Planned Parenthood Requires Patients to Disclose Sex Life

No Sex Questions, No Service

D.C.’s Planned Parenthood now requires patients to divulge the most intimate details of their sex life, including sexual orientation, sex history, STD history, recreational drug use, and the histories of current and past sex partner(s). These questions range from personal—“Does your partner have a penis or vagina?”—to extremely personal—“What type of sex have you had? Anal receptive? Or anal insertive?”. Patients used to be allowed to decline to answer but during my own doctor’s visit, I learned that if you want to get tested or treated at Planned Parenthood, you have no choice.

Yesterday, I arrived for my scheduled appointment at Planned Parenthood, signed in early, and was called into the doctor’s office, accompanied by a nurse. First, the nurse asked me to sign an updated consent form. I was given a computer stylus with a tablet to sign but no form to read. I asked to see exactly what I was signing. I was told that wouldn’t be a problem but I was never given the consent form. The nurse proceeded to take my blood pressure and quiz me on my sexual orientation and sex history.

As I have done in past visits, I said that I’d prefer to skip the questions and just get tested. The nurse said I didn’t have a choice and asked me another sexual question. I answered the question, then repeated my request to not answer further questions about my sex life. She brought in a manager.

The manager and nurse made clear that I could not see a doctor unless I told them everything they wanted to know about my sex life. After kindly asking whether it was really necessary to know everything about my sex life to get an STD test, I was escorted out by security, and the staff said they were calling the police.

While exiting the entrance, staff told me this wasn’t the first time people have been threatened with denial of service, unless they answer the full series of questions. However, the staff is usually successful in bullying patients into answering, in order to receive medical treatment. “They were informed that they have to give those answers, and then they usually give the answers,” the staffer told me.

A Planned Parenthood volunteer outside the facility was surprised when I told her what happened to me inside, and said, “That does sound shitty.”

Even if someone is comfortable sharing the private details of their sex life, there’s no guarantee that information will stay with Planned Parenthood. Just last year, it was reported that the same Planned Parenthood D.C. branch had its patient data breached. After a seven-week-long internal investigation concluded that there was, in fact, a breach, Planned Parenthood waited six months longer to even begin notifying patients that their information had been compromised, including patients’ Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, sexual health treatments, and sexual health diagnoses.

I asked the Planned Parenthood call center if answering the sex questions is a requirement and was told, “You’re welcome to decline. People decline all the time. Some people aren’t comfortable sharing some of that.” When I informed the representative that I was just denied service for declining, she was surprised, and told me, “I was under the impression it was an option.”

UPDATE 9/7/22: I visited a CVS clinic, and it is their protocol to require sex history questions too but, unlike Planned Parenthood, they were happy to test me anyway, even though I declines to answer the questions.