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Lifting the D.C. Abortion BanLast Thursday, the House of Representatives approved the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act and finally lifted a 20-year ban that barred Washington, D.C., from using local funds to pay for abortions for low-income women. Since 1980, Congress has prohibited the use of federal funds appropriated for the District of Columbia to pay for abortion services except in cases where the woman’s life is endangered or she is a victim of rape. Beginning in 1988, Congress went one step further by also preventing the District of Columbia from using its own locally raised, nonfederal revenues to provide abortion care to its low-income residents. This violation of the District’s autonomy was relieved for only two years, in 1993 and 1994, when Congress voted to lift the ban. A year later, an anti-choice majority in Congress restored the ban, and it has remained in effect since that time. This past May, President Obama’s budget recommendation to Congress sought removal of the restriction. We’re pleased to see that the House acted accordingly to allow the District to decide whether and how to meet the needs of poor women in their communities. The D.C. abortion ban is wrong on so many levels. It violates the spirit of the Home Rule Act by intruding on the District’s autonomy and disenfranchising its residents. It also burdens poor District women’s access to their constitutionally protected right to abortion. Additionally, through this provision, nonresident Members of Congress impose their own ideology, morality or religious belief upon the District’s residents and utterly disregard the needs or wishes of the broader community or those directly impacted. Most egregiously, those who seek to negate the will of the District’s residents or leaders are not accountable to the people of the District. That which they could not do in their own home districts, they do with impunity against the residents of the District. Indeed, numerous states currently use their own, nonfederal funds, to provide medically necessary abortions. Congress does not order New York, California or Arizona not to spend local tax dollars on abortion, and it should not do so with the District. So the House vote was a very important step in the right direction. However, D.C. can’t claim victory just yet. The Senate version of the Financial Services bill has yet to reach the floor. We’re heartened that the bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week did not include the D.C. abortion, but it’s unlikely that this fight is over. But today we applaud the leadership in the House of Representatives and celebrate a key victory.
End Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Funding(Originally posted on Daily Kos.) This week, President Obama signed into law the omnibus appropriations bill that will fund government operations for the rest of fiscal year 2009. Buried in the spending measure and the media blizzard about earmarks is $99 million for the Community Based Abstinence Education program. Sure, we're glad the program received a $14 million cut — the first ever — but it absolutely boggles the mind that this program still receives any funding at all. In fact, $162 million remains in the budget for abstinence-only-until-marriage funding. Did you catch that? $162 million. Enough already. For more than a decade, Congress has spent more than a billion taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs despite busloads of evidence that they don't work and pleas from the scientific and public health community to stop, stop, stop! We know that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs censor information that can help young people make responsible, healthy, and safe decisions about relationships and sexual activity. We know they reinforce gender stereotypes, marginalize LGBT youth, and provide inaccurate and misleading information. And yet, the money keeps flowing. Enough already. Seriously. Enough. It's time to put scientific integrity and the real needs of teenagers ahead of narrow, ideological agendas. So even though we took a good, albeit shamefully small, step in the right direction, we'll take a big leap forward if President Obama allocates zero dollars for abstinence-only programs in his 2010 fiscal year budget recommendation to Congress expected in April 2009. And the ACLU has asked him to do that. We've pointed out to President Obama that continuing to fund abstinence-only programs is inconsistent with statements he's made during the campaign and in the early weeks of his presidency. Now President Obama needs to hear from you. We may lose tremendous momentum in the fight against abstinence-only programs if President Obama's 2010 fiscal year budget includes funds for these programs. Your voice will make a difference! Send President Obama an email today asking him to defund abstinence-only programs. Tell your family, friends, neighbors, teenagers to email too. We need to let President Obama know that it's enough already.
Rescind Bush Health Care Denial RuleThe Obama administration appears to be making good on a promise to restore the balance between individual religious liberty and access to reproductive health care. As we reported in this space back in December, when the Bush administration pushed through the Health Care Denial Rule as its parting shot against women’s reproductive health, our fears were realized. The Bush rule seriously threatens access to basic reproductive health services, including birth control and information about abortion, and puts the objections of health care workers and institutions above the health care needs of patients. Today, the Obama administration took the first step toward rescinding this ill-conceived rule, and it needs your help to make the Bush rule a shameful blip in the history of reproductive freedom in this country. What’s Wrong with the Bush Rule The Bush rule jeopardizes the ability of women to access birth control — especially low-income women who rely on federally funded clinics for their care. If that wasn’t bad enough, these same women, under the Bush rule, may never even get the information they need to make decisions about their health. The rule, you see, permits individual health care workers to refuse to provide information and counseling about basic health care services. Additionally, it invites health care institutions to ignore laws that were expressly written to protect access to critical reproductive health services. Why the Bush administration thought we needed this rule is unclear. What is clear is that for years, federal law has carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients’ access to reproductive health care. The Bush rule takes those existing laws and takes patients’ health needs out of the equation. Restore Protections The Obama administration needs to hear that we want protections for patients’ health needs restored. Starting next week and continuing through April 9, the administration will ask the public to weigh in on the Bush rule. The ACLU will be sending in comments. We urge you to join us in this effort by going to our Action Center next week to send a letter to the new administration. At a time when more and more Americans are either uninsured or struggling with the soaring costs of health care, the federal government should be expanding access to important health services, not interfering in programs that have successfully provided services for years. This one is an easy fix. Make sure the Obama administration restores the balance and rescinds the Bush Health Care Denial Rule.
Bureau of Prisons Revises Policy on Shackling of Pregnant Inmates
(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)
The ACLU welcomes the Bureau of Prisons' recent policy change barring the shackling of pregnant inmates in federal prisons in all but the most extreme circumstances. This new policy represents a sea change in the United States, where the shackling of pregnant women during transport, labor, and even delivery has long been routine in jails and prisons. Currently, only California, Illinois, and Vermont have enacted state laws restricting the practice of shackling pregnant women. By contrast, international human rights bodies have repeatedly expressed concern about policies that permit shackling of pregnant women. Such reform is long overdue: As the stories from Amnesty International's 1999 report, "Not Part of My Sentence": Violations of the Human Rights of Women in Custody" make clear, shackling is not only dangerous and inhumane, but also poses serious and unnecessary risks to the wellbeing of the mother as well as her child. Warnice Robinson, who was imprisoned for shoplifting, explains, "Because I was shackled to the bed, they couldn't remove the lower part of the bed for the delivery, and they couldn't put my feet in the stirrups. My feet were still shackled together, and I couldn't get my legs apart. The doctor called for the officer, but the officer had gone down the hall. No one else could unlock the shackles, and my baby was coming but I couldn't open my legs." Maria Jones, who was incarcerated for violating drug laws, tells the story of having labor induced two weeks prior to her due date, but being "kept in shackles, leaving 18 inches between her ankles, and told to pace the hallway for several hours. 'It was so humiliating. My ankles were raw,' she said. 'I had shackles on up until the baby was coming out and then they took them off for me to push…It was unbelievable. Like I was going to go anywhere.'" Of course, shackling is just one of the many dangerous and inhumane practices that pregnant women face in prison. Far too many women lack access to adequate prenatal care or even adequate drinking water, and in nearly all facilities throughout the country newborns are almost instantly separated from their mothers — a practice that experts stress denies children crucial bonding time with their mothers. The new policy represents a huge victory for the thousands of women incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country — a victory hard won by groups like The Rebecca Project for Human Rights and other organizations that have advocated for this change. But this is only the beginning. In 47 states there is no legislation to restrict the practice of shackling pregnant women; state and local prisons are not subject to the new federal policy. And the U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which increasingly detains immigrant women who have never committed a crime, has refused to specifically end the use of restraints on pregnant women. In the U.S., where one in 100 people is behind bars and where women represent the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population (their numbers have increased at nearly double the rate of men since 1985), shackling continues to affect thousands of women each year. The ACLU has responded to The Rebecca Project's call for the formation of an Anti-Shackling Coalition to work together to end the practice of shackling incarcerated mothers during transport, labor, delivery and post-delivery in state prisons and jails and all immigration facilities. Stay tuned and prepare to call your representatives. For key findings from Amnesty International's 2005 follow-up report regarding the use of restraints on pregnant women in custody, click here; the full report appears here. Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project, Diana Kasdan, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, Lenora Lapidus, ACLU Women's Rights Project, Vania Leveille, ACLU Washington Legislative Office
Senator Durbin Stands Up for Domestic WorkersOn August 8, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent an indicting letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging her to implement promptly the recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) after its investigation into the abuse and exploitation of domestic workers, predominantly women, by foreign diplomats. The GAO report (PDF), released in late July, documents the State Department's failure to investigate and address this widespread and longstanding problem. Each year the State Department issues more than 2,000 A-3 and G-5 visas that allow diplomats to bring into the U.S. their "attendants, servants, or personal employees." Yet little is done to provide these workers with information or support that could protect them against physical, emotional or sexual abuse and trafficking. And even when the worker can escape from the diplomat's home and tries to hold him accountable, she must overcome the so-far impossible hurdle of diplomatic immunity. In light of these facts, Sen. Durbin demanded answers to a series of pointed questions about the State Department's reluctance to take responsibility for the treatment of domestic workers after it provides them visas to enter the United States. He also correctly characterized as "unacceptable" the State Department's long delays in providing information during investigations into allegations of abuse. Senator Durbin also expressed concern about the State Department's opposition to certain provisions in the Senate version of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) (S. 3061) which he has cosponsored with Senators Biden, Brownback, and others. One such provision would require the State Department to interview domestic workers before renewing their visas in order to ensure they are not being abused. TheState Department's objection? The interviews would be too burdensome. Durbin's response: "Why is this small burden not outweighed by the benefit of discovering whether domestic workers are being abused or exploited?" It's encouraging to see that there are still lawmakers willing to defend the human rights of those who are most vulnerable. Thank you, Senator Durbin, for calling the State Department to task for its utter disregard for the lives of women who came to this country to provide for themselves and their families and instead became modern-day slaves. We hope Secretary Rice takes to heart Senator Durbin's request to "act expeditiously and diligently to hold diplomats accountable for their actions" and to stop turning a blind eye to the impunity with which diplomats and members of their households abuse their domestic workers. And we will continue to work with Senators Durbin, Biden, Brownback, Representative Berman and others in Congress to preserve and further strengthen the TVPRA provisions that protect workers and hold diplomats accountable. To read profiles of domestic workers who have come forward and to learn more about the ACLU's work on this issue, check out: www.aclu.org/domesticworkers.
A Different Buzz There's certainly a different buzz in Washington -- both in the halls of Congress and in the reproductive rights community. It's hard not to be excited when you can point to a true blue pro-choice Speaker of the House, a Senate Majority Leader who cares about family planning, and any number of pro-choice committee chairs in both the House and Senate. These changes mean that we have the opportunity to make a real difference in women's reproductive lives. And, even better, we can now control the movement of the many extreme, anti-choice bills that drove us mad these past years. Elections matter! Voting matters! Of course, it's not easy sailing from here on out. The anti-choice folks are still going to do what they can to impose their agenda and control women's reproductive lives. And expanding abortion rights isn't really high on the congressional agenda. But, on this the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, it's still a happier, brighter day for women! To learn more about what's on the horizon for the new Congress check out the 2007 Federal Legislative update. |
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