Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • New Jersey’s new governor, Phil Murphy, undid the damage of his awful predecessor by restoring funding to Planned Parenthood. Yay!  (The Hill)

  • Democrats in the U.S. Senate are pressuring Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to reverse a strategy coordinated with a prominent hate group to undermine family-planning access for people with low incomes. (Rewire)
  • The Department of Justice is appealing a California judge’s decision to temporarily block new Trump administration rules allowing more employers to opt out of providing no-cost birth control in their insurance plans. (ABC News)
  • South Carolina is trying to ban ALL abortions by granting legal rights to fertilized eggs from the moment of conception. Literally the worst idea ever. Eggs are not sentient beings. Period. (Salon)
  • Hmm … What to think of those who call themselves “pro-life” but sit quietly and idly by while gun violence steals the lives of innocent bystanders? (WaPo)
  • The abhorrent goons in the Trump administration are quietly helping states defund Planned Parenthood. (Vox)
  • This is unbelievable! Some states — including Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas — directly divert public funds allocated to feed hungry children to fake women’s health centers. (Rewire)
  • Get a load of this bull: The Trump administration created a new HHS office just to discriminate against people — and they housed it under the Office of Civil Rights. (The Hill)
  • A man crashed a stolen bakery truck into a Planned Parenthood clinic on Valentine’s Day in East Orange, New Jersey, injuring three people, including two staff members and a pregnant woman. Thankfully none of the injuries were life-threatening. (Southern Poverty Law Center)
  • Hey, North Carolina, maybe strapping female inmates to beds during childbirth isn’t the most compassionate protocol? (News & Observer)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • scientist face maskThe GOP debates were last night. Just an FYI: Every single one of those dingbats has deplorable, antiquated views on women’s reproductive rights and health. (Bustle)
  • The foolery surrounding unfounded allegations that Planned Parenthood has been illegally selling fetal tissue has reached ASININE LOWS, people. (NYT)
  • And it’s helped three state governments reach their ultimate goal of defunding us and further chipping away at women’s reproductive rights. Alabama is the latest. (CNN)
  • Speaking of Ass Backward Alabama, these clowns tried to snatch the parental rights of a pregnant prison inmate to stop her from getting an abortion! What in the hell! (Guardian)
  • With regard to fetal tissue, several organizations agreed to speak with The New York Times about their involvement in obtaining fetal tissue for the purpose of medical research on numerous degenerative diseases, such as leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, and others. (NYT)
  • Scientific and medical research is already beginning to suffer as a result of this fetal tissue non-scandal. Colorado State University officials have suspended the school from acquiring fetal tissue from entities linked to Planned Parenthood until “Congressional investigations are concluded.” (RH Reality Check)
  • Thank you, Salon, for covering the facts of this debacle in a reasonable manner. And exposing the fact that Planned Parenthood has prevented possibly 3 million abortions in 2013 and 2014 by providing affordable or free birth control to those in need. (Salon)
  • Ebony has a magnificent piece on what you absolutely must know about Planned Parenthood and black women. (Ebony)
  • Warren Buffett has funded a birth control revolution on the down low?!? #WhoKnew (Bloomberg)
  • The Economist has quite the chilling piece on how “exceptionally deadly” childbirth is in the United States. Gee, almost seems like women should have a choice about whether or not they want to risk their lives giving birth to a child rather than having it forced upon them, right? (The Economist)
  • The birth control pill has prevented how many instances of cancer in the last decade?! (Time)
  • In case it slipped your mind, our senator, John McCain, is still The Worst. (Phoenix New Times)