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Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel

Leila Abolfazli is Counsel in the Health and Reproductive Rights Program at NWLC. She works on a range of issues involving the protection and expansion of reproductive rights at the federal level. Prior to joining the NWLC, Ms. Abolfazli was a Senior Associate at WilmerHale in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Emory University and Georgetown University Law Center.

My Take

Continuing the Fight for Contraceptive Coverage

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: June 20, 2012 at 03:37 pm

Yesterday, the National Women's Law Center submitted comments on the Administration's proposed "accommodation" for organizations that have religious objections to covering contraception in their health insurance plans for employees. In our comments, we state that the priority in structuring the accommodation must be to ensure women have seamless access to contraception no matter where they are employed or enrolled as university students.

The backstory: back in August of last year, the Administration announced that contraception would be one of the eight women's preventive services that insurance plans would have to start covering without cost sharing in August of 2012. When the announcement was made, the Administration also announced a religious exemption to the rule requiring insurance plans to cover contraception. Those of us at the Law Center thought that the exemption should be eliminated completely as it has no basis under law and arbitrarily precludes certain women from having their needed preventive care. However, other groups complained that the exemption should be expanded to include hospitals and universities.

After receiving over 200,000 comments on the issue, the Administration announced in January that it was not changing the exemption. With a sustained backlash from certain groups and media outlets (culminating in the infamous Where Are the Women hearing, which denied Sandra Fluke the opportunity to testify), the Administration announced an "accommodation" to the requirement.

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The Shaheen Amendment Passes in Committee!

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: May 25, 2012 at 02:30 pm

How fitting. How fitting it is that just days before Memorial Day weekend, when we honor our fallen troops, the Senate Armed Services Committee takes a very big step in respecting and acknowledging the women who currently serve to protect our country.

In case you haven't heard already, the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday finished its mark-up of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2013. During the mark-up, the Committee voted on whether to include an amendment offered by Senator Shaheen that would repeal the ban on coverage for abortion for survivors of rape or incest in the military.

I know I am usually the "Debbie Downer" for repro rights news, but today, I have the great news to report that the Amendment PASSED!! For the first time in a very long, we are VERY CLOSE to bringing the health insurance coverage for military women in line with the coverage other federal health insurance programs currently provide.

Now, you may stop to wonder, um, why is this the policy anyways why are military women denied such coverage? Why are they denied such coverage when civilian federal employees even have access to this admittedly-pitiful level of coverage? Great question.

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The DC Abortion Ban: A Cruel Ban for an Unfairly Unrepresented Population

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: May 22, 2012 at 04:29 pm

“It is unconscionable that someone would come into my city from the outside and try to impose a law that doesn’t represent the best interests of anyone, especially families like mine. This proposed law is downright cruel, as it would inflict pain on the families, the women, and the babies it purports to protect.” –Christy Zink

It’s round three in the Judiciary Committee. Last Thursday, Trent Franks (R-AZ) held yet another hearing on yet another bill that is aimed at denying women access to a constitutional right. This time the bill in discussion, the D.C. Abortion Ban (H.R. 3803), seeks to impose a ban on almost all abortions 20 weeks post-fertilization. The only exception to the ban is to save the life of the mother, and even that exception is restricted to when the mother faces physical life-threatening problems (being suicidal is apparently not life-threatening…). It is unconstitutional because it bans abortions pre-viability and fails to include any exception for health.

Oh, and did I mention that the bill only affects D.C. (a population who has no voting representative in Congress)?

The hearing began with a brief tangling over whether the only popularly-elected official for DC would get to testify on a bill that only affects DC. After the kerfuffle ended (with Rep. Franks again refusing to allow Rep. Norton Holmes to testify), the four witnesses gave their testimony.

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CIANA: Closing the Door on the Support and Care that Teens Need

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: April 04, 2012 at 04:15 pm

When your line of work is protecting reproductive rights, like me, sometimes you just don’t know how the day will go. Some days you just never know. And last Tuesday was just one of those days. That day I went to the markup of H.R. 2299, a bill titled the “Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act” that took place in the House Committee on the Judiciary. This bill, which is better called the “Teen Endangerment Act,” would jail an aunt or grandmother who supports a niece or granddaughter who crosses state lines to seek abortion care. The bill would also jail a doctor who provides abortion care to a teen who crosses state lines for such care when the doctor did not first inform the teen’s parents. There are very few exceptions to these onerous and dangerous provisions (including none that consider the health of the pregnant teen), meaning that this bill would most likely result in teens being denied access to abortion care they seek or make teens seek such care without any support from a trusted adult.

I went to the markup not really knowing what to expect, particularly because the hearing a few weeks before had not been very dramatic, especially when compared to other recent hearings on reproductive issues (most notably the “Where Are the Women” contraceptive coverage hearing and the hearing on the “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011”). Unfortunately, the markup made up for the hearing’s relative lack of drama, as I sat through hours of votes where every amendment that would have made this harmful bill just a little less harmful was rejected. Yes, the amendment that would have exempted a grandmother from criminal penalties for helping her granddaughter during her time of need was voted down. Yes, the Committee rejected an amendment that would have provided an exception to the criminalization of a minister or older sister who supports a teen seeking abortion care where the teen’s health was in danger. The Committee also rejected a similar amendment that would have exempted physicians from criminal penalties for failing to notify a teen’s parents where the health of the teen was in danger (yes, in case you were wondering, this is the Judiciary Committee rejecting a provision that the Supreme Court has said is required in any restriction to abortion access). The Committee also voted down an amendment that would have exempted the criminalization of an older brother or neighbor who helps a teen when she fears for her physical safety if forced to notify one or both parents. Are you starting to get why I felt pretty deflated after this markup?

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Hey Media: It’s about the Health of Women and Families

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 02, 2012 at 03:26 pm

There has been a lot of press on the recent announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that it was finalizing the rule requiring coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives with no co-pays or deductibles, and a lot of it hasn’t been positive.  Most of the focus has been on the fact that the Administration chose not to expand the exemption for certain religious employers.

Take Michael Gerson’s and E.J. Dionne’s recent op-eds, for example. Both of them admonish President Obama for not expanding the religious exemption to entities like religiously-affiliated hospitals and universities, and Gerson says that the rule covers “abortifacients” which is just wrong. He also concludes that the decision on the final rule means that “war on religion is now formally declared.” The way these two see it, it should have been a no-brainer to expand the exemption. But wait just one minute, is this all the rule is about – religious institutions versus the Administration? Is there anything else that maybe we should be considering when analyzing this rule?

Oh right…. the tremendous health benefits of contraception. Oddly and sadly, these health benefits are blatantly ignored in all of the negative commentary (Dionne tips his hat just a bit by vaguely referring to how the rule protects “women’s rights”). So it got me thinking, maybe they just don’t understand the health benefits. Maybe I should take a moment to explain just how critical contraception is as a preventive health service. So Gerson, Dionne, and all of the others who ignore the real issue at stake, please take notes.

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