WARRENSBURG, Mo.--The building is nondescript, set up and connected to the temporary City Hall annex, and it would seem to hold nothing special inside it.

But the building at 607 Burkarth Road contains the Planned Parenthood branch of Warrensburg, and it is anything but normal inside.

Planned Parenthood is a family planning facility that provides contraceptives, well women exams, counseling and preventative screenings for women and STD testing for both men and women. It also provides access to and advocates for abortion in the United States. Planned Parenthood will see any girl who is menstruating and has questions about sexual health and protection, and prescribes medication based solely on need, and not marriage status or age.

These stances have made Planned Parenthood a polarizing organization, and made it sometimes difficult for workers to reconcile their own personal feelings about sex, health and abortion with what their patients want.

“I don’t always like everything that I have to do,” said Cheryl Lyon, “but I help whoever comes in here.” Cheryl has worked at Planned Parenthood since 2006, and is the resident nurse practitioner and runs the branch. “We see anyone who’s scheduled an appointment,” said Cheryl, “and we take walk-in appointments, when we have no one scheduled.”

Cheryl sees patients, tests for STDs, and provides access to contraceptives and pregnancy counseling for anyone who needs it. “We provide all four methods of birth control to women,” said Cheryl, “pill, patch, shot and ring, mostly the pill.”

These four are hormonal methods of birth control, where the chemicals in the contraceptives either kill sperm or inhibit the egg from developing into a fetus, instead of simply blocking sperm from reaching eggs like condoms or cervical caps do.

Planned Parenthood does not only stop pregnancies; women wishing to become pregnant can come in and get information, and while no OB-GYN work is carried out, Cheryl refers women to other specialists for prenatal care.

She typically sees 10 to 15 patients on a typical day, and dozens more come in daily to get birth control of some sort at the front desk. Hillary, a nursing assistant, hands out the refills and Cheryl spends much of her time either seeing patients or doing paperwork in her office in the back. “I usually do about an hour’s worth of paperwork a day. I do follow-up calls for people who have come back with positive pregnancy or STD results,” she said. “Some days can be very, very busy.”

There is a Planned Parenthood in Warrensburg because of UCM, and most of the patients that Cheryl sees are college-age women. When she started, the center was open every weekday except Wednesday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., but Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit and is dependent upon donations and support.

“Since the recession started, donations have fallen, and our hours have been cut.” There are less patients than there were in previous years, but Cheryl said “We have a transient population in town, and it fluctuates year to year. The patient number is always changing.”

Cheryl has been in a nurse for more than 20 years, and she loves her job. “I like helping women learn about this,” she said, “and I’ve always worked with women.”

Cheryl got her bachelor’s degree from Texas Woman’s University and received her master’s from the University of Cincinnati. She became a certified nurse practitioner in 2001, allowing her to prescribe medicine and diagnose illnesses.

She worked in the Air Force for 24 years, but retired in 2006. She worked with labor and delivery in the Air Force, because helping pregnant women is much more uplifting than working with the sick. “I specialized with women before I ever worked here.”


Cheryl does not like several things about her job; the bad part is being on call for all local branches for a week at a time every two months. “No, I do not like that part,” Cheryl said. “It gets old very fast.” She also does not like dealing with ignorance about sex from her patients. “I always tell everyone to use condoms every time, if they don’t want to get pregnant, but a lot of girls come in and say their boyfriends don’t want to use condoms. These men never get tested for STD’s and they still want to not use condoms.”

The part that she likes least about her job is abortion. The actual subject itself, and the danger that providing access and information about it can cause, is not something she likes. “It’s a personal choice,” she said. “Some girls get carried away, but they just have to learn through consequences.”

She is dismayed with the dangerous behaviors that she often sees, and what happens to some of the girls deeply affects her. “It’s never good telling someone who doesn’t want to be pregnant that they are.” Cheryl can prescribe a pill regimen in the first nine weeks of pregnancy that will abort a fetus, but after that, abortions are not carried out by Planned Parenthood.

Women are referred to clinics where they can get the procedure done. The danger of bombings or assault from anti-abortion activists is present, but Cheryl does not focus on them. “We have a locked door to where both of us work, and we also have an alarm and panic button.” Their mail is checked for bombs and even for anthrax, but Cheryl knows of no major problems or protests in Warrensburg.

“Any girl can come in here and get contraceptives without their parents’ permission; most people don’t know that,” she said. Cheryl is not completely comfortable with the fact that young girls are coming in, but she sees educating them about protection as being better than doing nothing at all. “I can’t lecture them,” she said. “All I can do is teach them the facts, but if they engage in unprotected sex and risky behaviors, they will get STD’s. You know, that’s just the way life is.”

One of the most startling statistics that she said was that 80 percent of women who engage in repeated unprotected sex will be pregnant within a year.

“Oftentimes, it’s the youngest girls who come in with their parents. They catch them having sex and then panic and bring them in.” She laughed a little bit, and then said, “It is dangerous, and many girls know absolutely nothing about the dangers of sex. Every girl having sex needs to use two methods, condoms and some sort of hormonal treatment, to try and stop diseases and pregnancy.”

Cheryl said that abstaining from sexual activity is the only way to be completely safe, but using protection goes a long way. Cheryl can still help stop many women from having STD’s and from getting pregnant. “There is no 100 percent effective contraceptive: women can still get pregnant while using condoms and hormonal methods,” she said, “but it helps a lot to use protection.” She said the number of sexual partners has less to do with STD’s and pregnancy than whether or not the person properly uses protection. “I know people who have used only condoms and are perfectly fine.”
Cheryl has very few regular patients or return visitors. “Most women come in for birth control and then pick up refills at the front,” she said. “Most girls only come in here once or twice.” Patients pay based on income, and Planned Parenthood participates in a Title X, a federal program that subsidizes birth control for low-income Americans.

Their STD tests are federally funded and cover the full spectrum of diseases, from AIDS to gonorrhea. Most patients are female, and men only come in for STD testing, and the typical age range for patients is from early teen to late 20s, but Cheryl has treated patients ranging up to 61 years old. “Strange things happen,” Cheryl said.

Cheryl’s fourth anniversary working at Planned Parenthood comes up this summer. She has no plans to quit working for the next few years, and she looks forward to being able to assist young men and women in being safe and smart about sex. “Supportive families make you grow,” she said. “I don’t teach them morals; they get those for themselves.”

Cheryl helps women make their own choices about what to do with their bodies, and even when she does not agree with what her patients do or how they protect themselves, she is available to help, in a nondescript building at 607 Burkarth Road.