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Elisabeth Harley is a former nonprofit reproductive health clinic worker based in Bangor.
This year, Independence Day didn’t feel like a celebration.
On July 4, while fireworks lit up the sky and politicians gave speeches about freedom, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was signed into law. Buried inside that bill is a cruel and calculated attack: It strips Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood. On a day meant to honor liberty, our leaders chose to sign away access to life-saving healthcare for millions of people, especially low-income women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color.
I’m one of them.
Years ago, I walked through the doors of a Planned Parenthood clinic when I didn’t have any other options. I was uninsured and scared, and I needed reproductive healthcare. What I found was a place that treated me with dignity. I wasn’t judged. I wasn’t dismissed. I was helped. That experience stuck with me — and shaped the rest of my life.
For the last two years, I worked at a nonprofit reproductive health clinic here in Maine that provides the same kind of care: STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings, birth control, options counseling, and support for LGBTQ+ patients. I saw patients every day who relied on us not just for medical care, but for reassurance that someone in the system actually gave a damn.
And just days ago, I was laid off due to an unexpected financial crisis in our organization. I lost the job I loved — the one where I helped people get care they couldn’t find anywhere else. Our little clinic was a safety net, and now it’s unraveling. And with this new law, Planned Parenthood may be next.
It’s hard to put into words how devastating it feels to lose your own healthcare safety net and then watch the government start cutting holes in everyone else’s.
It’s infuriating that politicians will spend months slashing social programs and then pat themselves on the back while waving flags on the Fourth of July. What kind of freedom is that?
Freedom should mean the ability to access birth control without jumping through hoops. It should mean catching cervical cancer before it spreads. It should mean deciding what happens to your body, not having that choice made for you by lawmakers who will never face the consequences of their decisions.
When you defund Planned Parenthood, you’re not punishing an organization. You’re punishing the people who rely on it to survive. You’re punishing someone like me — someone who had nowhere else to go.
I am proud to stand with Planned Parenthood, and I’m grateful a federal judge has temporarily blocked this provision. But that protection won’t last forever. And if this law takes full effect, it will reduce access to care in communities across Maine. It will likely cost lives.
This isn’t just policy. It’s personal. And it’s urgent.
There are a lot of things I could say right now. I could talk about statistics, about how Planned Parenthood serves over 2 million patients a year. I could talk about cost savings and preventative care. But what I really want people to understand is this: I have sat with people in exam rooms who were scared, broke, and desperate. I have looked them in the eye and told them we would help. And I’ve been on the other side of that, too, needing someone to tell me I mattered.
Planned Parenthood did that for me. Now it’s my turn to do it for them.
If we care about freedom — real freedom — we have to care about the people whose freedom is being stripped away by this law. I do not believe healthcare is a privilege; it’s a right. And I will not quietly celebrate a country that takes that right away on the very day it claims to honor liberty.
