More than 100 people turned out in Portland today to support family planning clinics that face funding cuts at the state and federal level. Public funding makes up nearly half of the budgets for Maine's 45 family planning clinics. But Gov. Paul LePage is proposing to cut roughly a third of the $1.5 million in state funds for family planning. And the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a measure that would eliminate the federal family planning program that provides $2.2 million to Maine centers.

"This is the most devastating legislative attack on women's health care in American history," said Jenna Vendil, an organizer for Planned Parenthood, Maine's largest family planning provider with four locations in Cumberland and York counties.

Because it provides abortions, the group's also the target of an amendment passed by the House denying federal funding for all of its wide-ranging health services, including "routine cancer screenings, HPV, HIV screenings and teen pregnancy prevention programs," Vendil said.

The speakers inside a Unitarian Universalist church are calling on Maine's Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to vote against the GOP plan to defund the family planning program known as Title X when it goes before the Senate, sometime in the coming weeks.

They say that 30,000 Maine women, as well as men, rely on the family planning centers every year. For some, it is the only health care they receive. Twenty-eight-year-old Portlander Seren Hewes is one of them.

"I don't have health insurance," Hewes says. "The sliding scale at Planned Parenthood, their payment plan allows me to go be able to go there and make responsible decisions for my life, and make sure that I stay up-to-date on all my testing, and all my annual exams."

"If their argument is the other services that they provide, if it's that worthwhile as a non-profit, they can do fund-raising. They should not be getting it from the taxpayer," says Penny Morrell, of Manchester, director of Concerned Women for America for southern Maine, which supports cutting off federal funds to family planning clinics.

"People are struggling today making ends meet, and there's a lot of places we can cut in the federal government, and this is one of the first places I would think they would look," Morrell says.

Morrell says she's hopeful that funds will be cut at the state level, given that the Maine Legislature is controlled by Republicans for the first time in more than 30 years.

State Rep. Tyler Clark, a Republican from Easton, is hopeful for passage of his bill. It would require 24 hours to pass from the time a woman gave her written consent to an abortion to when a physician performs the procedure. Medical emergencies would be the exception.

"I'm not putting this through to try to make it impossible to have an abortion," Clark says. "Obviously, that's a legal and accepted practice in the United States. It's just simply to allow time to make such an important decision.

Several other bills expected to go before state lawmakers would require parental consent for contraception and parental notification for abortions for minors. Another proposal would require physicians to read a script about a developing fetus to a woman or teen considering an abortion.

Kate Brogan is a spokeswoman for the Family Planning Association of Maine, which manages the funds it gets from state and federal sources for the various clinics. "The Legislature is controlled a different party and the governor's office is controlled by a different party," Brogan said. "But the people of Maine are not different than they have been for years and years and years."

A spokesman for Republican Sen. Susan Collins says that she is a long-time supporter of the Title X family planning program and "believes that it is critical that Congress rein in excess spending," but adds that "these decisions should be made carefully, fully taking into account the benefits of each program and the potential consequences of elimination."

A statement from Sen. Olympia Snowe says that because of the nation's deficit, she wants to "carefully evaluate all spending measures that come before the Senate." But she also describes herself as a "a champion of women's health" who's supported access to family planning services.