Advocacy & Action

HEALTH CARE ACCESS

Immigrants Lured to Cheap, Do-It-Yourself Abortions: Ban on Federal Funds in Obama Health Care Law Means Poor, Uninsured Women are Marginalized
 Susan Donaldson James, (ABC News, 08/16/2010) 

 Kelly, a part-time hairdresser from Atlanta, took five little white pills at 7 a.m. and will take five more before her 6-week-old fetus is completely aborted. ”I am going through this as we speak,” said Kelly, who did not want her last name used. “What I read about it was really scary. I didn’t sleep at all last night, I was so anxious.” At first, the cramping pain and bleeding was “like a bad period” — but later “it got worse” and even the painkiller hydrocodone didn’t help. But Kelly could deal with the emotional event in the privacy of her own home and at about half the cost of a surgical abortion.     REWE    READ MORE
 

CONGRESS

Sens. Coburn, Hatch Introduce Bill To Extend Restrictions on Federal Abortion Funding
National Partnership for Women & Families (August 6, 2010)

On August 6, Republican Sens. Tom Coburn (Okla.) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) introduced a bill, the “Excluding Abortion Coverage from Health Reform Act,” that would prohibit any health insurance plan, public or private, that receives federal subsidies from covering abortion services, The Hill’s “Healthwatch” reports. The bill aims to eliminate a provision of the health reform law that allows federally subsidized insurance plans to offer abortion coverage if consumers pay for it with their own funds and requires that private funds used to pay for abortion services are kept separate from funds used to pay for other health care services.   READ MORE
 

CRISIS PREGNANCY CENTERS

Deceptive Tactics of Crisis Pregnancy Centers are Examined in the Courts, Congress, and the Media
 National Partnership for Women & Families (August 5-6, 2010)

In federal court on August 4, Baltimore attorneys defended a city law requiring crisis pregnancy centers to post signs stating that they do not provide abortion and birth control services or referrals for such services, the Baltimore Sun reports.  The Archdiocese of Baltimore — which helps run three CPCs in Baltimore — is challenging the law as a violation of the church’s First Amendment rights.    RE 

Meanwhile, an abortion clinic and a crisis pregnancy center on opposite sides of the street are the subjects of a new HBO documentary, “12th and Delaware,” which illustrates the “newest front line” in the abortion-rights debate, Time magazine reports. The film documents the various strategies used by the CPC featured in the film “to persuade clients to continue an unintended or unwanted pregnancy,” according to Time. There are more than 4,000 CPCs in the U.S — more than five times the number of abortion clinics – and CPCs are ”often vaguely named, and women setting out to go to an abortion provider sometimes mistakenly walk into a CPC.”   ADADMORE 

The release of the film coincides with accelerated efforts by policymakers to monitor the advertising of CPCs, which abortion-rights advocates say is deceptive. On the federal level, a bill (HR 5652) introduced in late June by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) would prohibit CPCs from portraying themselves as abortion providers. NARAL Pro-Choice America this summer launched a campaign to ensure that such CPCs are not advertised under abortion referrals or services or listed as medical clinics unless they are medically licensed facilities.