The Haute-Garonne Family Planning is at 1 p.m. on the Place du Capitole in Toulouse with other feminist associations, this Saturday. But also under the windows of the Occitanie regional council, to denounce cuts in subsidies. This year, the association will be short of 40,000 euros.
Three questions for Magali Tritto, Family Planning volunteer in demonstration this Saturday in Toulouse
This date of September 28 is symbolic for you, is it also a reason why you are mobilizing today?
Yes of course. The history of Planned Parenthood and abortion is now 50 years old. Every year, the political feminist inter-organ in Toulouse mobilizes on this date of September 28, which is that of the International Day for the Right to Abortion. And Planned Parenthood also wanted to take the opportunity to talk about its critical situation this year.
Why is this so critical? Where does this financial hole come from?
So this year, Family Planning 31, therefore Haute-Garonne, risks not completing the budget year. We are facing a financial crisis of €40,000. So we are not going to close the association, fortunately. But that would prevent us from continuing certain missions and certain actions which are necessary, fundamental. Such as interventions in schools, and an on-call service on Mondays.
The hole comes from reductions in subsidies, but generally speaking, aid is not increasing and does not follow the realities on the ground. We really have the feeling that the institutions, the structures, the local authorities are very far from the realities on the ground. In September, there was a report that came out from the State Economic, Social and Environmental Life Council, which showed that gender stereotypes are increasing, that violence and aggression are increasing, that young people are less and less informed about sexuality. Sexually transmitted infections are a public health issue! They are also increasing. And all of this is a symptom of the fact that there is sexuality everywhere, but sex education nowhere.
I would like us to return to the history of sex education in schools, perhaps also to play down things that are circulating on social networks. What exactly is in these school interventions on the part of Family Planning?
It depends on teaching which has been compulsory by law since 2001 and is called EVARS (education for emotional, relational and sexual life). It’s about teaching young people to communicate their emotions, to learn more about their bodies, to set limits, to talk about consent, to tell them that there are associations like Family Planning that exist if ever. they want to be informed, to get advice. And above all, as it is popular education, we always make sure that it comes from them. That is to say that it is not us who arrive with our big clogs and who propagate this or that idea. It’s “we open the floor for them” and we discuss based on what they tell us.
The response from the Occitanie region: “it’s deeply unfair”
Nadia Bakiri, regional advisor in charge of these files, responds to Family Planning of Haute-Garonne:
We have a very important partnership with Family Planning, as part of the fight against violence against women and against discrimination. We have been supporting Planning since 2016 and until this year with subsidies which have not stopped. We were even a community that decided to maintain all budgets during Covid! I find it deeply unfair that the association wants to demonstrate in front of the regional council this Saturday, and I wonder about the posture of going in front of the only local authority chaired by a woman.
As part of the “Generation Health” system, which is a project and which is therefore the subject of a call for projects, we wanted to redirect the action towards the mental health of young people, and we moved towards a another operator, that’s all.
But we will be at the proposed round table on October 9. We don’t have to be ashamed of the subsidies we give to family planning.
