My dudes,

If you're anything like me, you think of Planned Parenthood as a giant women's restroom. No boyz allowed. It's some kind of sacred vagina temple where mystic labia wizards lay their hands upon pregnant women and pass on the ancient tales of womanhood.

But it turns out that's all crazytalk. Planned Parenthood is for men, too. They do dude stuff. And they do it cheap.

You can get screened for STDs. You can get a general physical for school/sports. If you're an older guy, you can get your prostate checked out and your balls screened for ball cancer. You can get a vasectomy. If you're having troubles getting it up or coming too fast, then you can talk to somebody about that stuff as well.

Feel a little weird about calling up a clinic and telling the receptionist that you wanna get your dick checked? No sweat! With Planned Parenthood, you can sign up for appointments online. Don't have the heart to look at your family doctor and tell them you picked up some strange a week ago? Go to PP and get a special dick doc for all your shameful needs.

I once heard the dick is the dipstick of the male body, an indicator of trouble elsewhere. So it's good to get it checked, and checked often, not just because it's your job as citizen, but for the 100% selfish reason that it will directly benefit you.

Scenario: Let's say you're a line cook who's making 25K per year, and you want to take a full battery of STD tests because of what happened last night. If you don't have insurance because the world is cruel, Planned Parenthood is place to go. They'll test you—or send you a test in the mail, if you want—and then put you on a sliding scale repayment plan that's based on your income. In other words: Planned Parenthood provides quality, affordable heath care for everybody. You can afford it, no matter where you're at financially.

I bring all this up now because last Friday the House voted to defund Planned Parenthood for a year so that congress can investigate the veracity of a slew of highly edited videos that present the health clinic as a for-profit distribution center for fetal body parts. Given the services offered at Planned Parenthood, this vote isn't just an attack on women. They're going after us, too, dudes.

Though the bill to defund Planned Parenthood probably won't pass in the Senate, several members of the House want to shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood. The clinic provides safe and legal abortions, and Republicans don't like that.

But, as Elizabeth Warren explains here, no government funding goes to these abortions. So, defunding PP would only amount to closing up shop on a place that millions of women (and also men) rely on for general healthcare, and one of the few places that takes Medicaid. Abortion would still be legal, of course, but, with PP closed, poor people would have a harder time finding somewhere to get them done. Abortion would effectively become a thing that only rich people could do safely.

What else happens when you shut down all the Planned Parenthoods in town? You could ask the people of Scott County, Indiana, but they're probably too busy trying to manage their new HIV outbreak to respond. Not sayin', just sayin'.

All of this stuff is so often presented as a "women's health issue." But women's health is men's health. The way I figure: If I'm having sex with a woman, then whatever's going on with her is going on with me. Whatever helps her out helps me out. Planned Parenthood is one of the helping things.

So, supporting Planned Parenthood isn't just an "important thing we're supposed to do" or a nice way to get in good with our girlfriends or sisters or mothers or grandmothers or friends or whoever else benefits directly or indirectly from their services. It's in our personal interest to be out there screaming our heads off, standing with the people who are challenging the stigma on abortion, and giving money to the cause.

You gave money to the Planned Parenthood in Pullman that got burned, right?

UPDATE

In this new video produced by Lena Dunham, Grammy Award Winner Jack Antonoff of fun. fame tries to write a song about how Planned Parenthood offers services for dudes, too. The rhymes alone are worth the watch.