Miami Women Go To Dentist For Reproductive Health Care, Say Lawmakers Told Them To

A group of women in Miami walked into a dental office seeking pap smears and treatment for yeast infections.

It was a protest against a recently passed law that will cut funding to women’s reproductive healthcare in Florida.

About a dozen women crowded into a dental clinic at the Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami. 

"I came to see the dentist," said Yolanda Davis. "I have a bad yeast infection."

Rosalie Whylie asked the receptionist if she could make an appointment for a pap smear.

A representative from the dental clinic, who did not identify herself, told the women the dentists do not offer those types of services.

But the women from social justice groups from across Miami-Dade like the Miami Workers Center, Power U Center For Social Change and The Women's Fund, insisted, saying that Florida's GOP-led legislature instructed them to come to a dental clinic for women's health care. 

Earlier this year, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a bill that cuts funding to women’s healthcare at clinics that offer privately funded abortions. The law, which goes into effect July 1, will take funding away for HIV testing and other sexually transmitted diseases as well a preventative care at these clinics. Public-funded abortions are already illegal in Florida. 

The law largely targeted Planned Parenthood and activists argued it will bar women in poverty from accessing basic women’s healthcare.

Lawmakers offered that women will have many other options and provided a list of Florida's Federally Qualified Health Centers. The list included dental offices.

A group of Miami activists went to the dental clinic at Jessie Trice to see if indeed  a dentist would  address their "vagina care needs.”

Turns out, dentists don't do vagina care.