The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[Soon]

[Cin]

Appeals Court Allows Unconstitutional Texas Abortion Restrictions to Take Effect While Legal Challenge Proceeds

AUSTIN - A federal appeals court ruled today that part of a Texas anti-abortion law that was struck down Monday by a district court will be allowed to take effect while legal challenges proceed. The provisions will cause at least one-third of the state's licensed health centers that currently provide abortion to stop offering the service immediately.

The law was initially challenged by more than a dozen women's health care providers represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the law firm of George Brothers Kincaid & Horton. The district court ruled Monday that a provision that requires doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital is not rationally related to ensuring patient safety, and that the requirement would place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking abortion. Following the state's emergency request, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the provisions can take effect while the case moves forward.

"We will continue to fight to preserve access to abortion services in Texas," said Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "This law is unconscionable. As the district court found, it does not further patient safety, and it will shut down many clinics across the state."

"The result of this ruling is not academic," said Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. "Women in many parts of the state will lose access to care they count on because clinics will close. If the State of Texas cares about women's health and safety, as it claims, it should take steps to reduce the need for abortion rather than closing clinics in already underserved parts of the state."

For more information on this case, please visit: http://www.aclu.org/reproductive-fre...thood-v-abbott

https://www.aclu.org/reproductive-fr...ns-take-effect



Stealth Attack: What You Need to Know About the New Abortion Laws

The ACLU has enlisted the help of comic artist Jen Sorensen to help illustrate (literally) the coordinated, national efforts that anti-abortion groups are waging across the country to outlaw women's health clinics and block access to abortion care. Jen uses sharp wit and humor to reveal the tactics our opponents are using to undermine our private and personal decisions.

Ultimately these attacks are no laughing matter. During the 2013 state legislative session over 300 anti-abortion restrictions were introduced. From motorcycle vaginas to claims that "women don't get pregnant that often from rape," we have seen some politicians and their political allies go to ridiculous lengths to push through anti-choice measures. These politicians MUST think we are stupid if they think we want politicians playing doctor.

Check out Sorensen's illustrations:

https://www.aclu.org/reproductive-fr...-abortion-laws

[Cin]

Behind the right’s crazy crusade to make women pay more for health insurance
Equalizing premiums for men and women is common sense -- unless you’re opposed to women’s freedom

In a sane world, when Rep. Renee Ellmers asked rhetorically last week “Has a man ever delivered a baby?” she would have been arguing not against, but for the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that men and women pay the same insurance premiums. After all, the special physical burdens borne solely by women to ensure the life and health of the next generation obviously benefit both genders, right? Healthy men today can thank their mothers for eating well and getting good prenatal care; likewise fathers are grateful to the mothers of their children for the same. (Michael Hiltzik runs down the case for sharing those costs publicly here.)

But no, Ellmers asked that question of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in order to rail against the ACA’s equal premium requirement. She thought it was a clever “gotcha” moment, designed to show the craziness of requiring all insurance policies to cover maternity care and contraception without a co-pay. (The doofuses at Breitbart agreed, declaring “Ellmers brings her A game.”) Amazingly, Ellmers chairs the House GOP’s “women’s policy committee” – so how could she be so tone-deaf in attacking the way the ACA helps that increasingly elusive GOP constituency, female voters?

Because the right-wing base of the modern Republican Party is dedicated to restoring men as the head of the household, and the nuclear, husband-headed family as the principle social unit. From Rick Santorum railing against contraception and preaching the nuclear family as the answer to poverty in last year’s GOP presidential primary, to Rafael Cruz Sr. telling an audience that “God commands us men to teach your wife, to teach your children—to be the spiritual leader of your family,” today’s right-wing Republicans are increasingly comfortable with open displays of old-time crackpot patriarchy. This week Sen. Ted Cruz Jr. courts the right-wing preachers of the South Carolina Renewal Project, which is thought to be a key stop on his way to the GOP nomination in that early-primary state.
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Let’s face it: The only way charging women more for health insurance and healthcare makes sense is if they have a partner who either shares that burden or shoulders it entirely. As in … a husband. Then it’s clear that the male of the species is doing his part to keep the species healthy and reproducing itself. A woman who doesn’t have a husband to play that role? Well, there shouldn’t be women like that – and certainly if there are, they shouldn’t be having children anyway, or even having sex, so they don’t need maternity care or contraception.

That’s the only way I can explain the GOP’s willingness to openly endorse an enormous transfer of wealth from women back to men by not only advocating the repeal of the ACA but specifically railing against its equal-premium provisions. But don’t worry, gals: You’ll get that wealth back once you get yourself a man!

I got a glimpse of this mind-set from an otherwise open-minded Republican, former RNC chair Michael Steele, last year, when he argued against the ACA’s contraception without a co-pay provision on “Hardball.” As Steele told me:

The problem is that you have effectively absolved the male of any responsibility in the relationship with this woman, whether it’s a sexual nature or beyond that. It’s not just about giving women access to contraception. It’s about the responsible behavior that goes with that access. It’s nice for Barack Obama to tell women, ‘I got your back. Here, have a pill.’ Men have a responsibility here … It’s this other piece that doesn’t get talked about in terms of the responsibility of fathers, or potential fathers, in this relationship.

I tried to reassure Steele that men could continue to be responsible to the women in their lives, even if they got contraception without a co-pay, but he wasn’t having it. I saw the uneasiness with female autonomy that’s at the heart of modern Republicanism, even if Steele himself handles that anxiety better than folks on the far right.

Article in entirety:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/05/behi...lth_insurance/

[Cin]

Supreme Court allows Texas abortion restrictions to remain in place

The Supreme Court divided down partisan lines today when it ruled that Texas can continue to enforce strict abortion restrictions that prevent nearly a third of the state’s clinics from operating.

The court rejected the arguments by Planned Parenthood and several affiliated clinics that claimed that the strictures place an “undue burden” on women’s ability to procure an abortion.

“In just the few short days since the injunction was lifted,” lawyers for these groups wrote to the court, “over one-third of the facilities providing abortions in Texas have been forced to stop providing that care and others have been forced to drastically reduce the number of patients to whom they are able to provide care. Already, appointments are being canceled and women seeking abortions are being turned away.”

Justice Scalia, writing in support of the order, agreed with lower court judges who claimed that the restrictions do not outlaw the procedure, they merely make women drive a greater distance to obtain one.

In a statement, Texas Governor Rick Perry praised the decision. “This is good news both for the unborn and for the women of Texas, who are now better protected from shoddy abortion providers operating in dangerous conditions,” he said. “As always, Texas will continue doing everything we can to protect the culture of life in our state.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/2...main-in-place/

[Kobi]

Michigan women will have to purchase a separate rider if they want their health insurance to pay for an abortion, after the state's Legislature on Wednesday banned most public and private plans from covering abortion as a medical procedure.

Women must buy the rider before they become pregnant in order to have abortion coverage, once the law goes into effect in March. Women who become pregnant through rape or incest must already have the rider in place for an abortion to be covered, leading some opponents to dub the riders, "rape insurance."

But currently, insurance abortion riders don't actually exist in Michigan, the law's opponents say.

"There are no riders in Michigan that we are aware of," Lori Lamerand, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan, told The Huffington Post. "There are some riders available for some procedures, but there are certainly no riders for abortions here."

Elizabeth Nash is the state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a nationally recognized nonprofit reproductive health institute. "The riders don't exist," she told The Huffington Post. "There's no cost information. The riders just don't exist."

Michigan is the ninth state to restrict public and private insurance plans from covering abortions, Nash told The Huffington Post. Only two of those states have providers with abortion riders available for purchase. Dave Waymire, PR consultant for the Michigan Association of Health Plans, also told The Huffington Post that the group does not know which insurance companies currently provide or would offer abortion riders in the future, and how they would be priced.

There were about 23,000 reported abortions in Michigan in 2012, according to the Associated Press. Less than 4 percent were paid for by insurance. Women enrolled in Medicaid must pay out of pocket for abortions, except when their lives are at risk, or if they are victims of rape or incest.




According to a study published in the scientific journal Women's Health Issues, a typical first-trimester abortion costs around $500. Most women incurred ancillary expenses for transportation, lost wages and child-care costs, making the abortion more expensive. According to the study, 14 percent of women put off paying rent; another 16 percent delayed buying food in order to pay for the procedure.

Those costs can skyrocket in the second or third trimester to as much as $10,000, especially if the procedure is done in the hospital, Lamerand told The Huffington Post. Those procedures won't be covered by insurance in Michigan either.

"An early trimester procedure is one thing, but if you consider a family that had to abort a child due to a medical issue -- at a time when a family would be experiencing an incredible tragedy, we will just be adding insult to injury," she said.

After Gov. Rick Snyder (R) vetoed a similar bill in 2012, saying it wasn't "appropriate to tell a woman who becomes pregnant due to rape that she needed to select elective insurance coverage," Right to Life Michigan mounted a challenge, gathering 300,000 signatures on a petition (4 percent of the state's population). That forced the bill back to the Republican-controlled Legislature, which approved it Tuesday night; it does not need the governor's signature. Had legislators vetoed the bill, it would have been subject to a statewide vote in 2014.

Opponents of the legislation, like Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing), who called the law "misogynistic" and "extreme" in a powerful floor speech Tuesday night about her own rape, may have some recourse. The Detroit Free Press reported that the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups are discussing a coalition to mount another abortion petition drive -- this time to repeal the new law.

But Lamerand was extremely cautious about mounting a petition drive, given the resources needed to get the measure on the statewide ballot. A successful ballot initiative could cost $3 million, she said.

"That would take an extreme amount of resources to mount, and those resources may be better utilized to help women who are now not going to be able to afford their procedure," she said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4433040.html

[Kobi]

[Kobi]