Last week, during its markup of the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) bill, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to include a much-needed and overdue amendment to help servicewomen when they need it most. The amendment, offered by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), would reverse the current ban on abortion coverage for servicewomen who are the victims of rape or incest.
When the news broke a group of senior military officers, retired medical personnel and veterans called Stand With Servicewomen, immediately registered their support releasing video featuring several retired military leaders.
Yesterday, a video leaked of Mississippi Representative Lester "Bubba" Carpenter (pictured above) gloating that he and his anti-choice cronies had passed a bill that could effectively put an end to safe, legal abortion in the state of Mississippi. The money quote:
It's going to be challenged, of course, in the Supreme Court and all — but literally, we stopped abortion in the state of Mississippi, legally, without having to — Roe vs. Wade. So we've done that. I was proud of it. The governor signed it into law. And of course, there you have the other side. They're like, 'Well, the poor pitiful women that can't afford to go out of state are just going to start doing them at home with a coat hanger. That's what we've learned over and over and over.'
But hey, you have to have moral values. You have to start somewhere."
And now everybody's reaching for their smelling salts because, oh my, a politician trying to outlaw abortion doesn't care if women die. You know what I say? Finally. Finally, someone willing to speak the truth. Finally, someone is willing to drop the bullshit about health, safety, and a "culture of life" and admit that he'd rather women die than abortion remain legal.
This week the House will debate the NDAA for fiscal year 2013. We'll be monitoring the debate and pulling for an amendment that fixes the terrible detention provisions in last year's bill.
By Elissa Berger, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 1:47pm
The Kansas House passed an unwieldy 70-page bill, chock full of troubling provisions aimed at depriving a woman from receiving accurate information about her pregnancy, preventing her from accessing medical care and punishing health professionals who treat her. We need to make sure the Senate doesn't do the same.
Here are just a few examples of what this bill would do:
• It would provide legal protection to a doctor who discovers that a baby will be born with a devastating condition and deliberately withholds that information from his patient because he doesn't want her to seek an abortion. That means a doctor could decide to lie about the results of a woman's prenatal test so that she won't have information that she needs to make the best decision for her circumstances.
• The bill attempts to scare women by forcing doctors to tell patients about a supposed link between abortion and breast cancer — a risk that the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and other medical experts roundly reject .
• This bill would also require public hospitals to turn away a woman who desperately needs an abortion to prevent serious harm to her health. The extremists pushing this bill would have a hospital tell a very sick woman that she should come back when her pregnancy is about to kill her, even if that risks her future fertility or causes organ failure.
• And there's a provision that targets workers at women's health centers that provide abortion care. The bill could prohibit those workers from volunteering at their kids' school. We've seen a lot of bizarre provisions about women's health care, but this is one of the strangest. Imagine the nurse who helps care for women at the local clinic. When she wants to accompany her son on a class field trip will she be told to stay home unless she quits her job?
By Anjali Abraham, Public Policy Director, ACLU of Arizona at 10:52am
The debate over access to contraception ain’t over yet. Earlier this year, the Arizona legislature introduced a bill that would allow employers to impose their religious beliefs on their employees and deny them access to basic health services. Several weeks ago, the bill appeared to be dead, but the bill, HB 2625, came roaring back with a vengeance. Arizona’s legislature passed the bill and it now sits on Governor Brewer’s desk.
By Talcott Camp, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project at 5:08pm
In the midst of endless attacks on women's health, there have been a few recent victories worth celebrating. Yesterday, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a group calling itself "Personhood USA" cannot use the ballot initiative process to ban abortion (and contraception, in vitro fertilization, and miscarriage treatment as well). Intent on granting legal rights to fertilized eggs, these anti-choice activists sought to strip women of their right to determine when and whether to access those critical health care services. The court correctly reasoned that such a ban is "repugnant to the Constitution of the United States," and that allowing it on the ballot would therefore result in nothing but "a costly and futile election." The ACLU and the ACLU of Oklahoma, along with the Center for Reproductive Rights, challenged the initiative in March, and on behalf of the state's women and families, we are enormously grateful and relieved that it won't be on the ballot in November.
By Maggie Crosby, ACLU of Northern California at 4:11pm
Across the country we're seeing ongoing attacks on access to reproductive health care. The Guttmacher Institute released data last week detailing that just a few months into 2012, hundreds of provisions to restrict abortion access have been introduced in state legislatures around the country. Several have already been enacted. Here in California, it's vitally important that our state legislature move in the opposite direction and continue its role as a national leader in ensuring that women have access to reproductive health care.
