When Pate steps out for a moment, I ask China if her boyfriend will accept condoms. China looks doubtful and says, “Maybe.” Pate overhears and comes roaring back. “If he doesn’t wear a condom, he doesn’t get any sex,” Pate declares. “These are the rules: No condoms, no sex.”

China tells me she doesn’t have any other way of getting birth control or treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Without this clinic, she says, she might well be pregnant and be spreading infections.

As China leaves, Pate cautions her again: “Somebody says, ‘Let’s have sex without a condom,’ you say, ‘No, I don’t want any needles in my butt! I don’t want to see that crazy lady in the clinic again!”

I also met Doretta, who after a pelvic exam at the clinic received a diagnosis of possible cervical cancer. The good news is that it was found early and was treated, and she is expected to be fine.

Title X isn’t directly related to the furor over video footage showing Planned Parenthood staff members speaking cavalierly about fetal tissues; the Republican effort to eliminate Title X goes back much earlier. To those offended by the Planned Parenthood videos, if you’re infuriated by abortion, you should be channeling more money to Title X, not less.

Since 1980, inflation-adjusted spending on Title X family planning has fallen by two-thirds. Now the House proposes eliminating it altogether, while the Senate proposes a 10 percent cut.

This in a country where half of all pregnancies are unintended, where 30 percent of American teenage girls become pregnant by age 19.

The Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health, calculates that Title X family planning centers prevent about one million unintended pregnancies a year, of which 345,000 would have ended in abortion. It says that every year Title X clinics avert some 53,000 cases of chlamydia and 8,800 cases of gonorrhea, and save the lives of 1,100 women who would otherwise die of cervical cancer.