Blogs Comment on National Antiabortion Legislation, Title X Funding, CPCs

February 11, 2011 — The following summarizes selected women's health-related blog entries.

~ "Small Government vs. the Big A of Abortion," Linda Bergthold, Huffington Post blogs: "While Egyptian citizens are in the streets demanding more democracy, we -- who apparently have all the democracy we need -- are protesting not at all, as Republicans attempt to force radical antiabortion bills on the American public," health policy consultant Bergthold writes, adding that it makes her "so angry that this new intrusion on our privacy, this new assault on our personal choices, comes from a party that talks so grandly about small government and the right to run our own lives." She asks, "Why would conservatives who claim to oppose big government, suddenly spring forward with legislation that increases government control over our lives?" Answering her own question, Bergthold says, "They cannot answer because this contradiction makes no logical sense -- it makes only political sense," adding that once newly elected Republican lawmakers got to Washington, "they began to realize how hard it would be to actually cut the deficit and create jobs. Those goals are not nearly as easy to achieve as symbolic (or real) cuts in social programs." Bergthold concludes, "We should all be asking Republicans in our regions how they can explain this discrepancy. And if we don't march, will we sit still and let this happen without any protest? If we do, we are not as brave as the Egyptians. We will not have used the democracy that we so glibly claim as our right" (Bergthold, Huffington Post blogs, 2/8).

~ "Forcing Women To Visit Crisis Pregnancy Centers in South Dakota," Amie Newman, Change.org's "Women's Rights": A South Dakota bill (HB 1217) would require women seeking abortion care to "first present written confirmation that they've visited a crisis pregnancy center, to ensure they haven't been coerced into having an abortion, before being allowed to access private, legal, medical care," Newman, managing editor at RH Reality Check, writes. Providers should do all they can to ensure women are making a voluntary and uncoerced decision to obtain an abortion, but the bill "has it backwards," Newman adds. Pregnant women "deserve accurate unbiased medical information and high-quality care," but they will not receive that at CPCs, which have "a single, strong mission: to steer pregnant women away from accessing abortion." CPCs, Newman adds, "are more often than not simply outreach arms of religious groups and not actually health care facilities, and as such are not regulated at all." Newman says, the bill "does not represent the will of the people," noting that South Dakotans "obviously oppose government intrusion into personal, private health care decisions, including abortion, as evidenced by the fact that they overhwelmingly voted down two abortion bans in the last few years" (Newman, "Women's Rights," Change.org, 2/10).

~ "It's Not About Who Pays. It's About Respect," Carlton Veazey, RH Reality Check: "Pro-choice clergy in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice are outraged at the lack of respect for women's lives implicit in HR 3," Veazey, a minister and member of the coalition, writes. Veazey discusses the coalition's "Insure Women, Ensure Our Future" campaign, which he says is "dedicated to exposing the true purpose of this and other bills that purport to prevent taxpayer money from being spent on abortion." According to the campaign, HR 3, for instance, "is not about who pays for an abortion. It is about a lack of respect for the sacredness of women's lives and a lack of trust for women who are in the difficult situation of considering abortion." Veazey writes that the bill "fails to acknowledge the worth ... of women's lives" and is "immoral." He adds, "Compassion is a sacred value in our religious traditions. Women who have survivded rape or incest deserve appropriate health care and to not be turned away from a hospital. Vulnerable women who cannot afford health insurance deserve comprehensive care" (Veazey, RH Reality Check, 2/8).

~ "I Was A 'Prolife' Republican ... Until I Fell In Love," Andrea Grimes, RH Reality Check: Once a deeply religious, conservative antiabortion advocate, Grimes recalls her feelings at the time, saying, "The issue couldn't possibly be up for real debate, in my mind: either you were a baby-killer slut, or you behaved like a proper Christian woman and only let him get to third base." Her views began to change, however, when she fell in love with a Jewish man in college and began having sex, finding herself "frozen in a kind of moral limbo -- I couldn't believe I found myself simultaneously relieved that I could access an abortion if I wanted to, and saddened and stressed out by the possibility of having to make that decision." When she went to the women's health center at her college for the first time, she notes that she "learned more in a two-hour visit ... than I had in the 19 years leading up to it." She adds, "I know that what has kept me from having to make a decision about an unintended pregnancy is not the prospect of hearing a fetal heartbeat or having to go through a 24-hour wait period, but safe, easy and affordable access to contraception and good, honest medical information disseminated by doctors and medical professionals without religious agendas." Grimes concludes, "I believe wanting to take that choice away from others is deeply about shame and punishment and judgment, and not about righteousness and love. I believe that because I rarely see those who want to outlaw abortion doing anything to combat its cause: unintended pregnancy, and I see them doing a lot to punish some women" (Grimes, RH Reality Check, 2/8).

~ "Women's Health Advocates Applaud Movement to Remove Over-the-Counter Age Restriction Plan B One-Step," Dino Corvino, Below The Waist: Teva Pharmaceuticals has filed an application with the FDA to remove the age restriction on access to Plan B One-Step, a form of emergency contraception, writes contributor Corvino, who posted statements from women's advocates in response to the company's move. "Although FDA's request for new data from the company before removing the age restriction was unwarranted and unnecessary, we hope the FDA finally has all the information it needs to make a decision and will use this opportunity to confirm their commitment to public health and scientific integrity," Kristen Moore, president and CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said. Susan Wood, associate professor at the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University and board member of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, stated, "While it is good news that the FDA is now reviewing an application for removing the age restriction on over-the-counter Plan B One-Step, I hope this process does not set a precedent at the FDA for new data as a condition of approval for OTC access by teens under 17." She added such an "approach could have unintended consequences, if FDA is setting out new data requirements for all OTC products used by teens" (Corvino, Below The Waist, 2/10).

~ "What Would Shirley Do?" Linda Greenhouse, New York Times' "Opinionator": "Concern in the black community about abortion and what was once referred to as 'population control' has authentic roots, grounded in a shameful chapter in the history of welfare policy," Greenhouse, a former New York Times reporter and Yale Law School professor, explains. However, it is no excuse for the "nutty," "racially inflammatory," "dangerous" and "tragic" talk about abortion recently coming from lawmakers nationwide, she says. She discusses a chapter addressing abortion in the memoir of Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman in Congress and an active abortion-rights advocate. Greenhouse notes how Chisholm understood the political risk of being outspoken on abortion in the black community but decided to become an advocate based on her instinct and experience. Greenhouse quotes Chisholm, “To label family planning and legal abortion programs ‘genocide’ is male rhetoric, for male ears.” In her memoir Chisholm noted statistics finding that black women died from illegal abortion at twice the rate of white women. Greenhouse writes that nationwide today the rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion in communities of color is higher than that of whites. However, Greenhouse says "the difference in the rates raises questions about barriers to access to contraception, not only financial but cultural, too complex to be reduced to a sound bite." She ponders what Chisolm would have said about today's "pernicious kind of talk" that compares abortion to "racial genocide, saying she probably "would be distressed to know that the shibboleths she risked her career to fight are even more potent in today’s wired world than they were in the days when abortion was a crime." She says, "Those most likely to be hurt by [such comments] are the very same women who ought to be empowered to make their own reproductive decisions, not patronized or manipulated"(Greenhouse, "Opinionator," New York Times, 2/9).

~ "The Real GOP Agenda: An Extreme Effort To Roll Back Women's Rights," Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), EMILY's List Blog: "As co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, I will stand firm and rally my colleagues to fight back against [Republicans'] extreme assaults on reproductive freedom," DeGette writes, adding that she will "call out the Republican agenda for what it really is: anti-woman, anti-family, and most certainly, anti-choice." DeGette says "the Republican leadership has put forth a set of extreme bills designed to drastically roll back women's reproductive freedoms," trying to accomplish through legislation "[w]hat they haven't been able to do in the courts." She adds that the proposed bills "go far beyond current law, and mark probably the greatest assault on women's reproductive freedoms in our lifetime." The proposed legislation threatens to "cut off millions of women from the private health care they have today, even preventing them from using their own money for their care; limit the ability of women to get the care they need even if it threatens their lives; allow public hospitals to refuse to take necessary steps to save a woman's life; and allow the states to deny Medicaid coverage for care to save a woman's life," DeGette says. "When most American families are concerned about jobs, the economy, and affordable health care, the GOP is instead focusing on a narrow, anti-choice agenda" by proposing bills that "trample on women’s rights, their access to legal abortion, and their reproductive health as a whole," she says, concluding, "And quite frankly, these attacks on choice are too extreme for millions of American women, their families, and their doctors" (DeGette, EMILY's List Blog, 2/8).

~ "House GOP Declares War on Planned Parenthood," Nick Baumann, Mother Jones' "Political Mojo": Debate over abortion rights on Capitol Hill "was already heating up" when House Republicans "declared war" on Wednesday by proposing a continuing resolution that would cut the entire $327 million fiscal year 2011 budget of the Title X federal grant program, which provides funding to organizations such as Planned Parenthood to provide reproductive health services, excluding abortion, Baumann writes. "This money... is used to fund cancer screenings, birth control, and other health care services for poor people," he says, adding, "The House GOP is trying to zero out Planned Parenthood." If the funding cut makes it into the final version of the House appropriations bill, "which now seems likely, Republicans should be able to pass it out of the House with ease," Baumann says. The bill then would move to the Senate, "where abortion-rights supporters will have to fight hard to strip the provision from the bill," he says, adding, "Because the government will shut down unless the continuing resolution is passed, supporters of abortion rights will have less room to maneuver than they might have otherwise. And if there is no veto threat from the president, their hand will be weaker" (Baumann, "Political Mojo," Mother Jones, 2/9).

~ "Why Title X Is Crucial," Cecile Richards, Huffington Post blogs: In a harsh criticism of the Republican push to cut all funding for the Title X Family Planning Program, which has been in place since the Nixon administration, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Richards boasts the program's numerous benefits and calls it "one of this country's great achievements in public health and social justice." She notes that Planned Parenthood, which is the sole provider of Title X services in some states, provides care to more than one-third of the women served by the program and plays "a critical role [in] reducing unintended pregnancies, decreasing infant mortality, and detecting cancer at early stages, when it can still be treated effectively." She asks Congress, "What are you guys thinking?" and adds that "For a modest $327 million a year, the Title X program improves health, saves lives, empowers women, combats poverty and saves the government nearly four times what it costs." She concludes by calling the cut in funding "a blunt attack on women -- and a betrayal of the public trust" (Richards, Huffington Post blogs, 2/10).