(Credit: AP/Charlie Neibergall/Photo Montage by Salon)
Last summer the anti-choice movement was dealt a serious blow when the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot use medically unnecessary regulations as a pretext to shut down abortion clinics. But that doesn’t mean the religious right has given up on its mission to make sure that women who have sex are punished with unwanted pregnancy for it. Under President Donald Trump, anti-choicers are redoubling efforts to destroy Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country, which not only makes abortion harder to receive but, as an added bonus for the forced-birth brigade, will also cut off many thousands of low-income women from access to contraception.
Earlier this month, Iowa’s Republican Gov. Terry Branstad signed an appropriations bill that bars women on Medicaid from receiving any non-abortion services from clinics that offer abortion. The move is forcing four of the state’s 12 Planned Parenthood clinics to close.
Texas pulled off a similar move in 2011, passing a law refusing to let Medicaid patients use Planned Parenthood for any services. In response, the Department of Health and Human Services pulled millions of dollars of Medicaid family planning funding from the state because refusing to let a willing provider offer services to Medicaid patients violates federal regulations.
But with Trump in the White House, Texas is petitioning the government to retrieve its Medicaid money back without having to let Planned Parenthood be part of the roster of providers. Branstad’s move suggests that Iowa Republicans are also hopeful that the federal government will simply let states violate long-standing norms that allow women on Medicaid to choose the best provider for them.
“We have seen what happens in states like Texas, and now in Iowa, when politicians attack access to care at Planned Parenthood — it’s devastating, and sometimes deadly, for the women who are left with nowhere to turn for care,” said Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement.
She isn’t exaggerating. As Joseph E. Potter and Kari White of the Texas Evaluation Project explained in a February piece for The Washington Post, “Five years ago, we learned in Texas what can happen when efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are carried out: The network of health-care providers falls apart and women lose access to essential preventive services.” In their research, they found that women had trouble receiving contraception and in many cases they were unable to prevent pregnancy.
There’s good reason to fear that many women in Iowa are going to lose access to contraception because of these clinic closures. A 2017 report by the Guttmacher Institute found that Planned Parenthood is the main provider of government-subsidized contraception in three out of the four counties that are losing their clinic. In Woodbury County 80 percent of patients receiving family planning services from publicly funded clinics went to Planned Parenthood. In Lee County, it was 92 percent; in Des Moines County, 96 percent.
Anti-choicers have an answer for this, of course: Women can just go somewhere else.
“There are many quality community health centers in Iowa that provide comprehensive health care to women and families across the state,” Maggie DeWitte, director of Iowans for Life, said in a statement.
Notice, however, the vague words about “comprehensive health care.” DeWitte does not mention gynecological health care, which Planned Parenthood specializes in, and she certainly doesn’t mention contraception.
This is not an accident. There are other places that women can go if they have a cold, break their arm or need their blood pressure checked, but receiving gynecological care, which is a medical specialty, or obtaining affordable contraception is another matter entirely. Another report from the Guttmacher Institute, released this month, shows that replacing family planning services isn’t so easy. The researchers estimate that other clinics would often have to assume double or triple the number of contraception clients that they currently serve to make up the loss of Planned Parenthood’s family planning services. Many of these clinics are already extremely busy, and simply wouldn’t be able to do it.
But there’s good reason to believe that anti-choicers are not only fine with cutting women off from receiving contraception, but that in fact that’s the ultimate goal. To be clear, the funding being cut here never went to abortion. It was always earmarked for contraception and other sexual health care. The simplest explanation for why people want to cut contraception money is that they want to cut contraception money.
Beyond that, it doesn’t take a super sleuth to realize that anti-choice activists don’t like birth control any more than they like the abortions that birth control prevents. The Iowans for Life website is stuffed full of anti-contraception propaganda, including claims that intrauterine devices are being forced on unwilling women and assertions that Planned Parenthood “heavily promotes contraceptive methods that may increase women’s risk of contracting STDs.” (This claim only makes sense if you assume that women who don’t use contraception will instead abstain from sex, an assumption for which there is no real evidence.)
On its Facebook page, Iowans for Life has praised doctors for refusing to prescribe contraception and advertised events built around trying to scare women out of preventing pregnancy. The group has also posted articles sneering at Planned Parenthood for offering “easy contraception,” arguing that contraception and sex education have “exacerbated a promiscuous sexual culture,” and claiming that former President Barack Obama created a “forced contraceptive regime.” (In reality, no one has been forced to use contraception by the Obama administration or the Affordable Care Act.)
The agenda here is not “life.” It’s punishing women for having sex. The loss of services to prevent pregnancy and to prevent or treat sexually transmitted infections is a feature, not a bug.
If Texas is successful in restoring its Medicaid funding without reinstating the right of Medicaid patients to use Planned Parenthood services, then expect more states to follow in the path blazed by Texas and Iowa. Anti-choice activists may have lost the ability to shut down abortion services through legal shenanigans, but they will fight to make sure sexually active women are punished one way or another. Going after Planned Parenthood, which caters primarily to low-income patients, has the added bonus of punishing poor people for daring to exist at all. It’s the perfect double whammy in the age of misogynist cruelty ushered in by the Trump administration.
Having largely failed to convince women that ending a pregnancy is immoral, abortion opponents have turned to economic attacks
Last week the Trump administration announced a significantly expanded global gag rule, also known as the Mexico City Policy. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
The global gag rule prohibits any U.S. foreign aid from going to organizations that provide, advocate for or even discuss safe abortion services. Under previous Republican administrations, the rule applied to approximately $600 million in funds for family planning. Under Trump’s expansion, the rule puts $8.8 billion for a range of programs addressing health issues like maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and Ebola in jeopardy.
This expanded gag rule is an economic attack aimed at preventing the poorest women in the world from obtaining or even learning about safe abortion services, which will inevitably result in increased mortality from unsafe abortion as well as collateral damage to poor people in need of other life-saving health services. It is a significant escalation in the broader campaign by U.S. abortion opponents to use economic coercion to stop women from obtaining safe abortions at home and abroad – a strategy abortion opponents have embraced because, after losing the legal battle decades ago, they have utterly failed to convince women that ending a pregnancy is immoral.
Though abortion opponents like to pretend the Supreme Court made up the right to abortion out of thin air, Roe v. Wade was in fact the inevitable result of the Court’s gradual recognition that the Constitution applies to women, which means women also enjoy the fundamental rights to bodily integrity and personal autonomy that the Court had long recognized are protected by the Bill of Rights. Numerous lower and state courts had already ruled that the Constitution did not allow the government to force a person to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. Those decisions are in keeping with other rulings – and most people’s intuition – that one’s body and one’s decisions about family are sacred. The government can’t, for example, control how many children you have by forcing you to be sterilized. Nor can it invade your body by compelling you to donate an organ – or even just blood – to save a born person’s life.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld its ruling in Roe that a person has a fundamental right to end a pregnancy before fetal viability. The 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey gave states greater leeway to try to persuade women to carry to term, but dashed any realistic hopes for recriminalization. As Justice Kennedy put it in a later case, “Foreclosed from using the machinery of government to ban abortions in early term, those who oppose it are remitted to debate the issue in its moral dimensions.”
But opponents have had little success convincing women that abortion is immoral. Nearly half of all women with unintended pregnancies in the United States end them. Even after a significant drop in the abortion rate that coincided with improved access to contraception under Obamacare, close to a million women a year have abortions in the U.S. Even women who identify as anti-abortion tend to think their own abortions are justified. Studies show laws requiring women to undergo anti-abortion counseling or view embryonic ultrasounds do not cause women to change their minds.
So having failed to convince women not to have abortions, opponents have resorted to coercion. This isn’t a new strategy – in the wake of Roe, Congress enacted the Hyde Amendment, barring women on Medicaid from using their insurance to afford safe abortion care and therefore ensuring poor women continued to die from unsafe abortions, even after the procedure was legalized. As abortion opponents’ hopes of winning the legal or moral argument have dimmed in the decades since, they have focused their efforts on erecting new financial barriers to deprive low-income women of abortion care.
For example, the Trumpcare bill passed by the House bars individuals receiving federal Medicaid – who already lack abortion coverage thanks to the Hyde Amendment – from receiving non-abortion health care at Planned Parenthood. The end goal is to cause Planned Parenthood clinics to close, so that ending a pregnancy involves travel that will be cost-prohibitive for some women. The bill also aims to eliminate abortion coverage in private insurance plans by making anyone with coverage ineligible for tax credits. Similarly, targeted regulation of abortion providers, or TRAP laws, like those struck down by the Supreme Court last term, use bogus health regulations to shut down clinics and drive up costs and wait times at the clinics that remain.
Laws that put quality abortion financially out of reach are more effective at keeping women from having abortions than efforts to convince them to carry to term willingly – such laws are associated with later abortions, increased self-abortion attempts and moderately decreased abortion rates. However, a woman in the U.S. who has made up her mind to have an abortion will typically find a way to get one, come hell or high water – though doing so may jeopardize her ability to pay her rent or feed her kids. Thus, the biggest bang for one’s anti-abortion buck, so to speak, is in depriving the global poor of information and safe procedures. That’s exactly what the Trump administration’s expanded global gag rule does.
More than 21 million women have unsafe abortions each year; the deaths that result from such procedures make up 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide. When the gag rule is in place health organizations have to stop providing accurate information about safe abortion or lose all U.S. funding for their non-abortion services. As a result, organizations that continue to offer accurate health information can’t provide as many women with contraception, so the rate of unintended pregnancies increases. Women determined to end their pregnancies who have little access to or even information about safe abortion then resort to unsafe abortion in greater numbers. The second Bush administration, during which the gag rule was last in place, amended it to allow funded organizations to treat women after they’d had unsafe abortions – but it isn’t clear that Trump’s version of the rule even allows for that.
To be clear, federal law already prohibits U.S. aid from going toward the provision of abortion services. The gag rule is about preventing groups from lobbying governments for safe, legal abortion and keeping women in the dark where legal services are available. There is no better illustration of the fact that abortion opponents have lost the moral argument than the harm they are willing to inflict just to stamp out dialogue and information. Abortion opponents can do little to stop a woman from deciding an abortion is a moral choice in the best interest of herself and her family – but they can use her poverty to prevent her from getting a safe one.
Lawmakers voted to ban the most common form of second trimester abortions and to mandate the burial of fetal remains, among other measures.
The Texas House passed a slew of anti-abortion regulations this weekend, likely setting up new legal challenges less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s sweeping anti-abortion bill.
During five hours of debate Friday afternoon, Senate Bill 8 became the 85th Legislature’s main vehicle for restricting abortion. Conservative lawmakers tacked on more extreme measures that had passed as standalone bills in the Senate but stalled in House committees.
The bill, which passed 93-45 on third reading Saturday and now awaits final approval by the Senate, would ban fetal tissue donation and require the burial or cremation of fetal remains following an abortion. The legislation also bans “partial-birth abortion,” a nonmedical term for a practice already prohibited under federal law. The measure is a response to unfounded claims that abortion clinics harvest fetal organs for a profit, resulting from discredited videos claiming Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue.
An amendment by Representative Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, bans what anti-abortion advocates call “dismemberment abortion.” That’s another nonmedical term referring to the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure — one of the most common types of abortion during the second trimester.
Critics and some supporters agree the measures are not intended to advance women’s health — a critical standard set by the Supreme Court — raising the likelihood for future court challenges.
“This legislature has a history of passing bills that have been struck by the courts because they’re unconstitutional,” said Representative Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie during debate. He argued that the D&E ban would eliminate legal abortion options for many women.
Protestors inspired by “The Handmaid’s Tale” sit silently in the House gallery during debate on Senate Bill 8. SAM DEGRAVE
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down two main provisions of House Bill 2, Texas’ major anti-abortion law passed in 2013. The court ruled that the state cannot add restrictions that would create a burden on access without evidence that the regulations are necessary for women’s health. More than half of the abortion clinics in Texas were forced to close by the time the law was deemed unconstitutional.
“Why don’t we just stop passing unconstitutional laws for a change?” Turner said.
Supporters of the bill sidestepped questions of whether the proposed measures would improve women’s health, instead focusing on emotional pleas and graphic descriptions of abortion procedures.
“Abortion is a sin, it’s wrong, it’s evil,” said Representative Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park.
In a Senate hearing earlier this year, SB 8 author Senator Charles Schwertner, an orthopedic surgeon from Georgetown, repeatedly cited the debunked Planned Parenthood videos, not women’s health, as the reason for the bill. Representative Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale, the bill’s House sponsor, said Friday she is concerned with “fetal tissue becoming a commodity.”
The fetal remains burial requirement has already been ruled unconstitutional in Texas.
The measure was originally proposed last year by the state health department, just days after the Whole Woman’s Health ruling. The regulations were blocked by U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks, who said they placed new undue burdens on abortion access. The state is appealing and the case will likely be at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in the next few months.
Vice President Mike Pence signed a similar bill into law as governor of Indiana, but a federal judge blocked the measure last year.
Opponents of SB 8 say the requirements will further stigmatize abortion and add the kind of burdensome regulations that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.
“Clinics would have to get new contractors, and the rules create new burdens they may not be able to comply with,” said Blake Rocap, legislative counsel for NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. “The other side knows that. They know if they make it hard enough to comply, clinics won’t have a license.”
The new fetal remains bill, if given final passage, will be added to the current lawsuit, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Woman’s Health and lead plaintiff in last year’s Supreme Court case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. She is again at the center of the case in the fetal burial lawsuit.
“This is not based on any science or fact, [anti-abortion advocates] know that,” Hagstrom Miller said. “They’re trying to say what happened in the Supreme Court doesn’t apply to us in Texas.”
The bill’s supporters say the measure will survive legal challenges. It would not create an undue burden on clinics because added costs would be minimal, they say. The bill creates a registry of funeral homes and cemeteries willing to provide free or low-cost burials.
“This is really about ensuring babies are treated in a humane manner — that their bodies are not desecrated, their organs are not harvested and sold,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, the anti-abortion group aligned with Republican House leadership.
Abortion providers could also “absorb the cost, as a good faith measure to women,” Pojman suggested, emphasizing that the cost would be “very small.”
In fact, a cremation costs between $1,500 to $4,000, according to a letter submitted to the state by the Texas Medical Association and Texas Hospital Association last year. A full funeral costs about $7,000 to $10,000.
Democrats scrambled to moderate SB 8. An amendment from Representative Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, would have added a religious exemption to the burial requirement. Representative Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, tried to add an exemption to the D&E abortion ban in cases where doctors found it was the safest option for the mother, and another that would exempt cases in which the mother’s life was in danger. An amendment from Representative Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, would have exempted cases of rape and incest.
All these amendments failed.
State Representative Donna Howard, D-Austin, speaks against SB 8 Friday evening. SAM DEGRAVE
“Politicians have no place in the medical exam room,” Donna Howard, D-Austin, said tearfully. “If you want to stop abortions, then help me to stop unwanted pregnancies” by supporting contraception. Abortions happened before Roe v. Wade made them legal, she said, and will continue with these new restrictions, but less safely.
Texas Alliance for Life had urged lawmakers not to support a D&E abortion ban, saying it was sure to result in a court challenge. Meanwhile, Texas Right to Life, aligned with the House Freedom Caucus, cheered the passage of its priority bill.
Conservative lawmakers drew the line at a controversial amendment by Representative Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, that would outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, including in cases of a fetal abnormality. Burkett called the amendment “a step too far.”
“Why should a woman be forced to give birth to a baby that will die in birth?” Anchia asked. “Because it’s a person created in the image of God,” Schaefer said.
Anti-abortion rights activists say prayers during a prayer vigil outside Planned Parenthood on Jan. 21, 2014, in Washington, D.C.
IMAGE: ALEX WONG / STAFF / GETTY IMAGES
It’s hard to understand what it feels like to be confronted or bullied outside a women’s health center — until it happens to you.
I’d never had that experience until last year, while reporting on the Supreme Court case Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Before visiting the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in San Antonio, I expected some type of encounter.
What I couldn’t anticipate was the surge of adrenaline and mild panic I felt when, after I opened my car door, a middle-aged man wearing sunglasses thrust pamphlets at me and said, “There’s a lot of killing that goes on in there.”
I wasn’t there for an abortion or any of the routine gynecological services offered by Whole Woman’s Health, but I felt threatened and intimidated. I can only guess how the exchange might have affected me had I been a patient who lived nearby.
We don’t know how many people have this experience, but a 2013 survey of abortion clinic providers found that 92 percent were concerned about the safety of patients when they approached their facilities. And Planned Parenthood wants more of the public to understand it in a way it never has before.
That’s why the nonprofit organization — whose clinics see their share of anti-abortion rights protesters — created a virtual reality film called Across the Line last year to simulate a trip to a women’s health clinic punctuated by painful encounters with protesters. Now, new research suggests it’s having a positive impact.
A still image from ‘Across the Line.’
IMAGE: PLANNED PARENTHOOD / ACROSS THE LINE
Across the Line uses 360-degree video and computer-generated imaging to place the viewer in the body of someone entering a clinic to receive abortion care. The experience draws on real audio of people shouting, documentary footage, and scripted scenes.
Seeing the experience unfold in virtual reality was jarring for some.
“In the early viewings [of the film] you’d have to counsel people … to stay with it for a minute and imagine this is someone you love going through this,” says Molly Eagan, vice president of Planned Parenthood Experience and an executive producer of Across the Line.
“Who is going to walk through a group of protestors and subject themselves to that?”Planned Parenthood hoped that the film, which it showed last year to film festival participants and to dozens of people with moderate-to-conservative views on abortion, would increase empathy for people who have abortions, reduce tolerance for bullying, and even prompt people to act supportively by, for example, becoming a clinic escort or advocating for certain types of legislation.
Virtual reality is generally thought to cultivate empathy, but Planned Parenthood now has preliminary research to suggest that it can achieve that and more.
The researchers, commissioned by the nonprofit, randomly split up viewers into two groups. In one group, people were surveyed about their views on clinic harassment before they watched the film; in the other, people were surveyed after.
The results showed that the group that had seen the film before they were surveyed expressed more disapproval of clinic harassment than those who hadn’t yet watched it. They were also more inclined to dislike certain types of behavior, including individuals photographing patients, and protesters who demonstrated outside clinics.
A scene from ‘Across the Line.’
IMAGE: PLANNED PARENTHOOD / ACROSS THE LINE
The people who saw the film at festivals last year were predominantly highly educated white men who identified as somewhat or very liberal.
When the researchers conducted comprehensive interviews in Kansas City and Atlanta, however, they largely spoke to women between the ages of 20 and 45 who never had an abortion and held moderate political beliefs.
After watching the film, those participants were more empathetic toward women seeking an abortion and were open to talking about clinic bullying with friends. They were also willing to sign a petition against harassment on social media, though they were less interested to share it with their networks. Few said they would volunteer to escort women through crowds of protesters.
“They were very upset because they didn’t realize this was the level of harassment their loved ones may have endured.” Eagan says the encouraging results give Planned Parenthood useful information on how to shape public opinion of clinic protests. In the past year, the film has been distributed to college campuses across the country. Planned Parenthood affiliates also have discussion guides complete with a Google Cardboard VR set, which can be used to view the film.
Planned Parenthood is in the early stages of showing the film to legislatures and law enforcement groups so that policymakers and police officers, who often regulate clinic protests, better understand the effects of harassment.
The stigma surrounding abortion, Eagan says, typically keeps people from talking about their experiences at clinics, which in turn means their family and friends don’t fully grasp what it’s like to encounter protesters.
Even liberal viewers often had little knowledge of the kinds of harassment that can occur at a women’s health clinic.
“They were very upset,” Eagan says, “because they didn’t realize this was the level of harassment their loved ones may have endured.”
Abortion opponents have long sought to strip public funding from Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. In Texas, they succeeded.
Lawmakers in other states who want to follow suit should first visit Texas, which offers a case study of the severe consequences of attacks on women’s health.
In 2013, organizations that provide abortions in Texas were cut off from receiving family planning funds. The number of women covered by the state family planning program dropped by 30,000. Reimbursements for long-acting reversible contraceptives like IUDs, some of the most effective forms of pregnancy prevention, fell by more than 35 percent after the exclusion of Planned Parenthood. Pregnancies among women covered by Medicaid rose 27 percent.
To carry out its cuts, Texas had to give up federal money for family planning programs, since the Obama administration would not allow states to exclude specific providers. But now Texas is asking the Trump administration to restore the money. If the application is granted, more states could take Texas’ path.
Photo
Kristy Anderson testifying as a “Texas woman” in support of Planned Parenthood during a Texas Women’s Health Advisory Committee meeting in Austin on Monday.CreditIlana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Experts expect legal challenges, since federal law says patients must be able to use Medicaid at any provider that meets their needs. The change could also require a budget appropriations process in Congress. But this may not keep President Trump or his health and human services secretary, Tom Price, a longtime opponent of Planned Parenthood, from saying yes.
Restoring federal money to Texas would not necessarily bring new health centers to underserved areas where Planned Parenthood and other clinics have closed. Moreover, Planned Parenthood is a trusted provider, known for offering comprehensive and nonjudgmental care. Any program that excludes it, even if fortified with federal money, would unfairly restrict women’s options.
Several states have already followed Texas in directing family planning funds away from Planned Parenthood. This year, Missouri established a program that excludes the group. The governor of Iowa recently signed a bill to do the same.
Now the Trump administration is planning to export this bad reproductive health policy around the world. On Monday, the State Department issued rules expanding the so-called global gag rule, or Mexico City policy, which bars organizations overseas from receiving United States aid if they discuss abortion. Under previous Republican administrations, the policy, established by President Ronald Reagan, applied only to family planning funds, used to pay for contraception and other reproductive health services. The new rules apply to all United States aid for health services, meaning groups could lose money for malaria prevention or AIDS treatment. For instance, $6 billion in funding for H.I.V./AIDS prevention, which goes mostly to groups in Africa, could be lost.
The administration first signaled its intent in January when the president directed the secretary of state to develop a plan to expand the Mexico City policy. At that time, the International Planned Parenthood Federation estimated that it would lose $100 million over four years as a result and be forced to reduce services in at least 30 countries.
Texas offers proof that limiting choices for health services harms women. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is willing to put women and their families at risk in poor countries around the world.
Source: NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/opinion/the-way-texas-treats-women.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170520&nlid=15062368&tntemail0=y
Producers and stars of the CBS/Warner Bros. TV sitcom “Mom” have decided to make a $250,000 donation to Planned Parenthood rather than mount an Emmy campaign this year.
“Mom” star Allison Janney and series co-creator/exec producer Chuck Lorre on Thursday launched the effort to raise awareness of the threat to Planned Parenthood funding as the Republican-backed American Health Care Act makes its way through Congress. Janney and Lorre are expected to appear on “CBS This Morning” to encourage fans to donate to the non-profit family planning and health care org through a special link established as part of the “Mom” campaign.
“In Los Angeles County alone, we answer approximately 2,000 calls each day from people asking us for help,” said Sue Dunlap, president-CEO of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. “Across the country, millions of women and men are relying on Planned Parenthood health centers for their basic care — like birth control, life-saving cancer-screenings, and STD testing and treatment. We are committed to being here for them, no matter what. Generous support from our community fuels this work, and we are honored that the team behind “Mom” is launching this campaign at this critical time.”
Support for Planned Parenthood has become a rallying cry for activists and others who are organizing to fight aspects of the Trump administration’s political agenda. Planned Parenthood’s role as a provider of birth control and abortions has made the org a target of anti-abortion activists and some conservative lawmakers. The health care bill designed to repeal Obamacare would also bar access to Planned Parenthood services by anyone receiving Medicaid, a crippling blow to those in need of low-cost birth control options and women’s health services.
“Mom” stars Janney and Anna Faris as a mother and daughter who are both recovering from alcohol and drug abuse and other challenges. The show is known for its bold mix of comedy and drama in tackling real-life issues faced by people from all walks of life. Janney won back-to-back supporting comedy actress Emmys for her work on the show in 2014 and 2015. “Mom” was renewed in March for a fifth season.
Janney has long been an active supporter of Planned Parenthood. Lorre, one of TV’s most successful producers, has a record of supporting public health organizations including the Venice Family Clinic, where he established the Robert Levine Family Health Center in his father’s name. Faris is a champion of the Global Alliance to Prevent Premature and Stillbirth (GAPPS), a org devoted to preventing premature births and stillbirth.
Planned Parenthood serves some 2.5 million people a year, more than half of them in rural communities and areas underserved by affordable health care facilities.
The “Mom” team’s move to forgo traditional kudos campaigning in favor of social activism recalls the decision in February by UTA to table its Oscar-night party in order to make a $250,000 donation split between the ACLU and the refugee-oriented International Rescue Committee.
The Trump administration is giving extreme anti-abortion activists the ability to make major policy decisions. As a physician, I know firsthand how disastrous this will be for women.
Earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at a gala for Susan B. Anthony’s list, a powerful anti-abortion group. To rapturous applause, he gloated that President Trump had assembled an “A-Team” of “great pro-life leaders”: Tom Price, who twice sponsored legislation that would give full constitutional rights to zygotes; Ben Carson, who once likened abortion to slavery; Rick Perry, who signed Texas’ notorious abortion restrictions—which were eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court—into law.
Two new members have been recently welcomed to that team: Charmaine Yoest, the former head of Americans United for Life, and Teresa Manning, an outspoken anti-abortion activist. Both Yoest and Manning have been selected for leadership positions at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal agency tasked with protecting the health of the American public; both are strongly opposed to abortion and several methods of contraception. The problem is not that Yoest and Manning have strong views on these subjects—it’s that those views are not grounded in reliable evidence, and that both women have dedicated their professional lives to advocating for policies that aren’t evidence-based, either. These appointments are a stunning example of what happens when willful ignorance gains a powerful platform.
Yoest, who will serve as the department’s assistant secretary of public affairs, has made a career out of spreading false information, insisting that there’s a link between abortion and breast cancer—despite the fact that this claim has been debunked by several leading medical organizations, including the American Cancer Society. She also claims that contraception doesn’t reduce the abortion rate, and dismisses reliable evidence that contradicts her positions by claiming the entire scientific community is controlled by an “abortion lobby.” She has clearly stated that she wants to make abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest.
Manning, who will oversee Title X, a family planning program that has provided contraceptive services to low-income and uninsured people for over 40 years, holds the peculiar and medically incorrect view that contraception doesn’t actually workto prevent pregnancy. As a former lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee, she has advocated against both intrauterine devices (IUDs) and emergency contraception on the grounds that they cause early abortions (they don’t). She once remarked that family planning should be “what occurs between a husband and a wife and God.”
In reflecting what these appointments might mean for actual people, I think of my patients. I remember speaking with a woman in the early days of the Zika crisis, when so much was unknown, who had traveled to a Zika-affected area and was terrified of the possibility of becoming pregnant before she could be certain she had not contracted the virus. IUDs, which both Yoest and Manning oppose, are among the most effective methods for preventing pregnancy. Will the CDC’s new messaging withhold or minimize the evidence regarding the efficacy of IUDs because Yoest thinks they cause abortion?
Charmaine Yoest. Screenshot via Youtube
What will become of adolescents who rely on Title X clinics to obtain contraception safely and confidentially? Teresa Manning could push to change Title X guidelines and require parental involvement in teens’ health care decisions. While most young people involve a trusted adult in the decision to start birth control, the ones who choose not to often have compelling reasons to do so. I’ve cared for young people who were cut off financially, disowned, and even physically abused when their parents discovered that they had been sexually active. Mandating parental involvement can place vulnerable adolescents at risk of retaliation by unsupportive parents or guardians.
In 2016, the FDA (an agency within HHS) relaxed the guidelines for the abortion pill, extending the window in which pregnant women can take the medication and decreasing the amount of required doctor’s visits. What will happen if HHS’s new anti-choice leadership reverses these evidence-based changes? Patients could be forced to make three or more trips to the clinic just to swallow pills in the presence of a provider, or could be made to drive hundreds of miles so that they can take a pill in an ambulatory surgical center (which is essentially a mini hospital). We know that barriers to safe, legal abortion care disproportionately impact low-income women, people of color, young people, and rural women—groups of people who already experience health care disparities.
It’s challenging to overstate the potential ominous impact of these appointments on reproductive health. In this hostile climate, it can be easy to slip into despair. As we push back against the administration’s repeated assaults on access to abortion and contraception, I hold tight to a vision of what I’d like to see for my patients.
I imagine a world in which people’s reproductive decisions are respected and supported. Abortion is routine health care and should be treated as such—fully covered by insurance, including federally administered plans, and available without politically motivated barriers. Every person who wants to prevent pregnancy should be able to choose from a full range of contraceptive options and not be limited by financial constraints. Paid family leave, comprehensive maternity care, birth support, affordable child care, clean air and water, and safe neighborhoods and schools should be a reality for those who choose to parent. Health care policy must be informed by the best available medical evidence, and not ideology or theology.
A board member for Democrats for Life of America has suggested Democratic lawmakers should support a 20-week abortion ban to gain GOP support for paid family leave.
Days before Perez made a statement embracing reproductive freedoms, he told the Washington Post, “If you demand fealty on every single issue, then it’s a challenge.” Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Abortion is among the safest medical procedures in the United States. Yet, myths about its safety abound. False Witnesses reveals the individuals behind these lies.
Kristen Day, executive director of anti-choice group Democrats for Life of America (DFLA), confirmed to Rewire on Tuesday that the group was planning to meet with Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Tom Perez, though the specifics have yet to be scheduled.
Aides to Perez told the Atlantic in a report published Tuesday that Perez would meet with DFLA, and that the meeting came at the request of the group. It is to be “one of several conversations that Perez is having with pro-choice and pro-life Democrats,” the publicationsaid.
When asked what the group aimed to discuss with Perez, Day said, “Like most Democrats we care about regaining our majority across the country. Republicans have control over 68 out of 99 state [legislative chambers] and full control over half the states. We want to work with our party to reverse numbers like that and build majorities that will pass legislation like Paid Family Leave.”
Charles C. Camosy, a DFLA board member, suggested in a 2016 Los Angeles Times op-ed that Democrats should allow a later abortion ban through Congress as “a carrot” to Republicans in exchange for policies like paid family leave.
“[A]s Democrats, we must unite and work together on the things that we do agree on,” Day said. “There is much more we agree on than disagree on. There are a lot of misconceptions about who pro-life Democrats are.”
DFLA leaders at the 2016 Democratic National Committee Convention in Philadelphia tried to “distance themselves from the traditionally Republican anti-choice movement, but repeatedly invoked conservative falsehoods and medically unsupported science to make their arguments against abortion,” Rewirereported.
The group encouraged the party to “open the big tent” for anti-choice politicians, claiming it would help Democrats win more elections, though it did not outline a plan to make those wins a reality.
At an event hosted by the organization, Day said she didn’t “know what the rationale was” behind the group’s support of 20-week abortion bans, though DFLA President Janet Robert relied on the unsupported claim that a fetus can feel pain at this point in a pregnancy to support the anti-choice measure.
Perez said last month that every Democrat, “like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health,” according to the HuffPost. “That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”
“At a time when women’s rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country,” he said, “we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.”
The comments came amid backlash from pro-choice advocates who questioned why the Democratic Party was working with Heath Mello, given the Democratic Nebraska mayoral candidate’s anti-choice recordwhile in the state legislature. Mello later said he would not endanger reproductive rights should he win. He was handily defeated in his bid for office this month.
Days before Perez made a statement embracing reproductive freedoms, he told the Washington Post, “If you demand fealty on every single issue, then it’s a challenge.”
“The Democratic Party platform acknowledges that we’re pro-choice, but there are communities … where people have a different position,” Perez said.
The 2016 Democratic platform did not shy away from an unwavering stance on abortion rights. “Democrats are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice,” the platform stated. “We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion—regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured.”
The platform that year for the first time codified the Democratic Party’s commitment to ending the Hyde Amendment’s discriminatory ban on most federal funding for abortion care, which disproportionately affects people with low incomes and people of color.
He is going way further than past Republican presidents did to silence health workers on abortion.
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s administration announced the details Monday of the president’s unprecedented international anti-abortion policy, which drastically expands the “global gag rule” that past Republican presidents have placed on U.S. health assistance funds.
The gag rule, also known as the Mexico City policy, blocks international family planning assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development to any groups or programs that provide or even mention abortions to women, or speak out about abortion laws in their own countries. It was last implemented by President George W. Bush and then was repealed by President Barack Obama.
Trump’s plan, called Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance, goes much further than that. The policy applies the anti-abortion rule to $8.8 billion in global health funding furnished by the State Department, USAID and the Department of Defense, instead of only $600 million in family planning funding. This means that a clinic receiving U.S. assistance for HIV or Zika relief will lose all that money if it so much as gives pregnant women information about safe abortion care.
“The pro-life policy will apply to global health assistance funding for international health programs, such as those for HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, malaria, global health security, and family planning and reproductive health,” a White House official told Christian Broadcasting Network News.
CBN News’ David Brody called the policy “yet another evangelical victory under this administration.”
Unsafe abortion accounts for 13 percent of maternal deaths ― about 47,000 deaths per year ― worldwide. And because the U.S. is the largest funder of global health programs in the world, the policies governing U.S. foreign aid can have a significant chilling effect on abortion and contraception access for women and girls in developing countries.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) called Trump’s expansion of the gag rule an “ideological crusade” that ignores “decades of research” on preventing unplanned pregnancies and protecting maternal health.
“Today, the Trump administration confirmed our worst fears regarding this new, drastically expanded global gag executive order,” Shaheen said. “This administration’s pathetic rebranding of this policy is a thinly veiled attempt to hide the tremendous harm it has around the world. President Trump’s dangerous obsession with rolling back reproductive rights has severe consequences for millions of vulnerable women and children, and grossly undermines our nation’s humanitarian leadership around the globe.”
When Representative John Shimkus questioned, during a debate in March, why men have to pay for prenatal care, it was a sign of things to come. Soon Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, was joking that older men didn’t need maternity care. When asked about repealing a requirement of the Affordable Care Act, Senator Pat Roberts replied, “I wouldn’t want to lose my mammograms.”
These sophomoric jokes and flippant disregard for women’s health by Republicans would have been bad enough had they not been followed by the passage in the House of the American Health Care Act.
If it becomes law, it will harm millions of Americans, including the poor, sick and elderly. But it will be especially disastrous for women. Among other damaging provisions, it:
STRIPS FUNDING FROM PLANNED PARENTHOOD About half of the 2.5 million patients who visit Planned Parenthood centers every year, and about 20 percent of women of reproductive age nationwide, rely on Medicaid for their health coverage. Under the House bill, they would no longer be able to use Medicaid for care at Planned Parenthood centers, more than half of which are in rural or underserved areas. In 105 counties, Planned Parenthood operates the only clinic offering a full range of reproductive health services.
PUTS ESSENTIAL SERVICES AT RISK The House bill eliminates the Affordable Care Act requirement that insurers cover certain essential services. Many of these services, like mammograms, birth control, and prenatal and maternity care, are used primarily by women. Women are more likely than men to use mental health care and prescription drugs, both of which are considered essential under the Affordable Care Act. If the requirement is scrapped, plans could choose not to offer such services. Plans that offer maternity care could become prohibitively expensive.
SLASHES MEDICAID By cutting $880 billion from Medicaid over 10 years, the House bill removes a crucial source of coverage for many women’s health services. Almost half of all births in the country, and 75 percent of publicly funded family planning services, are covered by Medicaid. Slashing Medicaid funds would be especially harmful to black and Latina women, who are more likely than white women to be insured through Medicaid.
ELIMINATES PRE-EXISTING CONDITION PROTECTIONS The bill allows states to waive the requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions without charging higher premiums. While it’s not yet clear how insurers would respond, many of the conditions that prompted insurers to deny coverage or raise premiums before the requirement was in place, including depression, lupus and multiple sclerosis, are more common in women. Some insurers also denied coverage or charged higher premiums to women who had given birth by C-section.
ENDANGERS ABORTION COVERAGE The bill bars anyone from using federal subsidies to buy insurance that covers abortion. It also bars small employers from using tax credits to pay for plans that cover abortion for their employees. The likely result: Most insurers would drop abortion coverage, and the few plans that did cover abortion would become prohibitively expensive.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, initially convened a health care working group composed of 13 men and no women. Following widespread criticism, the group invited Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, to a meeting, but it is unclear whether she will become a regular member.
Meanwhile, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, is at work on her own health care plan. She and Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska have opposed efforts to strip funding from Planned Parenthood. Senators from states like Ohio that took the Medicaid expansion have also expressed reservations about the A.H.C.A.’s cuts to that program. Republican moderates will have a crucial role to play in the coming months, as the Senate decides what, if any, provisions of the House bill it will keep. It will be up to them to make sure women’s health is not treated as a joke.
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 