Planned Parenthood’s longtime president, Cecile Richards, will reportedly step down.

Richards helms both parent organization Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its political arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She’s held the top position for more than a decade.

Two sources confirmed the impending departure to BuzzFeed News, which first broke the story on Wednesday. One of the sources told BuzzFeed that Richards “has informed at least some members of the organization’s board of directors.”

Planned Parenthood would not directly address the report when asked by Rewire. “Cecile plans to discuss 2018 and the next steps for Planned Parenthood’s future at the upcoming board meeting,” a spokesperson said.

The meeting is reportedly scheduled for next week.

Republicans in the U.S. Congress have long targeted Planned Parenthood because the organization provides abortion care among its reproductive health-care services, which also include contraception, mammograms, and Pap smears. GOP lawmakers in 2015 coordinated a smear campaign with David Daleiden, the since-indicted Center for Medical Progress leader behind deceptively edited videospurporting to show that Planned Parenthood profited from fetal tissue donations.

Three Republican-led congressional committee investigations, 13 states, and a Texas grand jury have disproved Daleiden’s allegations. But the claims are gaining new traction under the Trump administration. The U.S. Department of Justice indicated it may launch a criminal investigation based on a powerful Senate committee’s report propping up the same baseless allegations. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who worked closely with Daleiden on a $1.59 million “witch hunt” that turned up no credible findings, pulled the same talking points for her 2018 Senate campaign.

Emboldened Republicans in April gutted federal safeguards that allowed four million low-income Title X patients, including 1.5 million Planned Parenthood patients, to access reproductive health care. The move was intended to punish Planned Parenthood for providing abortion care with its own funds, in accordance with federal law set forth by the Hyde Amendment. More recently, Trump’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week rolled back an Obama-era effort to stop states from cutting off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding,

Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration, however, have thus far failed to reach their ultimate goal: defunding Planned Parenthood. Independent polling from Quinnipiac and Kaiser Family Foundation underscored the public’s opposition to 2017’s defunding efforts.

“I think that [Richards] has to take a lot of credit for the fact that Planned Parenthood is one of the most respected and supported organizations in the country. Most Americans understand the fight,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL), the top Democrat on Blackburn’s investigation, told Rewire in an interview.

“And Cecile, by being such a great articulator of what’s at stake here, what it’s really about, can take a lot of that credit.”

Billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer told The Washington Post that Richards, the daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards (D), is “someone we have partnered with very happily.”

“If she stops, I hope it’s because she’s doing something new and important,” Steyer told the Post. “If she ran for any office, I’d support her.”

Richards’ next moves are unclear. Her memoir, Make Trouble, is scheduled to publish in April.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/25/planned-parenthoods-cecile-richards-reportedly-stepping/

State-level GOP lawmakers are ready to unleash a new crop of medically unnecessary proposals to force people to wait a day or two—or three—before they receive abortion care.

Mandatory waiting periods are among the most common restrictions that have been pushed by abortion rights foes and approved by legislatures in recent years. Already in 2018, Republicans in New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Coloradohave introduced forced waiting period bills.

Reproductive rights advocates told Rewirethat waiting periods are arbitrary restrictions that are medically unnecessary, create financial barriers, and constitute an undue burden for access to abortion. The continued GOP push for waiting period laws comes after a major legal setback for anti-choice legislators backing such measures.

A Florida judge on January 9 permanently blocked a state law that forces a pregnant person to complete a 24-hour waiting period before having an abortion. The law forces a pregnant person seeking abortion care to make an extra trip to the physician in order to listen to state-mandated counseling prior to obtaining the abortion.

Circuit Judge Terry Lewis wrote in the decision that no other state law “subjects no other medical procedure, including those that pose greater health risks than abortion, to a mandatory delay,” and declared the law unconstitutional. “A law that forces a patient to delay medical care to the detriment of her health cannot be the least restrictive means of furthering any compelling state interest,” Lewis wrote.

The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the ACLU of Florida on behalf of Bread and Roses Women’s Health Center in Gainesville.

Autumn Katz, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement that it is “cruel and unconstitutional” for the state to force pregnant people to delay care for reasons that are medically unnecessary.

“Women know what’s best for their lives and futures and don’t need politicians getting in the way of their health care decisions,” Katz said.

Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s spokesperson Lauren Schenone told Reuters that the governor’s office is “reviewing the ruling,” and did not comment on whether the ruling will be appealed to the state supreme court.

Scott signed the bill into law in June 2015. When the bill was passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature, proponents of the law claimed it was intended to empower women.

“If all this bill does is have one woman—just one—after some time of reflection, after some time of thought say, ‘I’m going to make the decision to have this baby’ … I will consider that be a huge success,” said state Sen. Anitere Flores (R-Miami).

Similar justifications have been echoed by lawmakers and activists in other states.

Twenty-seven states require a pregnant person to wait a specified amount of time prior to obtaining an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute. There are 18 states that require 24-hour waiting periods, three states that require 48-hour waiting periods, and five states that require 72-hour waiting periods.

Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told Rewire that in the years following the landmark Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision, legislators in several states passed laws mandating 24-hour waiting periods for abortion.

“In 2010, we had a real change in the state legislative level, and started to see states enact 72-hour and 48-hour waiting periods,” Nash said. “Often times they were combined with the in-person counseling requirement, and that’s really a difficult combination of requirements to meet from both a patient and provider perspective.”

There have been dozens of bills introduced by state lawmakers in recent years to either create waiting periods or increase the length of time required for waiting periods.

Utah’s GOP-majority legislature in 2012 became the first state to enact a law that required pregnant people complete a 72-hour waiting period before having an abortion.

Lawmakers and anti-choice activists who supported the law said those seeking abortion care should be required to compete a waiting period to allow time to “fully understand and think about the consequences of that choice.”

Dr. Leah Torres, a Utah-based physician and OB/GYN who provides abortion and reproductive health care, told Rewire that her patients are often surprised when she informs them that they will have to wait three days to have the common medical procedure.

“They often either didn’t know about it or thought it was 24 hours,” Torres said. “Either way, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to have the abortion they need, though they feel judged by the state and explain that they’ve ‘known for more than three days’ that they’ve wanted an abortion.”

Research that studied the law’s impact found that the 72-hour forced waiting period did not dissuade the vast majority of pregnant people seeking abortion care, and only made it more difficult and expensive to obtain the procedure.

Torres said that there are other consequences caused by the forcing pregnant people to delay abortion care.

“Pregnancies don’t stop growing and the three extra days will push them into having higher risks with the procedure, including no longer having the option of a medical abortion and being forced to have a surgical procedure,” Torres said. “Cost increases in this situation, and other situations such as going from 14 weeks and five days to 15 weeks and one day.”

Studies of waiting periods in other states have found similar impacts. In Arizona, most pregnant people “reported one or more financial or logistical challenges in obtaining abortion care” due to the state’s 24-hour waiting period, according to a study published in Women’s Health Issues.

“Unnecessary risk increase along with unnecessary cost increase is all that is really accomplished with any waiting period,” Torres said. “People don’t need the state to force them to think about their family-making plans, people already do that naturally.”

Nash said that waiting periods only serve to make it “much more difficult” to both provide and access abortion care. “The idea that a reflection period is necessary for them is really out of step with reality, and there’s no medical literature that says this is medically necessary,” Nash said.

Laws that restrict access to abortion have a disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color, and waiting periods can create a significant financial burden for pregnant people seeking abortion care.

“From the patient perspective you have to go to the facility twice, and you have to do it within at least 48 hours or 72 hours later,” Nash said. “That is very difficult for many patients, because it requires all of the logistics to fall into place—be it child care, or travel, or work schedule.”

Mississippi is one of a handful of states with one abortion clinic, and in addition to a 24-hour waiting period there are a number of other legal restrictions to access to abortion care.

Laurie Bertram Roberts is the co-founder of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund (MRFF), an organization that provides financial assistance and practical support for pregnant people in the state seeking abortion care. MRFF receives an average of 70 calls per week from pregnant people seeking assistance, and Roberts said that around 80 percent of the people who call are Black women, and that practically every caller has a low income.

“There’s far more that we can’t fund than we do fund; the need far outweighs the demand,” Bertram Roberts said. “This week we’ve gotten about 40 calls, and we’ll only be able to provide two of them with direct funding and we’ll only be able to help four of them with practical support.”

“For many callers, state-mandated waiting periods multiply other barriers they have,” Bertram Roberts said. “If child care, travel, or getting off work or school is a barrier, now it’s times two. This can often delay their care not by days, but weeks, even months as they get money and arrangements together.”

Bertram Roberts said that many callers are often confused as to why laws mandating waiting periods exist, feel insulted and ask why lawmakers would do this to them. “All I can say is they believe you should have to stay pregnant,” Bertram Roberts said.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/23/republicans-forced-waiting-period-laws-proliferate-2018/

GOP lawmakers in Florida are poised to pass legislation requiring the state to permanently contract with an organization that funnels taxpayer dollars to fake clinics, commonly known as anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs).

More than a dozen other states provide funding to fake clinics, which have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, as investigations have revealed they disseminate misinformation to people seeking abortion care and neglect to follow proper medical protocols.

Florida would be the first state to codify into law a requirement to contract with a specific organization to distribute grants to anti-choice organizations seeking to discourage people from obtaining abortion care.

Mark Ferrulo, executive director of Progress Florida, told Rewire that while the proposal is not unprecedented, directing state funding to organizations is typically done through the budget process—not through codification.

“They have named individual corporations or networks in the budget process, but it is uncommon to name a specific entity, in this case the Florida Pregnancy Care Network, in statute—especially in a law that creates a no-bid contract indefinitely,” Ferrulo said.

State Sen. Aaron Bean (R-Fernandina Beach) presented SB 444 to the senate appropriations committee on Thursday. The bill was approved by the committee in a 12-6 vote, and on Friday it was placed on the calendar for a floor vote. The companion bill, HB 41, was passed by the house on January 12 by a 73-29vote.

The Republican bill would require the Florida Department of Health to contract with the Florida Pregnancy Care Network (FPCN) for the management and delivery of pregnancy support and wellness services to eligible clients.

The contract would require FCPN to establish a network of subcontractors to provide pregnancy support and wellness services. The organization would only be able to approve subcontracts with providers that “exclusively promote and support childbirth.” The bill specifies that services provided by subcontractors may not include any religious content.

“SB 444 would codify into law fake clinics that oppose abortion and judge, shame, and intentionally try to trick women out of getting the care they are seeking,” Laura Goodhue, executive director of Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, said in a statement. “These sham health clinics have been known to mislead, judge and shame women to prevent them from obtaining abortions.”

Since 2009, FPCN has been awarded more than $22 million in state contracts. It was awarded a $3.95 million contract in 2017.

FPCN manages subcontracts with 61 direct service providers operating 105 facilities, according to a legislative analysis by the Florida House Health and Human Services committee. FPCN reported more than $3.6 million in government grants during 2015, according to the organization’s tax documents. During that time period, FPCN awarded $2,356,550 in reimbursements to 52 organizations.

The Florida Catholic Advocacy Network, the political arm of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, has campaigned in favor of the legislation. Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter in support of the bill to members of the senate committee.

Organizations associated with the Catholic church are the largest beneficiary of the program’s funding, receiving more than $494,000 in reimbursements in 2015. Since 2012, organizations associated with the church have received more than $1.65 million in reimbursements.

Catholic Charities Diocese of St. Petersburg, which operates four Foundations of Life Pregnancy Centers in Tampa Bay, received $227,644 in reimbursements in 2015. The Foundations of Life website contains medically inaccurate information about abortion procedures and the risks associated with abortion care.

Rose Llauget, director of pregnancy and adoption services for Catholic Charities Diocese of St. Petersburg, told the Tampa Bay Times that birth control pills are linked to cancer—a disproven anti-choice myth—and that women who have abortions are being “duped.”

Ferrulo said that organizations that promote this medically inaccurate information should not get state funding. “Women want objective, accurate information and comprehensive, professional counseling in order to make the best decision about their pregnancy,” Ferrulo said.

During Thursday’s committee hearing, Bean said any information the organization provides to clients must be medically accurate. “The Department of Health overseas the literature provided by the network,” Bean said. “They’re the ones that make sure that it is indeed medically accurate.”

But state Sen. Lauren Book (D-Plantation) said that claim was contradicted by state officials. “When I contacted the Department of Health, they said that they currently do not review or approve any of the brochures or other materials that are funded through [state funds],” Book said.

Ferrulo said that it is “unconscionable and indefensible” that lawmakers support sending state funding to “unlicensed, largely unregulated” organizations, rather than supporting qualified and licensed health care providers who offer a full range of comprehensive reproductive health care.

“Crisis pregnancy centers offer the exact opposite of that. They deceive, they intimidate, and they shame Florida women,” Ferrulo said. “To send taxpayer dollars to operate these fake clinics is a gross failure of leadership by Florida legislators.”

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/19/florida-republicans-permanently-fund-fake-clinics/

The road to Roe v. Wade arguably started in the living room of University of Texas at Austin (UT) science graduate student Judy Smith in the fall of 1968. As the late Smith’s longtime boyfriend Jim Wheelis joked, “If I had known this would be historical, I would have taken notes.”

In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that a constitutional right to privacy protected a married couple’s right to purchase birth control, overturning the state law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. Similar protection was extended to single women in Eisenstadt v. Baird seven years later, in 1972.

But married or not, young UT students sought the pill in the late 1960s from doctors on and off campus. Smith and another UT graduate student, Victoria Foe, met in early 1968 while working with one of the few male faculty who accepted female students. Both had a hard time finding an advisor in the science program. Male faculty refused to take on female students, arguing that women would become pregnant and drop out of school. Smith and Foe quickly realized that control over reproduction directly affected a woman’s education.

While the pill was available to married women in the late 1960s from private doctors and at the UT health center, doctors did not prescribe it freely. According to Foe, some doctors believed a “woman who was taking birth control pill was willing to sleep with you or that you could fondle her.” Foe remembered that there were “doctors who would do one of two things: They would either give you a lecture on morality as if it was any of their business or they felt they could make a pass at you.”

Smith saw the demand for easily accessible contraception as a starting point for a women’s rights organization in Austin.

Early in the semester, Smith approached Foe and explained that she was holding a meeting at her house to discuss women’s issues. That night was the first meeting of the group Austin Women’s Liberation, and the women agreed their first goal was to compile a list of doctors who prescribed birth control without harassing women.

By November, the Birth Control Information Center (BCIC) was operating in the University YMCA in a tiny, closetlike space next to the underground radical newspaper The Rag. According to Foe and Wheelis, the women tracked which doctors were accused of sexual harassment and advised women on who willingly prescribed the pill. The group ran advertisements in The Rag, which listed the BCIC’s number as the pay phone in the hallway of the Y. The birth control service had office hours where people could drop in or call, and if no volunteers were available, the newspaper’s staff would take messages and get them to the BCIC.

_{A Birth Control Information Center advertisement that the Austin Women’s Liberation group placed in a local radical newspaper}

Soon after opening the BCIC, Foe and Smith began to receive calls from women seeking abortions. Abortion had been illegal in Texas since the mid-19th century. Texans with means in the late 1960s traveled to New York or England for the procedure. However, broke college students and working-class women in the larger Austin area couldn’t just pick up and travel for an already expensive medical procedure. According to articles in The Rag, abortions cost anywhere from $150 to $1,000 in Texas. Many women opted to travel to England, where they were sometimes guaranteed their abortion would be performed by a medical professional. But the airfare alone cost hundreds of dollars.

Foe herself had an abortion along the Texas-Mexico border and knew that doctors paid local officials to look the other way. As a result, Smith and Foe traveled to the Mexican town of Piedras Negras across the U.S. border to assess which doctors performed the procedure. As Foe recounted, the BCIC gave women access to licensed doctors operating out of medical clinics in Mexico, complicating the idea that dirty and corrupt back-alley abortionists performed all abortions before legalization.

Once the women located and vetted doctors, the BCIC evolved to include abortion referrals. Women anonymously called the Y payphone and left a message with a BCIC volunteer or a Rag staffer who happened to answer.

As Wheelis, Foe, and former Rag staffers recalled during interviews, the students who rented space in the university Y knew the payphone was bugged. Because The Rag published socialist, radical, and New Left articles that often directly challenged the leadership of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, the UT Board of Regents—the university’s governing body—and the FBI kept a close eye on the groups organizing out of the space across the street from campus.

Smith returned calls from a secure line, sometimes adding her home phone number to the newspaper ads. As Wheelis recalled, women called Smith at home to set up an appointment. Smith then borrowed Wheelis’ truck to transport the women to the clinics, occasionally in San Antonio, Waco, or Dallas, but mostly in Mexico.

Although the handful of BCIC volunteers kept records, they did not preserve them over the years and there’s no way to know how many women the BCIC served between 1968 and 1973. While the majority of the women successfully ended their pregnancies, volunteers at the BCIC remembered the occasional failed abortion, such as that of one woman who remained pregnant after the procedure; however, the activists excused this error, thinking she must have been carrying twins.

The women continued to help other people access abortion into the 1970s, but Smith and Foe took different paths in their continued activism. Smith continued to focus on helping women on a community level, and Foe began to work at the Texas legislature to help representatives tasked with rewriting the Texas abortion laws.

While the women at the BCIC continued the referral service, the UT Board of Regents took The Rag to court in an attempt to ban the sale of the paper on campus. The volunteer student- and community-operated staff challenged the university head on and won its case in September 1970. A group of 20-something-year-old college students won in court, and Judy Smith believed women could follow their lead by challenging the Texas restrictions on abortion.

Smith met Sarah Weddington, the attorney who would argue Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court, through their boyfriends, who were law school classmates. Weddington could not find work as a lawyer after graduation, and Smith needed someone willing to take on the case for free.

This moment is where the well-known narrative of Roe (which was decided on January 22, 1973), begins. Weddington agreed to file the case, and the trio worked with Linda Coffee of Dallas, who was Weddington’s former law school classmate and clerk to U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes. They were hoping that filing the case in Dallas, against District Attorney Henry Wade, would land them in front of Hughes, who they hoped would be friendly to their case.

Their gamble paid off. Foe, Smith, the other BCIC volunteers, and Weddington were in their 20s when Roewas filed. Most of them were students.

Speaking about today’s young activists in a phone interview for my research about Texas abortion organizing, Foe added that it often only takes a small group of people working hard to make change.

“The worst thing you can do is think, ‘There is nothing I can do about this.’”

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/19/how-roe-started-pay-phone/

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is doubling down on so-called conscience protections that give an out to health-care providers who don’t want to treat LGBTQ patients or provide reproductive health care, including contraception, miscarriage management, and abortion care.

The Trump-era HHS, stacked with anti-choice extremists, on Thursday announced the launch of the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, a wing of the agency’s Office of Civil Rights. The division is a precursor to an imminent rule expected to bolster such “religious freedom,” or religious imposition, measures at the expense of vulnerable patients. Its launch comes a day before Friday’s annual March for Life in the nation’s capital.

Politico first reported the news of the rule, which is listed as pending review within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget—the final regulatory step before its release. A new “conscience and religious freedom” landing page within HHS’ sprawling online presence already allows people to file complaints about alleged violations. The landing page includes a photo of a person who appears to be a female Muslim doctor—even though patients living at the intersections of, say, a marginalized religion and race, gender, sexuality, income, ability, and immigration status are most likely to bear the consequences of the agency’s actions in their health-care access and outcomes.

Roger Severino, the virulently anti-LGBTQ head of the HHS civil rights office, said the new division would “help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination”—health-care providers with objections to caring for disproportionately vulnerable patients—”find justice.”

“No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions,” Severino said in a statement. He emceed a ceremony unveiling the agency’s plans at HHS headquarters on Thursday morning.

Severino’s assessment is notable in two respects. First, the HHS civil rights chief omitted the fact that LGBTQ people are most often the real “victims of unlawful discrimination” in the health-care arena. LGBTQ people routinely face “discrimination and mistreatment” from their providers, according to new data from the Center for American Progress. The discrimination and mistreatment results in “delays or denials of medically necessary care”:

For example, after one patient with HIV disclosed to a hospital that he had sex with other men, the hospital staff refused to provide his HIV medication. In another case, a transgender teenager who was admitted to a hospital for suicidal ideation and self-inflicted injuries was repeatedly misgendered and then discharged early by hospital staff. He later committed suicide. Discrimination affects LGBTQ parents as well: In Michigan, an infant was turned away from a pediatrician’s office because she had same-sex parents.

Second, the HHS-led rollback of the birth control benefit created a hotly contested moral exemption for reproductive health care. Severino is now further opening the door for doctors, clinicians, pharmacists, and other providers to turn away patients based on who they are, including their gender identity and sexual orientation, and what care they require.

This kind of state-sanctioned discrimination won’t be easy for the administration to pull off.

“Thankfully, HHS cannot eliminate the right of individuals to sue or to challenge discrimination in court,” Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, told Rewire. “What they can do is promote the belief that discrimination is legal. And encourage providers to discriminate and discourage patients from standing up for their rights.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, Section 1557 expressly prohibits anti-transgender discrimination and refusals to provide reproductive health care. The Trump administration stopped defending Section 1557 from GOP state-level legal challenges, but the underlying law remains in effect. It’s an important tool in combating discrimination in the delivery of health-care services.

“Ultimately, 1557 and our other civil rights laws that apply to health care, they give rights to patients that HHS can’t take away,” Tobin said. “The courts, when it comes to discrimination against transgender people, have been quite clear. The courts overwhelmingly say discrimination against a transgender patient is illegal.”

Expect the administration to push the boundaries of law, according to Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center.

Trump-era officials “have been willing to take the law as far as they can and then violate the law [in order] to enshrine one set of religious beliefs,” Borchelt said in an interview. “They don’t care what the harm is to individuals. Whatever the [George W.] Bush administration did, I think we would expect to see it taken at least one to two steps further, if not as far as possible beyond that.”

At HHS headquarters, Severino credited President Trump’s religious imposition executive order in May with setting the stage for the wide-scale discrimination now coalescing under his watch.

Acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan also paid homage to Trump. With the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, “we’re taking a significant step to implement President Trump’s vision,” Hargan said at the ceremony.

Hargan promised the administration would “vigorously enforce federal laws [in the form of] robust protections for religious freedom.”

Federal and state laws already provide a web of conscience protections for health-care workers. For example, the “Church Amendments” allow people and entities to raise religious or moral objections to performing or assisting in abortion or sterilization procedures. The Weldon Amendment protects physicians, hospitals, and insurance plans from repercussions for refusing to pay for, provide, or offer referrals for abortions. Another law, the Public Health Service Act, prohibits “abortion-related discrimination in governmental activities regarding training and licensing of physicians.”

Even the Affordable Care Act contains provisions protecting the conscience rights of health-care providers.

Conscience protections have long undermined reproductive health care, whether that’s in the form of contraception or common medications and procedures to facilitate a miscarriage or an abortion.

Source: https://rewire.news/article/2018/01/18/trump-carves-health-care-discrimination-wing-civil-rights-office/