All Ariana and Kevin Gonzalez want is birth control.
As far as health care needs go, that’s pretty simple.
But the California couple says that if the Republican alternative to Obamacare becomes law, they’ll be driving over the border to Mexico to get it.
It’s not that the Gonzalezes don’t have insurance; they have very good insurance through Ariana’s job as a high school teacher.
The problem is that “Trumpcare,” as Ariana calls it, would probably run her health clinic out of town. It’s Planned Parenthood, which the Republican health care proposal defunds because it performs abortions.
The Gonzalezes live in the Imperial Valley, an agricultural area two hours east of San Diego, with a severe doctor shortage. On average in California, there’s one primary care physician for every 1,341 people. In the Imperial Valley, there’s one physician for every 4,170 people, according to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
For Ariana, that means it takes well over a month to get an appointment with her gynecologist and then four or five hours in the waiting room to see him, which means she has to take the day off work. At Planned Parenthood, she gets an appointment the next day and is in and out in about 30 minutes.
If the Republican plan passes and Planned Parenthood leaves town, Ariana says, her best option would be to cross the border, where she can see a gynecologist immediately. It’s an option she doesn’t want to take but will if she has to.
Ariana has a message for senators as they contemplate whether to pass the law, also known as the American Health Care Act.
“If (Planned Parenthood’s) doors are shut, you’ll be driving your own constituents to an entirely different country in search of health care, and that’s not America,” she said. “I don’t think that’s who we are as a country.”
Pregnant at 15
Ariana, 23, knows what life would be like without Planned Parenthood in her town because she’s lived it.
Before Planned Parenthood opened in the Imperial Valley two years ago, she became pregnant when she didn’t want to, and then later she couldn’t get pregnant when she did want to.
Without easy access to birth control, Ariana became pregnant at 15. A doctor tried to convince her to have an abortion, saying she was one of countless teen moms he’d seen just that week.
“He said it would be better for me, and we could have it done in 10 minutes if I just said the word,” she remembers.
But Ariana, now 23, says her “maternal instinct kicked in,” and she never considered termination.
In the summer of 2011, when her son, Oliver, was 18 months old and she was 18 years old, Ariana met her future husband.
She wasn’t looking for love — in fact, she’d shunned dating to focus on caring for Oliver and preparing to study at San Diego State University in the fall.
But one day, she was visiting a friend when Kevin and his brother showed up to visit. They were hanging out in the front yard, and she excused herself to go inside and check on her napping son.
“I was expecting ‘you have a child?!’ ” she remembers. “But he just said, ‘OK, no problem.’ He didn’t blink an eye.”
