Tag Archives: Center for Reproductive Rights

Reproductive Health-Care Providers Challenge Arizona Laws That Put Women’s Health at Risk

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On Thursday, April 11, women’s reproductive health-care providers filed a federal lawsuit seeking to remove Arizona TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws that prevent and delay many women from accessing abortion. The lawsuit was filed by reproductive health-care provider Planned Parenthood Arizona and individual clinicians represented by O’Melveny & Myers, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Squire Patton Boggs.

Arizona’s extreme, medically unnecessary TRAP laws violate Arizona women’s constitutional right to access legal abortion. Their effect has been dramatic: a 40 percent decline in abortion clinics, leaving 80 percent of Arizona counties with no access to abortion clinics, and weeks-long waiting times for services. There is only one abortion provider in the northern part of the state, and that health center only provides medication abortion one day per week.

“Arizona lawmakers have made it difficult or even impossible for women to access safe, legal abortion,” said Bryan Howard, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Arizona. “Medically unnecessary laws that only serve to attack women’s rights and put women’s health at risk should be overturned to protect women’s health and rights.” Continue reading →

Five Things to Know About the Morning-After Pill on Its 20th Anniversary

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Medication portion of PREVEN Emergency Contraceptive Kit. Photo: Smithsonian Institution

In 1993, the New York Times Magazine posited that the morning-after pill might be “the best-kept contraceptive secret in America.” Even many doctors had no idea there was a fallback contraceptive that could be used shortly after unprotected sex or cases of rape.

In many ways, the morning-after pill had been right in front of U.S. doctors for decades. In terms of chemical composition, it was not much different from standard birth control, using the same main ingredients — synthetic hormones — in higher doses. Moreover, many of their colleagues in Europe and Asia had already been prescribing morning-after pills for years.

In 1998, years of research and advocacy led to the first FDA-approved morning-after pill.

Here, however, the secret was still largely intact. A 1994 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that two-thirds of American women had never heard of the morning-after pill or other forms of emergency contraception (EC). Less than 1 percent had ever used them.

There was an information shortfall in large part because there was no contraceptive that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) specifically for emergency use. Some providers worked around that absence by using the chemically similar estrogen and progestin medications that were approved for regular birth control. By upping the dosage, they created a suitable morning-after pill on their own. But drug makers couldn’t label or market those birth-control pills for emergency, post-coital use, since they weren’t FDA-approved for that purpose. It also spelled problems for federally funded clinics. Federal dollars couldn’t pay for an off-label medication hack, a makeshift morning-after pill that wasn’t officially approved. Continue reading →

Eroding the Birth Control Mandate

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The Trump administration made its boldest move against contraception access on Friday, when it reversed Obama-era policies requiring most employers to include birth control in employee insurance plans. Nonprofit companies, private firms, and publicly traded companies can opt out of providing birth control through employee insurance plans by claiming a “sincerely held religious or moral objection.” This change was made, effective immediately, with no period for public comment.

If you have insurance that still covers contraception, now might be the time to look into IUDs or implants, which can last for at least three years.

Previously, only a small group of religious employers was exempt from the requirement to include birth control in employee insurance plans; the new rule expands the types of businesses that can claim religious exemptions. Furthermore, these employers need not cite any particular religious beliefs, but can simply claim to have moral objections to birth control in order to opt out of including contraception in employee insurance plans.

The ruling drew condemnation from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, contraception is considered a “preventive” service and, therefore, legally must be made available with no out-of-pocket costs to patients. Zero-copay birth control, as this is called, has saved users and their families billions of dollars in the years it has been in effect. Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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Won the popular vote by more than 2 million. Just sayin'.

Won the popular vote by more than 2 million. Just sayin’.

I hate being the bearer of bad news. Unfortunately, it feels like I’ll be showering our dear readers with doom and gloom for the next month, as well as the full 208 weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency.

First, let’s get the worst out of the way:

  • We at Planned Parenthood are now in grave danger of being defunded. The president-elect has promised this and the Republican-controlled Congress will likely be more than gung-ho to gut us once and for all. I don’t shill for donations often (at all, really) on this blog, but if you can find it in your heart (and wallet) to help us, we and the millions of women we serve would be so thankful. (NY Mag)
  • Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, Tom Price, is a creep who espouses radical beliefs about “personhood,” thinks women should have no control over their bodies, doesn’t support insurance coverage of birth control, and is on the “defund Planned Parenthood” train. (The Daily Beast)
  • He’s also a Lying McLiarFace who asserts that “not one woman” ever struggled to afford birth control. (The Atlantic)
  • As of now, Hillary Clinton has trumped The Donald in total votes by more than 2 million (and counting). That isn’t a small margin. It’s “YUGE” and “bigly” (as the president-elect would say). Our soon-to-be commander in chief is not taking kindly to the news that he LOST the popular vote by such a large margin: The reckless, thin-skinned toddler in a 70-year-old body hopped on Twitter (his favorite platform) to assert that, had “millions” of people not voted illegally, he would have won the popular vote.

    First of all — this is a highly dangerous statement as there is literally ZERO evidence of “millions” of people voting illegally. However, if there were even the slightest possibility this could be true (it isn’t), how in THE WORLD can he take the giant leap to posit that everyone voting illegally voted for Hillary Clinton? Couldn’t it be equally possible that these millions of (non-existent) fraudulent voters voted for him, which calls into question whether he REALLY won the election? Funny how he only tosses out accusations of widespread voter fraud when it threatens his ability to claim victory and deem himself the winner. (NBC News)

  • Hillary Clinton wasn’t just failed by the Electoral College. Widespread voter suppression tactics (enacted by Republicans in 2010, right after Barack Obama’s history-making win — coincidence, I’m sure!) closed down at least 868 polling places nationwide and kept potentially millions of people (mostly minorities … probably another coincidence!) from voting. (WaPo)
  • Texas: Epicenter of anti-choice, anti-woman malarkey. They stay on the front lines of the War on Women! The abhorrent legislators there have decided that beginning December 19, all fetuses surgically aborted must be buried or cremated, regardless of gestational stage. Gov. Greg Abbott is claiming this measure is being taken for the “enhanced protection of the health and safety of the public.” Yet this mandate doesn’t apply to women who have miscarried in their own homes? How is this related to health and safety, then? Jeez … I’m sure their aim is not to SHAME women or make them suffer for choosing to abort, right? And I’m sure it’s definitely NOT meant to make abortion providers jump through potentially insurmountable obstacles in finding nearby funeral homes willing to provide fetus funeral services, which can cost upward of $2,000? Oh, and I must mention, Mike Pence did this in Indiana during his tenure as governor. (Broadly)
  • Speaking of vice president-elect Bad Hombre, he is practically dancing on Fidel Castro’s grave and had the gall to refer to him as a “tyrant.” Friendly reminder — Gov. Pence is the man who supported putting a woman in jail for having a miscarriage. #PotMeetKettle (ITV)
  • Could the orange menace known as Donald Trump ax our copay-free birth control unilaterally with no help from Congress? Unfortunately, yes. (Vox)
  • The megalomaniac in chief’s ultra-petty Twitter account is a frightening death spiral into madness. This man is not OK mentally, and that should terrify us all. (Mother Jones)
  • And his cabinet is a crapshow too! It’s shaping up to be the most conservative in decades. (Politico)

Speaking of Trump’s cabinet, I can’t “get the worst out of the way” until I introduce you to our future attorney general: Continue reading →

Lost in Translation: What the Doublespeak of Reproductive Rights Opponents Really Means

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NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona's Kat Sabine in front of the Capitol in 2012.

NARAL Pro-Choice Arizona’s Kat Sabine in front of the Capitol in 2012.

A “dedication and commitment to protect the health of women” sounds like something from the mission statement of a praiseworthy organization — one that might even get you to grab your wallet for a donation or your running shoes for a marathon. Those nine words, though, came from Gov. Jan Brewer, in a proclamation against Roe v. Wade that she signed for the Center for Arizona Policy.

The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP) is an influential, far-right Christian organization behind more than 100 of Arizona’s state laws. Since its founding in 1995, CAP has taken positions that are antagonistic to the health of Arizonans — adults and children alike. As Rachel Port has written previously for this blog, CAP has opposed anti-bullying measures, comprehensive sexuality education, and the Affordable Care Act.

Abortion opponents may claim to safeguard women’s health, but their policies put women in danger.

People who oppose access to abortion have made rhetoric about the health of women and children a common theme in their messaging, implying that the termination of a pregnancy is a dangerous procedure that threatens patients’ health. It’s been part of their toolbox even though abortion is one of the safest medical procedures a patient can undergo — safer, in fact, than childbirth. It’s been in use in spite of other contradictions as well, like those CAP exhibits in its disregard or adversarial stance toward policies that would promote the health of women and children. Continue reading →

Book Club: Generation Roe

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Like many in her generation, Sarah Erdreich thought the freedoms that Roe v. Wade guaranteed were secure. A child of the post-Roe era, she learned that the landmark decision had legalized abortion, striking down many of the state and federal restrictions that had previously forced countless women to risk their lives and health in the hands of underground abortion providers — providers whose work was not accountable to any professional medical standards.

What Erdreich learned was true, but it wasn’t the entire truth. Legalizing abortion was one thing. Guaranteeing access to it was another. After college, graduate school, and a series of abandoned career starts, Erdreich ended up in Washington, D.C., working for the hotline for the National Abortion Federation. Her job changed her perspective, opening her eyes to the extent that restrictions and barriers still diverted many people from the legal procedure of abortion. It was that experience that inspired her to write Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement (Seven Stories Press, 2013).

Generation Roe is worthwhile reading for those who want to build on the legacy of Roe v. Wade.

Generation Roe assesses where we are today, 40 years after Roe, with a sobering look at the continuing threats to reproductive freedom. In the decade that Roe was decided, 77 percent of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider. Today, that figure has jumped to 87 percent, while the number of women of childbearing age in those counties has increased from 27 to 35 percent. That’s one of many indicators Erdreich uses to capture the contradictions of the post-Roe era. Those like her who grew up after 1973 have never known what it’s like to live without the availability of legal abortion. But that availability has been curtailed by everything short of overturning Roe, from legal means, such as statutes mandating medically inaccurate pre-abortion counseling — plus waiting periods of 24 hours or more — to illegal means, such as threatening abortion providers and their patients.

Unfortunately, while so much significance can be pegged on Roe v. Wade, and while those few syllables can serve as a sort of shorthand for reproductive freedom, there isn’t a counterpart that succinctly captures its myriad curtailments. As a result, many of those curtailments are left out of the conversation. It takes a news hound to follow what’s happening in the 50 states on the abortion front and to have a thorough sense of where that leaves people who seek abortion services. “I absolutely think most people are not aware of what the realities are in terms of barriers to access,” says law student Kyle Marie Stock, one of the many people Erdreich interviewed for her book. Continue reading →

That Was Then, This Is Now: A History of Emergency Contraception

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plan bThe following guest post comes to us via Morganne Rosenhaus, community engagement coordinator for Planned Parenthood Arizona.

For more than 10 years, emergency contraception has been the “poster child” for what it looks like when politics trumps science, again and again and again. Women’s health advocates, women’s health care providers, and researchers have argued for years (and two different presidential administrations) about the safety of emergency contraception and the importance of its place on the shelf, between the pregnancy tests and the condoms.

The age restrictions on emergency contraception have been in flux. Where do things currently stand?

In 1999, Plan B was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a prescription-only product (all new drugs are first approved as prescription-only). In 2003, the manufacturer of Plan B filed an application with the FDA to make it available over-the-counter (OTC). An FDA Advisory panel voted to recommend Plan B for OTC access with no age restriction. Then political turmoil ensued. You can read all the details here in this handy timeline.

In 2006, Plan B was approved for OTC access, but with an age restriction, which meant men and women 18 years and older could purchase Plan B at the pharmacy, but only with an ID providing proof of age. The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) filed a lawsuit against the FDA over the ridiculousness of placing a scientifically unfounded age restriction on emergency contraception, which eventually led to the lowering of the restriction to 17 years. The FDA was also asked to re-review their rationale for imposing an age restriction in the first place.

Then things got worse. Let’s fast forward to 2011. Continue reading →