Reproductive Rights

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

In honor of Mother’s Day, I want to let you in on a little secret. Reproductive rights are mother’s rights. When women are able to make informed, autonomous decisions about when and whether to have children, they have healthier pregnancies. Planning the timing of a pregnancy can prevent a range of pregnancy complications that can endanger a woman’s health, including gestational diabetes and high blood pressure. Planned pregnancies allow women to take steps to address and ameliorate health problems such as diabetes, hypertension, or coronary artery disease which may be worsened by a pregnancy and threaten the health of the fetus. Read more »

Our Fight

Ask your mother, grandmother, aunt, or another loved one this Mother's Day about the challenges she had accessing birth control. Then, share her story or yours with us!

What challenges did I face accessing birth control when I was younger? My doctor told me taking the Pill could possibly kill me — apparently thinking this additional "fact" would help me make a more informed medical decision.

I'm still alive — so I guess he was wrong. And that doctor was not alone in putting up barriers for women trying to access reproductive health care.

TELL US: Have you ever asked your mom, aunt, grandmother, or another loved one in your life what challenges she had gaining access to birth control? We want to hear the stories!

It's been nearly fifty years since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Connecticut v Griswold striking down state bans on birth control. Since then, contraception has become so central to women’s lives that 98 percent of us use it at some point during our reproductive years. Yet, politicians still re-litigate access to affordable contraception and other women’s health care needs. Read more »

Apparently we have to keep fighting for basic health care. On Friday the Colorado state legislature took up a measure that would have a lasting impact on women’s access to health services, such as contraception.

The Colorado Senate Memorial 12-003 calls upon Congress to enact the Respect for the Rights of Conscience Act of 2011. This extreme bill introduced in Congress gives virtually limitless and unprecedented license to any employer or insurance plan, religious or not, to exclude coverage of any health service, no matter how essential, as required by the federal health care law.

In fact, this legislation was recently repackaged as the Blunt Amendment and attached to a routine transportation bill. Fortunately, this extreme measure was voted down by the U.S. Senate. As an aside, one of the Republican Senators who voted for the Blunt Amendment—Senator Murkowski—realized, after the vote, the extreme nature of the Blunt Amendment and now says she regrets her vote. Read more »

Attacks on contraception have been all over the news lately — from attempts to defund federal and state family planning programs and providers like Planned Parenthood to efforts to block the health care law's coverage of contraception with no-copays or deductibles. It's shocking that more than 50 years after the birth control pill was approved, we're fighting to ensure that women don't lose access to it. Another startling front in the contraception battle? When you go to a pharmacy to get your contraception, you might be denied.

Women in at least 24 states report that their pharmacists have denied them access to birth control. Watch our new video and tell your leaders: My Health is NOT Up for Debate™!

Read more »

Thanks to everyone who participated in yesterday’s tweet chat with Sandra Fluke, National Women’s Law Center, and Law Student’s for Reproductive Justice! And yes, when I say everyone I even want to thank the people who were on who didn’t have the nicest things to say.

Everyone who contributed questions and were supportive- you all are amazing! A lot of really great questions were asked that drove an interesting and informative conversation. We had questions about the accommodation, what actions students can take on their campuses to ensure coverage as soon as possible, and specific questions about what preventive services are covered.

I’m very excited for a tweetchat that’s happening this afternoon at 3pm ET with Sandra Fluke, National Women's Law Center, and Law Students for Reproductive Justice! Follow the conversation at #CCEduChat.

This chat comes from the realization that a lot of students and employees of universities had questions about their contraceptive coverage under the health care law. There’s a section of the law that requires all new and non-grandfathered private insurance plans to cover a wide range of preventive services, including services such as mammograms, pap smears, smoking prevention and contraceptives without co-payments or other cost sharing requirements. The Administration even proposed an accommodation that would enable religiously-affiliated organizations beyond churches – such as universities and hospitals - to avoid directly providing contraceptive coverage if it was against their religion, but would ensure that all women are guaranteed coverage of this critical service without cost sharing. Read more »

Do you think our nation’s leaders would allow a hospital to refuse to perform an emergency abortion on a woman – even if it means she would die? Unfortunately, if some leaders have their way, the answer would be yes. The House of Representatives actually passed a bill that would allow hospitals to turn away women needing emergency abortion care. This bill is just one example of the recent onslaught of attacks at both the federal and state level that that aim to deny women’s access to reproductive health care.

Getting the emergency care a woman needs should not depend on the hospital to which she is taken.

Watch our new video and tell your leaders: My Health is NOT Up for Debate™!

Read more »

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? Read more »

Months later, I am still very concerned about the decision by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to overrule a judgment by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to expand over-the-counter availability of the morning-after contraception Plan B One Step. Anyone who is concerned about unintended pregnancy must support increased access to a range of contraceptive methods, including emergency contraception (EC).

The impact of unintended pregnancy among young women is staggering. Teen pregnancy, which is at unacceptably high levels in the United States and is higher than most other developed nations, has far-reaching consequences well into adulthood. Only about 50% of teen mothers receive a high school diploma by 22 years of old, versus about 90% of women who had not given birth during adolescence. And, dropping out of high school alters a young woman’s life for decades, and perhaps even generations. Why then would we not do everything we can—use every tool at our disposal—to increase access to emergency contraception? The stakes are too high, reducing unintended pregnancy is too important. Read more »

Shippensburg University recently made a controversial decision to sell emergency contraception or Plan B from vending machines in their student health center.  As a junior at American University, this decision does not seem controversial to me at all but instead a smart step in helping women make healthy decisions about their bodies.  Personally, I think that every college campus would benefit from selling Plan B.

Perhaps some of this controversy has risen because people do not understand the purpose of Plan B. Emergency contraception has been equated with the abortion pill, however; they are very different.  Forms of emergency contraception are safe and effective forms of birth control used after intercourse.  It does not work if the woman is already pregnant.  EC prevents pregnancy by delaying ovulation, and the fertilization of the egg. Therefore when a woman takes Plan B she is not aborting a fertilized egg, but instead preventing fertilization.  Read more »