Divorce, graduation, job loss. Your employer cancels or reduces insurance coverage in response to the economy. These are just a few of the ways you or I could lose our health insurance.

We see women (and men) facing this situation every day at Planned Parenthood of Western New York. As the often confusing and very emotionally charged debate on health care reform continues, I am asking you to remember the clients of Planned Parenthood.

Last year we served more than 10,000 local women, men and families with vital reproductive health care. In fact, essential community health care providers like Planned Parenthood are often an individual’s only health care contact.

Six of 10 Planned Parenthood clients consider us their primary care provider. Our clients are your sisters, friends, daughters, mothers and wives. We are working to make sure they get breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control prescriptions and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Plus, we connect them to additional services in the community.

As a result of the downturn in the economy, the clients we are seeing are less able to pay than ever before. Right now, I assure you, a woman you know is trying to determine how she can afford her birth control prescription now that she does not have insurance. She may be delaying an important cancer screening, or treatment for another health care concern because of a lack of insurance coverage, and she simply does not have the money to pay for it.

Why care about women’s health care? Because it saves money. Screenings for cancer and ensuring access to contraception is preventive health care that cuts health care costs.

According to the independent and nationally recognized Guttmacher Institute, every dollar spent on family planning saves more than $4 in reduced health care costs. Women who plan their pregnancies have healthier pregnancies. Women diagnosed with cancer early have better health outcomes. Investing in women’s health isn’t just a nice thing to do—it’s a smart thing to do! Moreover, it is the right thing to do, and reflects the way we want our daughters, sisters and mothers treated here in Western New York.

Women’s health care centers, like Planned Parenthood, must be a part of any federal health care reform legislation that moves forward. Under health care reform, women must have access to reproductive health care and providers they trust like Planned Parenthood.

Let’s work together to make sure women’s health is not politicized. Women should not end up worse off after health care reform. Let’s make sure women’s health is taken seriously.

Karen J. Nelson is chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Western New York.