parenthood is likely their only option, as the for-profit clinics in our town, Carle and Christie clinics, will turn them away.

Paul, if you want to witness immoral profiting from health care, just look to our local clinics that have been denying access to the uninsured and Medicaid recipients, who comprise 40 percent of the people in this county.

Currently the clinics are being sued by the Illinois attorney general for illegally conspiring to fix prices for Medicaid reimbursement. The Health Care Access Task Force has been addressing these issues in Champaign-Urbana since April and is open to all interested in enacting change in our local health care system.

Now would be a great time for the moral-minded to look beyond the issues they’ve become so comfortable embracing, like abortion, and to speak out against transgressions occurring in our own community every day.

Cynthia McDonnell

Champaign resident