On Friday, February 17th, American Beauty in New York City will be hosting a tribute to Alanis Morissette’s essential album, Jagged Little Pill. Assembled by Turkuaz drummer Michelangelo Carubba, the super group set to pay tribute to this classic 90’s album includes Jennifer Hartswick (Trey Anastasio Band), Shira Elias (Turkuaz), Sammi Garett (Turkuaz), Mayteana Morales (Pimps of Joytime), Sasha Brown (Sister Sparrow & The Dirty Birds), Nate Edgar (The Nth Power), and Craig Brodhead (Turkuaz). The group will start off by playing a set of jams, before paying homage to Alanis. The night is also set to serve as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood, with a portion of the proceeds going to the women’s health organization.

***Get Tickets Here***

With the ever-changing landscape of individual rights being put at risk in the current political climate, it is important to support organizations and charities that advocate for various demographics of the country’s population. With that in mind, a portion of the proceeds from this show will be donated to Planned Parenthood in support of women’s rights to decide what is in the best interest of their own bodies and minds.

While its funding is frequently construed as a partisan issue, and a volatile one at that, the affordable women’s services that Planned Parenthood provides to communities across the country have been shown to be essential, particularly to underserved and primarily low-income communities, which accounted for 79% of their patients in 2012. As the largest provider of reproductive and women’s health services in the country, over five million men, women, and adolescents visit Planned Parenthood clinics each year. 16% of its services are related to cancer screening and prevention, 35% of its services are used by women and men for STD testing and treatment, and 35% of its services are related to contraception. This translates into 270,000 Pap tests and 360,000 breast exams used for detecting cancer and 4.2 million tests and treatments for STIs, including over 650,000 tests for HIV. Because such a small fraction of their services are related to abortion (3%), regardless of your personal feelings on the issue, in practice, when Planned Parenthood is threatened, communities lose access to these other services that are essential to public health.

So, what can happen to communities when their local Planned Parenthood clinics don’t get the money that they need to keep providing health care services? In 2013, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Scott County, IN, closed due to insufficient funding. The site was the only free provider of HIV testing in the county and did not provide abortion services. Two years later, Scott County was in the midst of a public health crisis: an HIV outbreak infecting 181 individuals.

On March 25, 2015, then Indiana governor, our now vice president Mike Pence, declared a public health state of emergency, breaking from his previous thoughts on such programs and starting a free needle exchange program in the area to curb the outbreak. While the closure of the Scott County Planned Parenthood cannot be definitively shown to have caused or played a role in the Scott County HIV outbreak, some medical experts after the fact have wondered if these tragic events could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, had HIV testing, like the services originally provided by Planned Parenthood, been available to this rural community leading up to the outbreak. Thus, even outside of the pro-choice/pro-life debate that often becomes the focus of discussions about Planned Parenthood, it is important not to lose sight of the impact of the other important preventative services that Planned Parenthood provides.

On February 17th, a group of incredible musicians will be coming together in New York City to benefit Planned Parenthood. Not only will the stacked supergroup ensure the night is fun, with one set of jams and one set dedicated to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, but, more importantly, proceeds of the ticket sales will be benefiting a hugely important organization whose good work is increasingly threatened by the current political climate. Tickets for the benefit are available for purchase here.