Category Archives: Legislative Watch

SB 1367: Grieving Families Are a Casualty of Arizona’s Latest Attack on Abortion

Posted on by

The following guest post comes to us via Kelley Dupps, public policy manager for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona.

Senate Bill 1367, also known as the “live delivery” or “fetal torture” bill, depending on your worldview, was signed into law on March 31 by Gov. Doug Ducey.

Proponents of SB 1367 framed the bill as one that would give “survivors” of abortion a “chance at life” by requiring abortion providers to be trained in and stock equipment needed for “neonatal resuscitation” to keep the baby alive by any means necessary. Opponents pointed out that the chances of a late abortion resulting in a live delivery are slim to none, and the law would have “cruel consequences for grieving parents.” Families who learn their baby has fatal defects would be denied the chance to hold their newborn for the brief time they have with it, instead forcing doctors to perform heroic measures that could cause extreme suffering. Parents whose babies won’t have more than a few minutes or hours of life deserve to decide for themselves how they will spend that precious time.

Doctors will be bound to a law written by people who don’t understand how medicine is practiced.

SB 1367, an abortion bill that will do nothing more than traumatize patients, was introduced by extremist politicians looking for a fight with Planned Parenthood — although Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona intentionally stayed out of the debate. Planned Parenthood Arizona (PPAZ) does not perform late abortions, and we didn’t want deceptive lawmakers to distract the public by turning SB 1367 into a “Planned Parenthood bill,” which would draw focus from more pertinent underlying issues. To be clear: This bill stigmatizes abortion, denies compassion to families facing heartbreaking decisions, and does not impact the services provided by the amazing health care professionals at Planned Parenthood. PPAZ stands in solidarity with patients in need of health care and providers of legal, late abortions.

In the face of science, SB 1367 doubles down on the obscure and morbid aspects of abortion care in hopes of getting closer to the extremists’ coveted abortion ban. SB 1367 would require fetuses delivered at 20-24 weeks to be given “lifesaving” measures, regardless of the clinicians and patients in the room, regardless of the nonexistent instruments made tiny enough to achieve “lifesaving” measures, regardless of the ethics, morality, and humanity around grieving families and the care their specialists provide. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

Posted on by

  • Some happy news to share right off the bat — Epic TV Goddess Shonda Rhimes has joined the board of Planned Parenthood! (ABC News)

  • Dr. Willie Parker, a prominent physician and abortion provider, visited The Daily Show to talk about the barriers faced by women seeking abortion and the religious beliefs that inform his pro-choice values. What an astonishingly brave and compassionate man. (Comedy Central)
  • The Democrats’ filibuster was successful, so Republicans went ahead with the “nuclear” option for Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the Supreme Court. We know how they roll, so it’s not a surprise. “Better to change the rules altogether than play the game fairly!” –Republicans (MSNBC)
  • Can you imagine being CONVICTED of molestation for changing a baby’s diaper? Arizona was very close to enacting this, but luckily the law was struck down. (Slate)
  • This is scary: Anti-abortion groups in various states have been  tracking women’s visits to Planned Parenthood and other health clinics via cellphone data (a practice known as “geofencing”), and then sending “pro-life” digital ads to their smartphones! Massachusetts is not having it, but what about the rest of us? (Boston Globe)
  • Ivanka Trump, who purports to be all about the “economic empowerment” of women, held a meeting with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards in the weeks following the inauguration and has since done NOT A DAMN THING to advance THE most crucial aspect of women’s livelihoods — reproductive rights. (Politico)
  • The global gag rule, recently put back into effect by President Trump (wonder where Ivanka was???), will only “increase the likelihood of perilous, sometimes fatal [abortion] procedures.” Thanks in advance for contributing to the deaths of scores of women around the world, 45. (Lenny Letter)
  • Republicans have a remarkable knack for taking something that sucks and literally making it suck even worse. Kudos and cheers to Trumpcare 2.0 failing just as badly as the first version. (Think Progress)
  • The spike in oral cancer cases is spurring more and more doctors to order parents to vaccinate their young children against HPV. This goes for girls AND boys! (Chicago Tribune)
  • Speaking of HPV, a quarter of American men have cancer-causing strains of the virus! (Jezebel)
  • One of my biggest pet peeves is hearing non-scientific hysteria surrounding birth control. “Oh, I tried the Pill but it made me CRAZY!” Or, “I gained x number of pounds taking birth control!” Or, “I took the Pill but it made me super-depressed!” Well, science has spoken: Birth control has not been proven to cause depression. Also, please keep in mind, there are dozens upon dozens of different types of birth control pills. They don’t all have the same side effects! (NY Times)
  • Here’s How John McCain and Jeff Flake’s Votes Could End Up Screwing Over 30,000 Arizona Women (Phoenix New Times)
  • “The Donald” has halted all U.S. grants to the United Nations Population Fund, an international humanitarian aid organization that provides reproductive health care and works to end child marriage and female genital cutting in more than 150 countries. (HuffPo)

What’s in a Name: Repealing the Affordable Care Act

Posted on by

Supporters drop off petitions and rally at Rep. Martha McSally’s Tucson office, March 15, 2017

As this post goes to press, word has come that Speaker Paul Ryan has pulled the American Health Care Act, being unable to muster enough votes to pass it. So we have escaped that disaster, and it appears no attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act will proceed in the near future. But the fight is not over. Aspects of this bill will come up in other forms and we will have to be vigilant. But this is a victory for activism, so many thanks to all of you who made phone calls, demonstrated, told your stories, and reminded the Republicans that destroying something is not the same as governing.

So as you read this, realize what we have escaped, and what we need to watch out for as we proceed.

People were going to die. But the free market would have triumphed.

Republicans called it Obamacare, and used that name as a slur to run against President Obama in 2012. It didn’t win that race for them, but there are enough people in this country for whom the name Obama is enough to damn a program. One woman, whose son lost his job and had his monthly insurance premium fall from $567 to $88, attributes that decrease to the tax credits in Trump and Ryan’s new American Health Care Act. You know, the bill that never passed. In actuality, her son became eligible for a subsidy under Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — which is still the law.

Paul Ryan and his cronies in the House of Representatives hated the Affordable Care Act before it was written. They hated it even more when it passed and more than that when it was implemented.

What did they hate about it? Continue reading →

I Am Woman, Hear me Roar

Posted on by

In July 1978, I boarded a bus in Cleveland for the overnight trek to Washington, D.C., to join the herd of feminists marching to get the Equal Rights Amendment off the dime. In November 1989, I showed up there again to protest state and federal legislative attempts to undercut a woman’s right to an abortion. Did we send powerful messages? I think so.

Many of you will not remember the early 1970s or Helen Reddy’s feminist anthem “I Am Woman” (“hear me roar … in numbers too big to ignore”), but it strikes me that her lyrics still ring true today.

Just as throngs of protesting American women made waves in the ’70s and ’80s, now masses of women marching elsewhere on the planet are setting an example for us.

Witness what is happening around the world …

Poland "Black Monday" protest. Photo: Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images

Poland “Black Monday” protest. Photo: Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images

Thirty-six hours, that’s how long it took the Polish Parliament to reject a proposed near total ban on abortion last week.

Parliament had, apparently, been “taught humility” by women across the country, who brought the eyes of the world onto the streets of Poland when tens of thousands thronged the streets in a mass strike clad all in black, for their self-styled “Black Monday” protest.

The Government’s swift and grovelling change of heart, was a resounding victory for people power that will go down in the history books.

The New Statesman, October 10, 2016

Continue reading →

Post-Election News Rundown

Posted on by

hangers-croppedIt would be an understatement to simply say we’re all reeling from last week’s election.

Ironically, in a nation where only 1.2 percent of the population are actual “real Americans” who are natives to this country, a swath of angry, non-native voters, with the intention of “taking their country back” (from whom is still a mystery) chose to pull the proverbial lever for a self-serving, authoritarian, demagogic, misogynistic, race-baiting, ego-maniacal, predatory, pathological liar.

Thanks to the 46,000 (and counting!) folks donating to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name.

The fact that hate speech and fear-mongering triumphed is truly frightening and demoralizing.

Most disappointing to many of us is the stunning betrayal we are realizing has been perpetrated by white female voters — 53 percent of whom voted for Donald Trump. #InsertFrownyFaceEmojiHere

Sorry to shatter your dream of a sisterhood! White ladies decided not to support a woman who has a long and storied history of advocating for children, affordable health care, equal pay, family leave, and women’s health and reproductive rights. Sadly, a majority of white women proved they would rather cast a vote for an openly cruel and vindictive man who doesn’t care about consent or gender equality, and publicly assigns and strips women of their value and humanity solely based on their appearance, and bullies female journalists and other women in the public sphere for his own entertainment.

Oh, and he blatantly and outlandishly lies about abortion. A procedure that one in three women has undergone.

Fairly certainly from a statistical standpoint, many of them were Trump voters.

I guess his statement that women who have abortions should be “punished” didn’t bother them.

In other harrowing news: Continue reading →

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt: Finally, Facts Matter

Posted on by

On Monday, June 27, 2016, the Supreme Court decided that Texas HB2 was unconstitutional, eliminating requirements for Texas doctors to have hospital admitting privileges near their clinics and for abortion clinics to become surgical facilities. Many fine summaries of this landmark decision popped up within hours of the decision. See Planned Parenthood’s press release and “The Court once again makes the ‘undue-burden’ test a referendum on the facts” on SCOTUS Blog.

On Monday, the Supreme Court demanded that laws be supported by facts.

What struck me most about the majority opinions written by Justices Breyer and Ginsburg was the lack of assertion and conjecture so often found in the court’s previous abortion case decisions. Recall Justice Kennedy’s 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart opinion upholding Congress’ Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003: “We find no reliable data” that abortion causes women emotional harm, but we find it nonetheless “self-evident” and “unexceptional to conclude” that “some women” who choose to terminate their pregnancies suffer “regret,” “severe depression,” “loss of esteem,” and other ills. “Some women”? Did we really uphold a law based upon this kind of neo-paternalistic, fuzzy thinking?

Not this time out. The Supreme Court put future litigants on notice: Facts matter, science matters, logic matters, common-sense inference matters. Unsupported assertions? Nah. Consultants parading as scientists? Not so much. In workmanlike fashion, dealing with abortion in a frank and unapologetic way, the majority read into law 15 separate District Court findings of fact gleaned from stipulations, depositions, and testimony. Further, the court chastised Texas for “attempting to label an opposing expert witness, Doctor Grossman, as irresponsible.” Breyer writes, “making a hypothesis — and then attempting to verify that hypothesis with further studies, as Dr. Grossman did — is not irresponsible. It is an essential element of the scientific method. The District Court’s decision to credit Dr. Grossman’s testimony was sound, particularly given that Texas provided no credible experts to rebut it.” Wow — The Supremes defend the scientific method. Color me happy.  Continue reading →

Telling the Truth About Abortion Politics

Posted on by

Sens. Yee and Barto asked. We answered. It’s Our Turn to share the truth behind abortion politics. We have submitted the following op-ed to the Arizona Republic, but they have not (yet?) published it.

Thank You PP croppedAs a medical professional, I am dismayed at the recent “Our Turn” published in the Arizona Republic titled, “Make doctors tell the truth on abortion drug.” I would like to do just that — tell the truth and correct the record, because the opinion by legislators Barto and Yee was laden with revisionist history, misstatements of legal fact, and most important, non-medical junk science.

Doctors practice up-to-date, evidence-based medicine. I appreciate lawmakers repealing their intrusive foray into the practice of medicine, SB 1324. This law attempted to mandate how doctors dispense abortion medication according to an outdated, 16-year-old protocol contained in the original drug label. SB 1324 was an attempt to re-start a legal case that Arizona was losing. Despite the FDA’s update of the drug label to reflect current medical practice, policymakers and the governor stubbornly insisted on enacting SB 1324. Why, I cannot imagine. The repeal of this legislation was certainly welcome.

Real doctors reject junk science. More disturbing than the FDA label issue is Sens. Yee and Barto’s assertion that “at least 170 healthy babies have been born when medication abortions were reversed.” There is no scientific support for this assertion, just as there is no peer-reviewed medical evidence for the whole notion of “abortion reversal.” A handful of doctors with a moral agenda have attempted to use progesterone to “stop” a medication abortion. However, there is nothing in the literature to justify this practice, save for one report of six informal clinical anecdotes. No significant sample size, no control group, no oversight, no peer review. Regardless, last year these same legislators passed SB 1318, violating physicians’ and patients’ constitutional rights by forcing physicians to inform their patients that it is possible to reverse a medication abortion, which is untrue. Continue reading →