Tag Archives: Cecile Richards

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • Our smarmy Vice President Mike Pence was all too eager to cast the tie-breaking Senate vote to advance legislation allowing states the right to block Title X funds from going to Planned Parenthood. In case you missed my January analysis of his anti-life legislative record, this guy is the absolute worst. He’s PLINO — “pro-life in name ONLY” — as he backs policies that do nothing to help the well-being of children or families. This move will only hurt the scores of low-income women who depend on us for care. (Politico)
  • The horrendous “born alive” bill I covered in the last rundown was passed by our wretched legislators. It now heads to Gov. Ducey’s desk. (AZ Central)
  • Planned Parenthood has a real asset in our president, Cecile Richards. She’s calling out Ivanka Trump bigly in a recent interview. By the way — Ms. Richards will be at our annual luncheon in Phoenix on April 13! (Buzzfeed)
  • North Carolina’s preposterously cruel “bathroom bill” continues to make news. The law stands to cost the state a cool $3.76 billion in revenue. And, according to this article, “that number will increase by hundreds of millions of dollars if the NCAA follows through on the threat it made last week to block the state from hosting any events through 2022. The NCAA is making those placement decisions this week.” Lawmakers there have apparently reached a deal to repeal it, but the LGBTQ community has valid concerns about the initiative doubling down on discrimination and not protecting people from discrimination until 2020. (HuffPo)
  • Trumpcare may have gone down in a blaze of not-glory last week, but here are seven ways the Trump Administration could make the Affordable Care Act “explode.” Ugh. (NBC News)
  • But hey, maybe there’s a possibility we could achieve the dream of a single-payer/universal health care system soon? (NYT)
  • Just a reminder: SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch has an ABYSMAL record on women’s issues. (NBC News)
  • No Baby Should Be Born With HIV. What Will It Take to Save Them All? (Time)
  • The question I constantly ask myself: Why has it become so hard to get an abortion??? (The New Yorker)
  • In 105 counties, Planned Parenthood is the only full-service birth control clinic! (Vox)
  • Women’s Health has a great post on how to communicate your STD status to a potential partner. (Women’s Health)
  • Lifehacker has a very informative post on individual state laws that is a MUST for bookmarking to keep up with the kajillion harebrained schemes being plotted by lawmakers nationwide. (Lifehacker)
  • Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is sooooo pro-life he hasn’t bothered to adopt or foster ANY children in need, has signed new legislation that forces doctors to “investigate” the backgrounds of their patients seeking abortions. If doctors fail at this oppressive task, they could face prison. (Bustle)
  • Surprise, surprise — states with the most Planned Parenthood clinics have lower rates of teen births and STDs. (Glamour)
  • The two yahoos who tried to destroy Planned Parenthood with unlawfully recorded, heavily edited recordings are facing 15 felony charges. Hope they follow the yellow brick road right to prison! (Rewire)
  • Get a load of this bulls****: The state of Iowa was considering a bill that would allow the parents of INDEPENDENT, SINGLE, ADULT WOMEN to make medical decisions for them with regard to abortion. (Raw Story)
  • Forced-birth advocate, opponent of the ACA’s zero-copay birth control requirement, and first-class dummy John Fleming has been tapped as deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Fleming, who is also sooooo pro-life he hasn’t bothered to adopt or foster ANY children in need (according to my research), was duped by an Onion satire article that reported Planned Parenthood was opening an $8 billion “abortion-plex” complete with a theater and water slide. (Jezebel)
  • Another awful appointment to the Department of Health and Human Services? Roger Severino — an anti-LGBTQ activist who’s spoken out against protections for LGBTQ individuals. He’ll now be comfy and cozy in the department’s Office of Civil Rights. #FacePalm (LGBTQ Nation)
  • If you’ve taken comfort in the fact that you have private health insurance and may not be affected by some of the nonsense going on with the ACA, please take discomfort in the fact that the GOP wants to restrict private insurance from covering abortion too. (Guttmacher)
  • I really appreciated this post via Cosmo that expounds upon why there is no economic justice for women without abortion rights. We can never really be whole, autonomous, independent, upwardly mobile persons without the right to control our own bodies, and it is NOT a coincidence that women and children are more likely to suffer from poverty than men. Our fates are inextricably linked to our reproductive choices, and the lack thereof. (Cosmopolitan)
  • I’ll leave you with a laugh, Dear Readers. A recent survey showed that 52 percent of men don’t believe women’s affordable access to birth control has EVER affected their lives. HAHAHA! Ninety-nine percent of women have used birth control, correct? So, what planet are these imbeciles living on??? Aren’t most of these respondents heterosexual, non-virgin men??? Ladies, try to resist the urge to call up all your male exes to demand a THANK YOU ON BEHALF OF YOUR BIRTH CONTROL for not making them fathers. Or, on second thought … maybe we should have a nationwide phone bank to do just that! The turnout would be bigger than the Women’s March. #DialMeIn (HuffPo)

Tom Price, Secretary Against Health and Human Services?

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Protesters at Sen. McCain's Tucson office, December 20, 2016.

Protesters at Sen. McCain’s Tucson office, December 20, 2016.

On December 20, I took part in a demonstration opposing changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We gathered outside Sen. John McCain’s Tucson office and told our health care stories. Almost all of us were women, but our stories included issues like the cost of diabetic testing supplies and insulin, the difficulties with employer-provided health plans that don’t allow specialized testing and care outside of their network, the prohibitive cost of medication for chronic conditions like AIDS, and my story of a CT scan (which I could only afford with government assistance) for something unrelated that found my kidney cancer. We were unable to meet with anyone from the office, but the written stories were given to staff and a later meeting was set up.

Tom Price is among those who could do the most harm to the greatest number of Americans.

I begin with this story because Tom Price, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services, doesn’t think the government has any place in our health care system. He fits very well among Mr. Trump’s choices to head government departments and agencies, a group of people who don’t believe in the work of their respective departments: Jeff Sessions for attorney general, who was denied a federal judgeship because of his racist comments and judicial overreach as Alabama’s attorney general; Scott Pruitt, who has sued the Environmental Protection Agency 13 times because he opposes regulations and doesn’t believe in climate science, to head that agency; Betsy DeVos for secretary of education, who has no background in education and has spent millions of dollars lobbying to get money away from public schools; and Rex Tillerson, who worked all his life for Exxon, which had a large deal with Russia put on hold by sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea, as secretary of state, with the ability to lift those sanctions. And that’s just a sample.

Since 2009, Price, an orthopedic surgeon, has been a member of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a group whose members sign a “declaration of independence” renouncing payments from third-party payers, whether government or private insurers. Their journal has published articles opposing taxes on cigarettes, linking abortion and breast cancer, doubting whether HIV causes AIDS, and opposing mandatory vaccinations. They oppose regulating medical practice even as far as hospital peer reviews, and are fiercely for free-market medicine. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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phone-operator

Time to call your senators!

Happy 2017, readers! I hope the first days of this new year have brought you happiness, love, joy, and hope.

Not that you needed a reminder, but we are mere days away from having a narcissistic, Twitter-addicted, habitual liar, and numbskull as our president.

  • Everyone knows he’s a prolific teller of untruths, including the Washington Post, who gave “The Donald” ALL THE PINOCCHIOS for his bazillion lies in 2016. Hope they’re ready for another blockbuster year! Actually … #MakeThatFour (WaPo)
  • Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has hijacked Donald Trump’s campaign slogan and flipped the script to reveal the truth — by repealing the Affordable Care Act, Trump and the GOP want to “Make America Sick Again.” (Politico)
  • Ugghhh. Paul Ryan … what can we even say? He has sucked in the past, he sucks at the present, and he will continue to suck in the future. He spearheaded last night’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which will strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding. And the irony is, the funding he wants to strip from us DOES NOT GO TOWARD ANY ABORTIONS. The Hyde Amendment banned federal monies going toward abortion care in 1976. The money Speaker Ryan wants to rob from us is Medicaid payouts for low-income patients who receive preventive and diagnostic care and low-cost or free condoms and contraceptives. This is heartlessness and cruelty on a savage level. So today, our advocates are hand-delivering 80,000 petitions to Ryan’s office to express just how furious we are! (NY Mag) *Sadly though, we could lose our federal funding as early as next month*
  • Sen. Robert Stivers (R-Kentucky) is championing a 20-week abortion ban in the state because he thinks when women consent to sex, they also consent to pregnancy. Guess a-freaking-gain, pal. (Raw Story)
  • A federal judge in Texas decided that doctors, who take an oath to help people and never cause harm, can deny patients care on the basis of gender identity and history of abortion. (Rewire)
  • Mississippi legislators = a bunch of bigots who want to make hatred of LGBTQ folks an actual religion. (Slate)
  • The National Institutes of Health is entering the first-ever worldwide clinical trial of an HIV vaccine! (NBC News)
  • In 2016, 57 percent of American women of reproductive age lived in a state considered either hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights. Just think about the magnitude of that statistic. Most of us live in a state that wants to take away our right to a safe, LEGAL medical procedure. (Guttmacher)
  • 106 lawmakers asked Trump to repeal the Hyde Amendment. Brace yourselves: He won’t. (NY Mag)
  • Texas’ craptasic governor, Dan Patrick, wants to pass a “bathroom bill” similar to North Carolina. But this one only targets trans women and girls because, according to his preposterous, archaic logic, men “can defend themselves.” (Texas Tribune)
  • As a matter of fact, six states are now working on this “bathroom bill” nonsense. (Time)
  • Did women break new ground in 2016? Slate delves in with an astute analysis. (Slate)
  • One ground we didn’t break? We still make up the majority of low-wage workers in this country. (NY Mag)
  • Our relentlessly fearless president, Cecile Richards, gave an interview to Rolling Stone promising to continue to fight the hostile political climate that threatens the health and very lives of our patients. (Rolling Stone)

McCain Can’t Airbrush His Anti-Women Record

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“Decades of attacks on women’s health can’t be erased by a last-minute ploy”

Phoenix, AZ – After suffering mounting criticism from women across Arizona for his sustained support for Donald Trump — who was caught on camera condoning sexual assault — John McCain is attempting to minimize his abhorrent record on women’s health. McCain is facing a tight reelection against Ann Kirkpatrick. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona today issued a harsh rebuke of McCain’s recent political pander: a newly formed group “Women for McCain.”

McCain’s record includes having voted against at least 55 pieces of women’s health legislation, despite health care access in Arizona being among the worst in the country.

Quote from Bryan Howard, President, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona

“John McCain can’t airbrush his year-long support of Donald Trump and the Presidential candidate’s disgusting behavior towards women. Nor can McCain airbrush his own record of voting repeatedly against women’s health and safety. John McCain has voted to defund Planned Parenthood at least eight times, pushed extreme bills that use religion as a reason to allow employers to deny women health care coverage, and voted over and over again to make it harder for women to obtain safe, legal abortions.

“Women can’t afford Trump’s abhorrent behavior towards women nor a Senator who let Trump’s behavior slide for over a year. This year at the ballot box women will hold John McCain accountable for working against Arizona’s women.”
 Continue reading →

Courting Women

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Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan: Sitting Supreme Court Justices

Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan: Sitting Supreme Court Justices

“… [T]he difference of having three women on the Supreme Court. I think that all the justices obviously are important in that court, but it really makes a difference to begin to have a court that more reflects the diversity of this country, and I think women who can really speak from a woman’s point of view, just how impactful these kind of laws that specifically target women and women’s access to health care, how impactful they are. And I was really grateful to have the women’s voices in the room.”

Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood president, March 2, 2016, commenting on that day’s oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt

Me, too, Cecile.

Courting women. Let’s snatch that phrase from the parlor in a Jane Austen novel and lob it into the Supreme Court chambers, making courting not the passive “pick me” word of yesteryear, but an assertive “empower me” word of today.

Power, judiciously applied, is what Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan demonstrated during oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. They formed a tag team of relentless logic, assertiveness, and deep understanding of the predicament of women in Texas needing timely, accessible abortion care — and not getting it. The court was probing two provisions of Texas HB2, the law that requires that (1) physicians performing abortions must have admitting privileges at a hospital near their clinics and (2) all abortions must be performed in ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs, mini-hospitals). (See SCOTUSblog “Round Up” and Roe v. Wade: Texas Then and Now for additional background on this important case.)

Justices explored the elements that create an unconstitutional “undue burden” for women seeking an abortion by questioning attorney Stephanie Toti, representing Whole Woman’s Health, and Solicitor General Scott Keller, representing Texas. Here are some highlights: Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • bathroomHobby Lobby continues to be terrible — this time they’re discriminating against a transgender employee who simply wants to use the restroom that corresponds with her gender identity. (Slate)
  • President Obama is decidedly not down with discrimination and is signing an executive order to protect LGBTQ workers — and there will be no religious exemptions for those who think their god gives them a right to discriminate. (NYT)
  • Bill Moyers had Planned Parenthood’s fearless leader, Cecile Richards, on his show for an enlightening discussion about the right wing’s crusade against reproductive rights. Definitely worth a watch! (Bill Moyers)
  • Only in modern-day America would a nurse, who is anti-contraception and refuses to dispense contraceptives, sue over not being hired to do a job in which dispensing contraception is an integral part. (Wonkette)
  • A group of protesters (anti-abortion, of course) interrupted a church service to demand that the worshippers there “repent” for supporting reproductive rights. So yeah, now churches aren’t even safe from these clowns. Ironic coming from people who claim to “serve God,” dontcha think? (Think Progress)
  • More states are recognizing that new mothers on Medicaid who wish to prevent pregnancy aren’t being served well under current rules — and they’re finding new ways to help them. (NPR)
  • Do women perceive other women differently when they’re taking the birth control pill? (Salon)

Meet Our Candidates: Dr. Richard Carmona for U.S. Senator

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The Arizona general election will be held on November 6, 2012, with early voting starting on October 11. After the many recent legislative challenges to reproductive health care access, both nationally and statewide, the importance of voting in November can’t be overstated. To help voters, Planned Parenthood Action Fund has endorsed candidates who have shown strong commitment to reproductive health and freedom. Along with those endorsements, we are spotlighting our endorsed candidates in a series called “Meet Our Candidates.” To vote in the general election, you must register to vote by October 9 — and can even register online. Make your voice heard in 2012!

[W]hen announcing Dr. Richard Carmona’s endorsement by Planned Parenthood Action Fund, President Cecile Richards said that “Arizona women need a champion who has long fought to protect and promote women’s health representing them in Washington” — and as a former U.S. surgeon general, Carmona is uniquely positioned to advocate for scientifically driven, rather than agenda-driven, policies on health and medicine.

“Health care should not be politicized.”

Carmona already has experience fighting for evidence-based health policy in an increasingly polarized political climate. After leaving his position as surgeon general, Carmona testified before Congress that the George W. Bush administration continually hampered his attempts to present scientifically sound public health policy when it conflicted with their political agenda. As Carmona said in his testimony, the Bush administration silenced him on many issues, including emergency contraception and comprehensive sex education — and the public was denied access to the latest unbiased evidence on important public health issues.

Carmona is running against Republican challenger Jeff Flake to succeed Jon Kyl as U.S. senator from Arizona. Flake’s congressional voting record is problematic, and includes support for an amendment to the Affordable Care Act to prohibit abortion coverage, support for defunding Planned Parenthood, and a vote against expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

As a U.S. senator, Carmona can bring his lifetime of experience as a physician and public-health expert to the legislature. When it comes to our medical care, no matter our political affiliations, we all need access to the best scientific evidence, and we need someone who will be a champion for our health in the U.S. Senate.

Dr. Carmona generously took time for an interview with us via telephone on October 3, 2012.

Many of us, including myself, are becoming increasingly concerned about the hostility toward science exhibited by some of our current lawmakers. What can you do to inject reason and scientific evidence into an increasingly politicized discourse about public health?

Well, first and foremost, if you remember my tenure as surgeon general, I had to do that. There was a lot of ideological, nonscientific-driven sentiment, and when necessary I stood up and I addressed the issues appropriately. It wasn’t a perfect world, especially when you have many of those ideologues thinking differently, but nevertheless, I will do the same thing as a senator.

And I think I enter the Senate with, if you will, the imprimatur of being a surgeon general and a trauma surgeon and a registered nurse and a paramedic. I bring all those years of cumulative science to the table as I discuss things with my colleagues. And although they may be ideologically driven, and I will certainly acknowledge their personal beliefs, that’s not science and it’s not fact. Continue reading →