As we commemorate the 31st anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, and move into the 2004 election season, we face a dangerous climate for reproductive rights at the federal level.  With both presidential and congressional elections approaching, the White House and the anti-choice majorities in the House and the Senate will face increased pressure and political will to enact measures to curtail reproductive freedom.

Last year, Congress enacted the first-ever federal ban on abortion procedures. This dangerous, deceptive, and extreme measure, which is now being challenged in the courts by the ACLU and others, is only the beginning of the broad anti-choice agenda that we expect to see pressed during the upcoming congressional session.  Congress is poised to enact a wide variety of restrictions that will place abortion out of reach for many American women.  It is also eager to attack access to contraception and sex education.

Thirty one years after we secured the right to choose, we continue to battle for its survival.  Here are some of the most dangerous measures we anticipate fighting during this session of Congress:

Teen Endangerment Act (S. 851/H.R. 1755)

Called the ""Child Custody Protection Act"" by proponents, this bill would make it a federal crime for any person other than a parent to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion unless the minor had already fulfilled the requirements of her home state's parental involvement law.  This bill is not only unconstitutional; it is also harmful to minors.

The bill would endanger the health of pregnant teens by discouraging them from turning to trusted adults for help and would instead force them to travel alone if they sought care out of state.  Experience tells us that family communication cannot be legislated.  While studies have found that a majority of young women who are pregnant and seeking an abortion already choose to involve a parent in their decision, other teens have valid reasons for not doing so.  One third of teenagers who do not tell their parents about a pregnancy have already been the victims of family violence -- physical, emotional, and sexual abuse -- and fear it will recur.

The last two Congresses considered this bill, which passed the House in 1999 and 2002.  We expect it to come up again this session and will need to mobilize vocal opposition to defeat it.

For more information and to find out how you can help, go to: /reproductiverights/abortion/16413res20030526.html 

Broad Federal Refusal Clause (S. 1397/H.R. 3664)

Called the ""Abortion Non-Discrimination Act"" by proponents, this bill would allow a wide range of health care organizations -- from hospitals to insurance companies to HMOs -- to refuse to comply with an array of federal, state, and local requirement to provide reproductive health services.  The measure is nothing less than a broad and dangerous federal ""refusal clause.""

Sometimes called ""conscience clauses,"" refusal clauses permit a person or entity to refuse to provide abortion services or information about such services.  But laws requiring the provision of abortion services tend to apply only in extreme circumstances, such as when a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or when a woman's life or health is threatened by a pregnancy.  This bill would allow health insurance companies, health plans, hospitals, providers, and others to ignore these laws with impunity.

This bill could, for example, permit health care institutions to ignore public health laws that require them to provide pregnant women complete information about their reproductive health options.  It could also allow hospitals to turn away women who need emergency abortions because they are hemorrhaging, experiencing heart failure, or suffering other grave complications of pregnancy, despite federal laws mandating such care in medical emergencies.  In these and other circumstances, the measure could protect the institutional objections of health plans, insurers, and hospital conglomerates to providing reproductive health services otherwise mandated by law, allowing those objections to trump the health care decisions of individual patients.

This measure passed the House in 2002, and we expect it to be a high priority for anti-choice forces in the upcoming session of Congress.

For more information and to find out how you can help, go to: /reproductiverights/abortion/16550res20030510.html

Bill to Create Fetal Rights (S. 146, S. 1019/H.R. 1997)

Called the ""Unborn Victims of Violence Act"" by proponents, this bill would grant independent legal status to a fetus under federal law by making it a crime for an individual to cause the death of or injury to a ""child in utero"" at any stage of development.  This legislation would be the first federal law to recognize a fetus as an independent victim of a crime, with legal rights distinct from those of the pregnant woman who has been harmed by a violent act.  It would thus dramatically alter the existing legal framework by elevating the fetus to an unprecedented status in federal law, undermining the very foundation of the right to choose abortion.

The bill passed the House in 2001, with supporters rejecting alternative approaches that would have protected pregnant women from violence and appropriately punished violent offenders without undermining reproductive freedom.  The bill has already passed a House subcommittee this Congress, and we expect it to move even further during the upcoming session.  Given President Bush's stated support for the measure, the bill will become law unless we defeat it in the Senate.

For more information and to find out how you can help, go to: /reproductiverights/gen/16412res20030510.html 

Bill to Block Access to Early-Abortion Pill (S. 1930/H.R. 3453)   

Called the ""RU-486 Suspension and Review Act"" by proponents, this bill would suspend the sale of mifepristone (the early-abortion pill, also known as RU-486) and require a review by the General Accounting Office of the process by which the drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In 2000, the FDA approved mifepristone after more than a decade of careful study.  Thousands of women have safely used the drug since it entered the U.S. market.  Mifepristone represents a significant breakthrough in reproductive health care for American women, especially those who live far from an abortion provider, because it gives them better access to a safe, private, and early option for ending a pregnancy.

This bill represents an inappropriate attempt by Congress to second-guess the considered judgments of medical experts at the FDA.  There is no evidence that mifepristone is unsafe or that the FDA's procedures were flawed.  Rather, the FDA has made clear that the approval of mifepristone resulted from its careful evaluation of the medical evidence under strict scientific protocols.

We will need to mobilize to protect women's access to this important drug.

To learn more about mifepristone and the FDA approval process go to: /reproductiverights/abortion/16509res20001229.html

Other Likely Threats

We expect Congress to attack reproductive freedom in a variety of other ways this year as well.  For example, Congress is likely to consider measures requiring minors to obtain parental consent to receive contraception in the federally funded Title X program, banning emergency contraception in school-based health centers, barring organizations that perform abortions with their own funds from receiving federal family-planning dollars, and significantly increasing funding for abstinence-only until marriage education, which prohibits teaching about the benefits of contraception.  As these provisions demonstrate, the upcoming assaults on reproductive freedom will go far beyond restrictions on abortion to include attacks on contraception and health information.

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As even this short report suggests, the 31st Anniversary of Roe is a time of grave danger for reproductive freedom.  While many of these restrictions have been considered in Congress before, we now face a political climate in which anti-choice forces are stronger than at any time in recent memory, and we are facing the peculiar pressures of an election year.  Blocking these dangerous measures will therefore require more resolve than ever.

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