Tell the Senate: Reject the dangerous 20-week abortion ban! | NARAL. Don’t Let Texas Restrict Abortion Again. You can’t fault Texas for inconsistency. It first criminalized abortion in 1854, and Roe v. Wade arose from a lawsuit in Dallas County. That 1973 Supreme Court ruling, which protects a woman’s right to have an abortion, is still the law of the land. It’s a point worth keeping mind in view of last week’s legal roller coaster in Texas. First, a federal judge struck down an important part of the state’s restrictive new abortion law before it was scheduled to take effect Oct. 29.
A few days later, a federal appeals court said the law could go ahead while appeals proceed. As expected, 13 Texas clinics -- one-third of the state’s abortion providers -- then announced they would cease providing those services. The law requires doctors who perform abortions to have formal admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic. Surely one reason Roe v. Texas officials knew better than to defy Roe too blatantly by stating their intention to curtail abortions. Roe v. Epic One-Woman Filibuster Blocks Radical Anti-Abortion Legislation In Texas.
By Tara Culp-Ressler "Epic One-Woman Filibuster Blocks Radical Anti-Abortion Legislation In Texas" State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-TX) wore a back brace for the final hours of her filibuster (Credit: Dallas News) Thanks to efforts from hundreds of protesters and state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-TX), an omnibus abortion bill did not win legislative approval from Texas lawmakers early on Wednesday morning. The proposed legislation, SB 5, would have criminalized abortion after 20 weeks and forced all but five of the state’s abortion clinics to close their doors.
In order to block SB 5 from passing the Senate and heading to Gov. Shortly before 11 pm, after Davis’ fellow lawmakers believed she had violated the terms of the filibuster three times, they attempted to end it. As a group of male officials discussed the parliamentary procedure that would decide the fate of Davis’ filibuster, her colleague Sen.
The Senate eventually voted to put an end to Davis’ filibuster. Update. Infographic: Emergency Contraception over the Counter. By Liz Chen and Lindsay Rosenthal | December 7, 2012 Elizabeth Chen is a Policy Analyst with the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. Lindsay Rosenthal is the Special Assistant for Domestic Policy at the Center. Sources American Academy of Pediatrics, “AAP Recommends Emergency Contraception Be Available to Teens,” November 26, 2012, available at American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Women’s Health Care Physicians, Committee Opinion, “Over-the-Counter Access to Oral Contraceptives,” December 2012, available at American Medical Association, “H-75.985 Access to Emergency Contraception.”
Tracey A. William R. To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact: China’s Drinking Water Contaminated With Contraceptives, Says Environmentalist | Special Section. By Wang Liang & Gary PanseyEpoch Times Staff Created: May 24, 2012 Last Updated: May 31, 2012 Chinese fisherman displays a bountiful catch while consumers worry about possible contamination. (STR/AFP/Getty Images) Fears about water quality are rocketing throughout Chinese cyberspace after a Beijing environmentalist disclosed that tap water in China is contaminated with contraceptive compounds.
Though officialdom rushed to downplay the risks, citizens have once again broached their ever-present worries about food safety. Liangjie Dong, a former researcher in molecular biosciences and bioengineering at the University of Hawaii, blogged on May 16 that China has the highest consumption of contraceptive pills; they are not only taken by people, but are also used in fisheries and aquaculture. Dong cited an article, titled “Assessment of Source Water Contamination by Estrogenic Disrupting Compounds in China,” which was published by the Journal of Environmental Science in February 2012.
Women Ask Rick Perry About Sexual Health. Missouri Legislator: Qualified to Legislate Women's Health Because "My Father Was a Veterinarian" On the News With Thom Hartmann: Health Insurance Companies Are Charging Women an Extra Billion Dollars Annually, and More. Move to Remove Abortion Coverage from Numerous Health Care Plans. It started slowly, when the Republican National Committee acknowledged that it couldn’t attack abortion coverage in health insurance without removing that benefit for its own employees.
But what started slowly may eventually become an avalanche as a movement begins to remove abortion from health insurance plans across the country. In Kansas, a bill in front of the House Insurance Committee will require people who want coverage for abortions to purchase an abortion rider and pay a separate payment. "This is needed so people who are opposed to abortion aren’t paying for coverage for services that they find objectionable," according to the representative sponsoring the bill. This bill, unlike many in the past, does not address simply state employees or those who’s insurance is subsidized, but in fact addresses all new insurance policies, including private insurance plans. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas: New Section 1. Women's Rights Without Frontiers - Stop Forced Abortion - China's War on Women!
Rachel Maddow: Worm turns on Republican anti-women agenda. Rachel Maddow: The GOP war on birth control. The mainstream antiabortion movement opposed the Colorado effort because its members believed a challenge to it might have the unintended effect of reaffirming Roe v. Wade. They also worried that a blunt effort to ban all abortion might cause a backlash that would set back their incremental chipping away at abortion rights. But voters seem to have rejected “personhood” for a different reason — legally redefining a “person” would not only criminalize all abortion but would probably outlaw hormonal forms of birth control as well.
Hormonal contraceptives generally prevent an egg from being fertilized in the first place, but the at-least-theoretical possibility that they might also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus was enough to raise the specter of birth control pills being viewed as an instrument of homicide. In Colorado’s U.S. Undeterred, the “personhood” folks tried again, getting their measure on the ballot in Mississippi last year. Arizona bans funding to Planned Parenthood in abortion fight. Abortion. Catholic tribalism and the contraceptive flap - Contraception. The resolution to the contraception contretemps seems mainly designed to do one thing: mollify the Catholics who defied the U.S. Conference of Bishops to support the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Church leaders are unlikely to officially back this so-called accommodation – the White House isn’t calling it a compromise — just as they continued to oppose the ACA even after President Obama did everything imaginable to insist the new law wouldn’t provide federal funding for abortion.
But the new agreement makes it possible for women’s groups and some liberal Catholic leaders to maintain a truce on hot-button social issues while working together around issues of women’s health and universal access to healthcare. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America are happy with the solution, and so is Sister Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, who endured withering heat from the bishops and their right-wing allies over the ACA. But what just happened? Bishops Blast Contraception Compromise, but White House Stays Firm. The nation’s Catholic leaders on Friday rejected the Obama administration’s compromise for covering birth-control services for employees at religious institutions, according to the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.
The revised White House plans lifts a requirement that faith-linked hospitals, universities, and charities pay for contraceptive coverage, instead requiring that their insurance carriers offer such services directly to employees, with no co-pays. Chief of staff Jacob Lew said Sunday that the administration would not amend the regulation further, Reuters writes. In a statement issued late Friday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said the compromise does not go far enough and that the federal government’s overall mandate that women have free access to contraception remains “a grave moral concern.”
Return to Top. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer bans public funding of Planned Parenthood. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has put an end to tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood by signing a bill that she says closes loopholes for funding abortions. The bill, known as the “Whole Woman's Health Funding Priority Act,” tightens existing state regulations and prevents any government entity -- city, county or state -- from giving money to an organization that offers family planning that may indirectly fund abortions. It “closes loopholes in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund abortions, whether directly or indirectly," Brewer said in a statement Friday after she signed the bill. Arizona's Republican-led Legislature passed other reproductive healthcare bills during a 116-day session that ended Thursday.
Brewer signed a bill last month banning most abortions after 20 weeks. “Planned Parenthood’s abortion-centered business model does not need or deserve taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) in a statement for the Susan B. Dalina.castellanos@latimes.com.