Health Care & Reproductive Rights

Roe v. Wade 40th Anniversary

For 40 years women have had the legal right to decide whether or not to have an abortion, yet even today numerous barriers threaten that right.

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Preventive Services in the Health Care Law

Preventive Services in the Health Care Law

This new year, more health plans will come under the reach of the law and will cover certain women's preventive health services with no co-payments.

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This Is Personal

Join the Reproductive Health Campaign

Go to ThisIsPersonal.org to get the facts and tools you need to help protect women's reproductive health.

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Not in Her Shoes

This is Personal

At 40, Roe v. Wade is more relevant than ever. Tell opponents: no one knows what it's like to be in your shoes.

Share your shoes & thoughts.
Women's Health Report Card 2010

Are we making the grade on women’s health?

Find out how healthy women in your state are and how the new health care law will affect women's health and health policy.

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Roe v. Wade 40th Anniversary
Preventive Services
This Is Personal
Not in Her Shoes
Report Card on Women's Health

Highlights

Fact Sheet | Requiring Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Disclose Limits on Care Is Part of a Long Tradition of Protecting Women’s Decision-making and Access to Reproductive Health Care

April 9, 2013

Women face many obstacles to receiving comprehensive, affordable, quality health care, including when individuals and institutions refuse to provide health care services.   Some even go so far as to refuse to inform women about their health care options or even to notify women that there are certain services or information that they will not provide.  This prevents women from participating fully in their own medical decision-making.  Not only are their rights compromised, their health may be harmed.

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Fact Sheet | Strong Public Support Continues for States to Accept Federal Funds to Cover More Uninsured People Through Medicaid

April 9, 2013

A new national survey sponsored by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and the National Women’s Law Center shows strong support among adults 18 and older for their states to accept federal dollars that have been allocated to cover more uninsured people through Medicaid.  The survey, conducted March 15-19, 2013 among 1,016 adults 18 and older, has a margin of error of + 4 percentage points.

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Resource Page | Overview of the Lawsuits Challenging the Affordable Care Act’s No Cost-Sharing Contraceptive Coverage Benefit

April 4, 2013

Full Document with Chart

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Fact Sheet | The Ryan Budget’s Catastrophic Health Cuts and their Impact on Women

March 14, 2013

Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed budget for fiscal year 2014 includes devastating cuts to the health care programs women and families rely on.  Ryan would repeal the Affordable Care Act, make drastic cuts to Medicaid, and convert Medicare into a voucher program. These changes would leave millions of women and their families without the financial security of high-quality health insurance, unable to access the health care services they need, and facing dramatic increases in their healthcare costs.

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Fact Sheet | Health Care Refusals Harm Patients: The Threat to Reproductive Health Care

January 25, 2013

Across the nation, the personal beliefs of individuals and institutions are interfering with patients’ access to health care.

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Fact Sheet | Even More Than Abortion: The Constitutional Importance of Roe v. Wade and the Right to Privacy

January 18, 2013

Roe did far more than establish the right to abortion; it solidified and expanded the constitutional “right to privacy,” which has also been described as the right to autonomy or to be let alone.  This right to privacy is part of the right to liberty protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which state that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law.”

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More Resources

Fact Sheet | The Rubio Bill Would Allow Any Employer to Take Away Women’s Insurance Coverage of Contraception, Harming the Health of Women and Their Families

February 09, 2012

The Rubio Bill, S. 2043, introduced in the Senate in January 2012, allows any corporation of any type, any other entity of any type, or any individual to refuse to provide contraceptive coverage and services to their employees on the basis of religious beliefs.  Called the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012,” it would take away the right of millions of women to have any insurance coverage for contraception, based on an employer or health plan’s religious beliefs – whether affiliated or not with any religious entity.

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Webinars & Presentations | February 2012 Reform Matters Webinar Agenda

February 08, 2012

The February 2012 Reform Matters Webinar will be a discussion about the roles of agents, brokers and navigators in the health insurance exchanges.

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Fact Sheet | NWLC Letter to Secretary Sebelius: Essential Health Benefits Bulletin, Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight

February 02, 2012

On December 16, 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a bulletin outlining their plans to implement the Essential Health Benefits provision of the Affordable Care Act.

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Fact Sheet | Letter to Secretary Sebelius: Inclusion of Preventive Services in Medicaid Expansion Benchmarks and Basic Health Plans

January 19, 2012

Dear Secretary Sebelius:
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Legal Briefs & Testimony | Amicus Brief: Department of Health and Human Services, et al., v. State of Florida, et al.

January 13, 2012

The National Women’s Law Center's “friend of the court” brief is on behalf of 60 organizations in United States Department of Health and Human Services, et al v. State of Florida, et al. The brief explains what’s at stake for women in the challenge to the new health care law and why the ACA, in correcting fundamental gender inequities in the health insurance and health care markets, is an appropriate exercise of federal Commerce Clause authority and therefore is constitutional.

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