The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[Kobi]

NEW YORK (AP) — The federal government on Monday told a judge it will reverse course and take steps to comply with his order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions.

The decision ends a years-long fight between President Barack Obama's administration, which had argued that age limits for the morning-after pill are common sense, and women's rights groups, which insisted the drug should be made as freely available as aspirin.

The Department of Justice, in the latest development in the complex back-and-forth over access to the drug, notified U.S. District Judge Edward Korman it will submit a plan for compliance. If he approves it, the department will drop its appeal of his April ruling.

According to the department's letter to the judge, the Food and Drug Administration has told the maker of the pills to submit a new drug application with proposed labeling that would permit it to be sold "without a prescription and without age or point-of-sale prescriptions." The FDA said that once it receives the application it "intends to approve it promptly."

Last week, an appeals court dealt the government a setback by saying it would immediately permit unrestricted sales of the two-pill version of the emergency contraception until the appeal was decided. That order was met with praise from advocates for girls' and women's rights and with scorn from social conservatives and other opponents, who argue the drug's availability takes away the rights of parents of girls who could get it without their permission.

Advocates for girls' and women's rights said Monday the federal government's decision to comply with the judge's ruling could be a move forward for "reproductive justice" if the FDA acts quickly and puts emergency contraception over the counter without restriction.

Annie Tummino, lead plaintiff in a lawsuit over unrestricted access to the morning-after pill and coordinator of the National Women's Liberation, said women and girls should have "the absolute right to control our bodies without having to ask a doctor or a pharmacist for permission."

"It's about time that the administration stopped opposing women having access to safe and effective birth control," she said in an emailed statement.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards, in a statement, called the government's decision to drop the appeal "a huge breakthrough for access to birth control and a historic moment for women's health and equity."

But opponents of easy access to the morning-after pill, such as the anti-abortion Family Research Council, criticized the government for not sticking with its decision to appeal.

"We're very concerned and disappointed at the same time because what we see here is the government caving to political pressure instead of putting first the health and safety of girls (and) parental rights," said Anna Higgins, director of the council's Center for Human Dignity.

The government had appealed the judge's underlying April 5 ruling, which ordered emergency contraceptives based on the hormone levonorgestrel be made available without a prescription, over the counter and without point-of-sale or age restrictions.

It had asked the judge to suspend the effect of that ruling until the appeals court could decide the case. But the judge declined, saying the government's decision to restrict sales of the morning-after pill was "politically motivated, scientifically unjustified and contrary to agency precedent." He also said there was no basis to deny the request to make the drugs widely available.

The government had argued that "substantial market confusion" could result if the judge's ruling were enforced while appeals were pending, only to be later overturned.

The morning-after pill contains a higher dose of the female hormone progestin than is in regular birth control pills. Taking it within 72 hours of rape, condom failure or just forgetting regular contraception can cut the chances of pregnancy by up to 89 percent, but it works best within the first 24 hours. If a girl or woman already is pregnant, the pill, which prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg, has no effect.

The FDA was preparing in 2011 to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill with no limits when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled her own scientists in an unprecedented move.

The FDA announced in late April that Plan B One-Step, the newer version of emergency contraception, the same drug but combined into one pill instead of two, could be sold without a prescription to those age 15 or older. Its maker, Teva Women's Health, plans to begin those sales soon. Sales had previously been limited to those who were at least 17.

The judge later ridiculed the FDA changes, saying they established "nonsensical rules" that favored sales of the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill and were made "to sugarcoat" the government's appeal.

He also said they placed a disproportionate burden on blacks and the poor by requiring a prescription for less expensive generic versions of the drug bought by those under age 17 and by requiring those age 17 or over to show proof-of-age identification at pharmacies. He cited studies showing that blacks with low incomes are less likely than other people to have government-issued IDs.

The decision marks a sharp reversal for Obama and his administration. His previous decision to appeal set off a storm of criticism from girls' and women's rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for their health. Abortion rights advocates who had counted Obama as among their supporters angrily questioned why a Democratic president had sided with social conservatives in favor of limiting women's health care choices.

Reluctant to get drawn into a messy second-term spat over social issues, White House officials have argued that the FDA and the Department of Justice were acting independently of the White House in deciding how to proceed. That approach continued Monday, with the White House referring all questions about the decision to Health and Human Services.

Still, Obama has made clear in the past that he feels strongly about the limits, and he said in 2011 he supported Sebelius' decision to impose them despite the advice of her scientists.

"As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine," Obama said then.

http://news.yahoo.com/feds-girls-mor...025550538.html

[Allison W]

Originally Posted by Kobi

The DoJ stops fighting the morning-after pill

About fucking time. What the hell was Obama thinking in the first place, here?

[Kobi]

A controversial abortion ban passes a House committee, while a Republican raises eyebrows with a startling comment about rape.

Republicans on Wednesday handed Democrats more ammunition to declare that the GOP's War on Women, a focal point in last year's elections, is back.

The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill by a 20-12 vote that would outlaw all abortions — including those resulting from rape and incest — after 20 weeks. The current federal and Supreme Court-mandated threshold is 24 weeks.

Even before the bill's passage, Democrats were outraged over comments made by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), the bill's author. Franks defended the decision to exclude exceptions for rape by saying, "The incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low."

To some, the remark echoed the "legitimate rape" comment made by failed Senate candidate Todd Akin (R-Mo.) last year. Akin's claim that women's bodies could magically detect "legitimate rape" and had a way of "shutting that whole thing down" to prevent pregnancy likely cost Republicans an easy Senate seat. It also spurred a Democratic campaign accusing Republicans of outright hostility toward women's interests.

Democrats on Wednesday immediately seized on Franks' comment.

"The idea that the Republican men on this committee think they can tell the women of America they have to carry to term the product of a rape is outrageous," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.)

Unlike Akin, however, Franks may have managed to steer clear of crazy town.

"Simply stating that the number of abortions in the case of rape is low (in relation to the total number of abortions) is not the same thing as Todd Akin's crazy, unscientific claim that women can't get pregnant from 'legitimate rape,'" The Weekly Standard's John McCormack wrote.

New York Magazine's liberal columnist Jonathan Chait agreed, noting that Franks did not say the "rate" of rape-induced pregnancy was low, but rather that the number of actual pregnancies as a result of rape are. Plus, he said, Franks "was not relying on pseudoscientific nuttery about the lady-parts shutting down pregnancy in the case of rape."

Franks may have a statistical case to support his comment, too. According to the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, the pregnancy rate from rape is roughly five percent.

Still, Franks' remarks came off as tone deaf, especially since they followed other questionable comments about women that Republican lawmakers and pundits have made over the past few months.

As Congress debated how to handle the military's sexual assault epidemic, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) suggested the problem was an unavoidable result of "the hormone level created by nature." Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) went further, accusing women of bringing the problem on themselves by joining the military in the first place.

And last month, following a Pew Research report that found women were the sole or primary source of income in 40 percent of American households, Red State's Erick Erickson said that men were the "dominant" sex, and that women should accept their "complementary" role in society. After receiving plenty of scathing responses, Erickson needled his opponents even more, saying "feminist and emo lefties have their panties in a wad."

It's no surprise that Democrats are quietly stockpiling all those remarks, part of a new offensive against the GOP. The Republican Party may not want a War on Women, but Democrats will make sure they get one.

http://theweek.com/article/index/245...-women-is-back

[Soon]

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

US Supreme Court has agreed to consider a challenge to the Massachusetts abortion clinic buffer zone law.

The Supreme Court issued an order today granting a writ of certiorari to the petitioners, who are objecting to the law that keeps abortion protesters a set distance away from abortion clinics.

The high court’s action comes after a federal appeals court in January upheld the law, saying it protected the rights of patients while, at the same time, allowing others to express their opinions.

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said in its ruling, “Few subjects have proven more controversial in modern times than the issue of abortion. ... The nation is sharply divided about the morality of the practice and its place in a caring society. But the right of the state to take reasonable steps to ensure the safe passage of persons wishing to enter health care facilities cannot seriously be questioned.

“The Massachusetts statute at issue here is a content-neutral, narrowly tailored time-place-manner regulation that protects the rights of prospective patients and clinic employees without offending the First Amendment rights of others,” said the opinion, written by Judge Bruce M. Selya, who heard the case, along with two other judges.

The appeals court ruling affirmed a decision by US District Judge Joseph L. Tauro in February 2012.

The law creates a 35-foot fixed buffer zone around the driveways and entrances of clinics. The lawsuit, Eleanor McCullen et al v. Martha Coakley et al, was brought by seven people who say they regularly engaged in antiabortion counseling outside the three clinics.

The challenge to the law was the latest in a series. “This case does not come to us as a stranger,” the appeals court said, leading off its decision.

The court twice upheld an earlier version of the law, in 2001 and 2004. After the Legislature revised the law in 2007, the appeals court upheld it again in 2009. More challenges were launched in Tauro’s court. Tauro rejected them, but the plaintiffs appealed.

Massachusetts began moving toward a buffer zone law after the slayings of two clinic workers in Brookline in 1994 shocked the nation. John C. Salvi III, a 22-year-old abortion opponent, shot two clinic workers to death and wounded several others. Salvi later committed suicide in prison while serving two life sentences.

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013...nzJ/story.html

[Kobi]

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives approved on Monday sweeping restrictions on abortions, including a ban on most after 20 weeks of pregnancy and stricter standards for abortion clinics.

If the bill becomes law, Texas could become the 13th state to pass a 20-week ban and would have some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country.

Supporters says the bill is needed to protect women's health and to keep fetuses from feeling pain. Opponents say it will cause nearly all the state's abortion clinics to close or be completely rebuilt.

"Sadly, too often today the back-alley abortion is the abortion clinic because the standards for providers and the facilities are too lax or substandard," the measure's House sponsor, Representative Jodie Laubenberg, told colleagues early Monday. "This bill will assure that women are given the highest standard of healthcare."

State Representative Senfronia Thompson, a Democrat, waved a coat hanger on the floor of the House, warning that such objects would be used to perform abortions if the measure became law.

"There are going to be more people ending up in the hospital DOA (dead on arrival) for trying to do the abortions themselves," Thompson said during the debate.

The vote was 95-34, mostly along party lines. The House gave the measure preliminary approval earlier on Monday by a vote of 97-33. The measure now returns to the Senate, which has passed a version of the bill that does not include a 20-week ban.

Republicans are racing to send the measure to Governor Rick Perry, who supports restricting abortion, before the current special legislative session ends on Tuesday.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, but conservative states have enacted laws in recent years that seek to place restrictions on the procedure, especially on abortions performed late in pregnancy.

Twelve states have passed 20-week bans, including two states where the bans take effect later this year, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. Courts have blocked the bans in three of the 12 states - Arizona, Georgia and Idaho.

Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill banning abortions 20 weeks after fertilization. The measure is extremely unlikely to become law because Democrats control the U.S. Senate and the White House.

Similar to the federal measure, the 20-week provision of the Texas proposal is based on controversial medical research that suggests a fetus starts to feel pain at that point.

The Texas proposal would allow exemptions for abortions to save a woman's life and in cases of severe fetal abnormalities.

Thompson unsuccessfully proposed an exemption for victims of rape and incest.

Planned Parenthood said the stricter requirements for abortion facilities would reduce the number of clinics in Texas to five from the present 42.

http://news.yahoo.com/texas-house-re...150751075.html

[Kobi]

Ohio has three new abortion-restricting laws on the books now that Governor John Kasich has signed the new state budget without vetoing any of the abortion measures attached to it.

Kaisich also continued the trend of keeping the visuals of abortion legislation 100 percent men.

Keep in mind that there are actually two big anti-abortion legislative efforts going on in Ohio this month. HB 200, the bill that will, among other things, require doctors to give patients disputed scientific "facts" about abortion, is still making its way through the state's legislature. The budget measures signed today pertain to funding provided to family planning services (effectively prioritizing anti-abortion pregnancy centers over Planned Parenthood for federal funding), and bans surgical facilities that perform abortions from partnering with public hospitals for transfer agreements. The Cleveland Plain Dealer explains the practical effects of the latter:

Surgical facilities in the state are required to have a transfer agreements with a hospital, Ribbins said, adding that barring Planned Parenthood from drafting agreements with public hospitals would force the health care provider to seek agreements with private hospitals, which are often affiliated with religious groups that oppose abortion."

A last-minute provision added to the bill will require doctors to listen for, and if detected, inform patients of, a "fetal heartbeat." The bill doesn't specify the method used to detect the heartbeat, but this could possibly mean that doctors will perform external ultrasounds.

The new measures could cause the closure of some clinics and family planning centers that provide abortions. At the very least, they'll make it a lot harder for women in the state to receive any of the services offered by those providers.

While the three abortion measures in the budget went untouched, the governor did veto 22 measures from the budget, including provisions pertaining to Medicaid, the sales tax, and Spider Monkeys.

http://news.yahoo.com/meet-ohios-thr...030520731.html

[Kobi]

Reuters) - Stricter rules for abortion clinics were approved by the North Carolina Senate on Wednesday, adding that state to the ranks of a growing number nationwide seeking to tighten regulations.

The bill passed the Republican-majority state Senate on Wednesday on a vote of 29-12. Supporters maintain the bill is designed to protect the safety of women who seek an abortion, while opponents argue it could shut down all but one of the state's clinics.

The package of anti-abortion amendments was attached to an unrelated bill that would ban sharia, Islamic law in the state.

The amendments would require abortion clinics in the state to meet the same safety standards as ambulatory surgery centers, limit healthcare coverage for abortion and that a doctor be present when women take the RU-486 pill to induce abortion.

The move comes as lawmakers in Texas and Ohio have pushed hard for abortion limits in the past week, angering supporters of abortion rights. The tightened standards for abortion clinics are being considered in five states, and are already on the books in nine more, according to abortion rights advocates.

"A fuse has been lit that is burning across this country. Women have been shut down, shut out and told to shut up, but we demand to be heard," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. "These attacks on women's health are dangerous and deeply unpopular, and that's why politicians are trying to sneak them in with special sessions, midnight votes, hearings without witnesses and other underhanded tactics."

The North Carolina House of Representatives has already passed the sharia bill without the last-minute abortion provisions, which were added by state senators without public notice in a late-day committee hearing and put to a preliminary vote on the Senate floor in Raleigh on Tuesday night.

The bill now goes back to the House for approval of the changes. If the bill is not approved, it may be sent to a conference committee to decide whether the abortion restrictions stay in the bill before it goes to the governor.

The hasty action was decried not only by supporters of abortion rights, but by the state's Republican governor.

The nine states that require abortion clinics to meet the same safety standards as ambulatory surgery centers for all abortions are Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, according to the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Twenty-five states have passed less stringent variations of those laws, NARAL said, including some that require later-term abortions to be performed in a hospital.

[Kobi]

RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - North Carolina's "Moral Monday" protesters, now in their tenth week, objected to a bill that could limit abortion access - the latest move to counter a conservative shift by the state's first Republican-led government in more than a century.

The rally at the state capitol in Raleigh on Monday night was one of the largest since the protests began this spring, drawing about 2,000 people, including 64 protesters who refused to leave the legislative chambers and were arrested.

The protests have gained momentum since a few dozen people first rallied against the political shift to the right in a state that Barack Obama won in the 2008 presidential election but lost in 2012. Some 700 people have been arrested in acts of civil disobedience over issues ranging from natural gas drilling to school vouchers to voting rights.

Republican legislators have largely stayed mum in the midst of the protests, though some state officials have grumbled about the cost of the arrests and the impact on the state.

"I'm fielding calls every day, ‘What the heck's going on (over) there?'" the state's Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker told a crowd of reporters Monday. "The current environment makes it very challenging to market North Carolina."

This week, the protest zeroed in on a bill passed last week by the North Carolina state Senate requiring abortion clinics to conform to the same safety standards as ambulatory surgery centers, a regulation currently met by only one of the state's five clinics.

Opponents say it will limit access to safe abortions. Supporters of the measure say the higher standards will make abortion safer.

Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, criticized senators for pushing the regulations through without a public hearing.

The state House of Representatives has scheduled a public hearing on the proposed regulations for Tuesday.

The bill makes North Carolina the latest state to consider abortion restrictions. The issue has dominated politics in Texas in recent days, after Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis spent 11 hours on the senate floor in an effort to stall the measure.

On Monday, a U.S. federal judge temporarily blocked a part of a new Wisconsin law, signed on Friday by Republican Governor Scott Walker, that opponents say will close two of the four abortion clinics in the state if enforced.

Cecil Bothwell, a city councilman from Asheville, North Carolina, made the four-hour bus ride to Raleigh with about 100 of his constituents. He said state lawmakers want to have it both ways when it comes to the state's role in health care.

"It amazes me that they claim they don't want government intervening in health care issues, yet they want to tell women what to do with their bodies," Bothwell said.

Melissa Reed, a vice president of Planned Parenthood Health Systems, brought a petition with 10,000 signatures opposing the measure.

Like many at Monday's protest, Tanya Glover, 34, who lives in Harnett County, a rural area outside of Raleigh, wore pink.

As she lined up with her father to be arrested, she said the legislature's lean education budget will slash services for her special needs child.

"This state has gone to hell and it's hurting my family," said Glover.