One woman’s experience with Planned Parenthood.

Thirty-two-year-old Alisha Ragland has been visiting Planned Parenthood’s Seaside location for half her life. Her first visit was for birth control pills. Over the years, the center has become more than a place to prevent unplanned pregnancies. It has become a part of her life, a place for well-woman exams and cervical cancer screenings, providing peace of mind and care that precluded what could become expensive and dangerous procedures and emergency room visits.

“I feel safe and taken care of there,” she says.

Long-term patronage like Ragland’s is common at Planned Parenthood, especially in terms of reproductive health care, clinicians say.

“I often see female patients [for] years for regular well-woman exams,” says Jessica Dieseldorff, a nurse practitioner for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte. Dieseldorff, who rotates between the Watsonville and Seaside clinics, also says she frequently sees multiple generations of the same family: “They keep coming back because they trust us.”

Ragland dropped out of high school in part to escape an overcrowded home where she slept on the couch, later re-entering high school to get her diploma, and toiled at multiple part-time jobs at once. She balanced college classes and finally master’s classes. Health insurance was never a benefit in any of her jobs. “Employers don’t usually give part-time baristas working for minimum wage health insurance,” she says.

After a few years of juggling jobs and school, Ragland committed to being a full-time master’s student studying anthropology at San Jose State University.

Today she’s still living off whatever shred of student loans she has leftover for living expenses – around $1,000 a month for food and gas for her commute to school. In the summer, when she doesn’t receive student loans, she has to scramble for a job to cover her expenses. Luckily, this summer, she found a job in her field of study, as an archaeologist. “Ideally, I would have a job [in anthropology] all semester,” Ragland says. “I want to start paying back my student loans before I graduate.”