Yes Virginia, there is a state more demeaning to women than you!

You’ve probably recently heard about the Virginia ultrasound bill, but did you realize Pennsylvania has a bill pending that’s even worse? The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is poised to take up HB1077, the disingenuously titled “Women’s Right to Know Act.”  Are you ready to stop the cruel, demeaning attacks on women in Pennsylvania? Sign the petition and urge your representative to vote NO on HB 1077 and stop this demeaning and unnecessary bill from becoming law in Pennsylvania.  Click here to find your PA Representative.

 Below is a Open Letter Reposted from We’ve Had Enough PA

Dear Virginia, (CC: outraged left wing media)

Your little legislature was wrong. There is a state more demeaning to women than you. Up here across the Mason Dixon line, we’ve managed to come up with a forced ultrasound bill more cruel and medically unnecessary than yours! (It was tough, I’ll be honest.)

If our bill becomes law, women will have to wait at least 24 hours after their ultrasound before an abortion, no matter how far away they live from the provider. And here in Pennsylvania, 113 of the 203 elected state Representatives have signed on to our ultrasound bill. That’s more than your twelve by a long shot! 

Our bill FORCES the doctor to turn the ultrasound screen towards the woman’s face. Don’t worry – we avoided constitutional meddling by “allowing her” to look away. I heard you only give ‘the opportunity’ to view the ultrasound image. LAME! 

LOVE the “free ultrasound providers” bit!  We did that too, so now we can funnel women to those so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” where they can be fed state-funded, unregulated misinformation. We don’t even require that ultrasound providers have any training!

Oh and you’ll love the part about the printouts – listen to this. We’re going to make the woman take TWO printouts with her – one for her scrapbook, and the other one SHE has to bring to the doctor performing the abortion (if she hasn’t been shamed out of it at this point! LOL). 

And come on now, only civil penalties?  Our bill includes civil and criminal penalties for doctors and patients who dare defy our legislating of medicine. 

Nice try, Virginia. But you’ve got nothin’ on Pennsylvania!

Your partner in crime,

 Pennsylvania
Virtue, Liberty and Independence (Unless you’re a woman)

 

PA Legislature Passes Disastrous “TRAP” Law

On December 14, 2011, after a raging legislative fight over women’s abortion care that lasted most of the past year, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed Senate Bill 732 and sent it to Governor Corbett for his signature or veto. SB 732 will require safe, accessible abortion providers to comply with the burdensome and costly regulations now reserved for ambulatory surgical facilities, even though abortion is much safer and simpler than surgeries commonly conducted in ambulatory surgical centers.

Known as “TRAP laws,” (“Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers”), similar measures have been enacted in several states and are a tactic recommended by the National Right to Life Committee for closing down women’s clinics. Every medical and public health organization in Pennsylvania that has weighed in on the matter, including the unquestioned medical authority, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, opposes SB 732.

If SB 732 is allowed to take effect, most or all of the 20 existing freestanding clinics in Pennsylvania may have to stop offering abortion care temporarily, while they hire architects and contractors to transform their small clinics into sophisticated medical facilities; or they may close permanently, if they determine that their costs of making the required upgrades are prohibitive (particularly in light of the unavailability of public funding for abortion care). Instead of attending to the 37,000 Pennsylvania women who rely on them for safe care each year, providers will have to install hospital-grade elevators, acquire parking spaces and covered entryways, install specialized HVAC systems, double or triple the size of their procedure rooms, and rip up their flooring and install new flooring, among many other unnecessary and costly physical plant specifications.

The Women’s Law Project is busily at work on a legal strategy. The Governor could avoid not only litigation but also the potential of grievous harm to women simply by vetoing this bill. Please call him today, and tell him to veto SB 732, for the sake of the one in three women who will need abortion care by age 45.

GOVERNOR CORBETT: 717-787-2500
Honorable Tom Corbett
Governor of Pennsylvania
225 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg PA 17120
PLEASE DELIVER A MESSAGE TO GOVERNOR CORBETT:
RESPECT WOMEN’S HEALTH – VETO SB 732.

In Remembrance: Illegal Abortion Kills

Tuesday, October 18^th, Pittsburgh pro-choice advocates marched on the office of Senator Jane Orie, one of the PA Senate’s strongest supporters of the dangerous SB 732, which could put most of Pennsylvania’s abortion clinics out of existence by legislating compliance with unnecessary and expensive Ambulatory Surgical Facility (ASF) guidelines. Unlike the lively We’ve Had Enough rally in Harrisburg, the Pittsburgh protest was somber. Its aim was to remind Senator Orie how many women have perished from desperate measures taken when safe, sanely-regulated abortion was not accessible.

The National Organization for Women lists brief biographies for some of these women on their website.  Clara Bell Duval, a Pittsburgh native with five children, died in 1929 from self-abortion with a knitting needle. Geraldine Santoro, separated from her abusive husband and pregnant by another man, tried to perform the procedure in a hotel room with the father of her child, and bled to death. In 1977, soon after the passage of the Hyde Amendment which denied abortion coverage to women on Medicaid, Rosie Jiminez died from a botched illegal abortion, too poor to afford the procedure at a private clinic.

To this list we can now add Karnamaya Mongar, the 41-year-old Nepalese refugee with whose murder the infamous Dr. Kermit Gosnell is charged. Mongar allegedly died from an overdose of anesthesia at the hands of an unlicensed employee at Gosnell’s unsafe, unsanitary, and poorly monitored “Women’s Medical Society.”

Dr. Gosnell  allegedly sold prescription drugs during the day and performed illegal abortions at night, primarily for clients who were poor, immigrants, and women of color. For over 16 years the Health Department ignored complaints about the facility, including a hand-delivered complaint from a doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The Health Department and other regulating agencies had cause to be concerned about Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, but they did not investigate repeated complaints from patients and other providers.

The problem with Dr. Gosnell’s clinic was not the lack of regulations, but the lack of enforcement of those regulations.  The Pennsylvania legislature, rather than improving inspection procedures and ensuring that consumer complaints are appropriately investigated and acted upon, is using Dr. Gosnell as an excuse to push for unnecessary and cumbersome regulations that could effectively close down most freestanding abortion clinics in Pennsylvania.

SB 732, Pennsylvania’s “answer” to Dr. Gosnell’s house of horrors, would require all health facilities that offer abortion care to comply with Ambulatory Surgical Facility regulations. These complicated and expensive regulations have the potential to shut down nearly every freestanding abortion clinic in the state of Pennsylvania at least temporarily, and only those with the resources to redesign their facilities in accordance with ASF regulations – such as quadrupling the size of their operating rooms for no added safety benefit, and installing unnecessary hospital-grade elevators capable of lifting the equivalent of a small car – would be able to reopen. Those surviving clinics would have to increase the cost of an abortion out of reach of many women.

Karnamaya Mongar didn’t die because the elevators in Gosnell’s clinic were too small. She died because the regulations already in place were ignored.  If the cost of a safe, legal abortion increases or the number of safe providers decreases as a result of SB 732, stories like Mongar’s will become a lot more common in our state. Making abortion harder to access for all women is, to paraphrase David Bowie, like fighting fire with gasoline. These regulations are a backdoor tactic to severely limit abortion care, a hypocritical and disingenuous response to the atrocities allegedly committed by Dr. Gosnell. 

The heartbreaking stories of Clara Duval, Geraldine Santoro, Rosie Jiminez and now Karnamaya Mongar send a message that ought to be loud and clear: when safe abortion care is made illegal, unaffordable, or too difficult to access, women who are desperate to end their pregnancies seek other options, as dangerous or unsavory as they might be because the alternative—remaining pregnant—is untenable.   Far too often, those women die. It is our responsibility to remember their lives as we continue to fight for fair, reasonable reproductive health care legislation. Learn more about SB 732 here.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers: the New Face of Women’s Health Care?

Since we last blogged about Crisis Pregnancy Centers, a new development has increased the threat they pose to women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care. A new initiative by several pro-life groups aims to fund CPCs’ conversion to medical clinics, staffing them with doctors and nurses and expanding their health care offerings – while they continue to oppose abortion and contraception and block or impede women’s access to those alternatives (we blogged about the misinformation provided by CPCs here).

AlterNet has the full story in their August 18 article, “The Anti-Choice Plan to Lure Women to Christian Pregnancy Centers.” Author Tana Ganeva calls our attention to the efforts of Focus on the Family and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates to make CPCs even more important players in women’s health care. NIFLA’s Life Choice project, established in 1998, gives CPCs legal advice as they transition to medical clinic status, and trains nurses and doctors to work in the newly created clinics. Since 2004, Focus on the Family has been funding the conversion of particularly high-impact CPCs into medical clinics. CPCs have long offered biased counseling and limited prenatal services to pregnant women, as well as post-natal services in some cases. As medical clinics, with doctors, nurses, ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, and perhaps even PAP smears, CPCs become more attractive to women who need these services and do not necessarily know about the ideology driving the centers.

This is particularly disturbing in light of the increasingly precarious situation of Planned Parenthood, on whose clinics many women have long relied for their health care. As many conservative governors have slashed funding for Planned Parenthood while funneling funds to CPCs through programs that support abstinence-only education, women are beginning to see their options constrict. The New York Times featured Texas as an example of this trend in an article last month.

 A CPC turned licensed medical clinic, with a doctor and nurses, may soon be the most accessible pregnancy care option for many women, who could walk in the door not knowing they have entered an explicitly anti-abortion zone where they may not be presented with all of their options.

We’ve Had Enough: Our Response to Anti-Choice Legislation

As we blogged here on July 26^th, there has been a record number of anti-abortion bills introduced in state legislatures across the country, and Pennsylvania is no exception.  In the first six months of 2011, Pennsylvania lawmakers spent 30% of their days at the Capitol working to restrict access to safe, legal abortion.  In response to these attacks on women, Pennsylvanians for Choice and Raising Women’s Voices Southeastern PA have organized the “We’ve Had Enough Rally” scheduled for September 27^th in Harrisburg.  The rally is a chance for allies from across the state to say “We’ve had enough” of these legislative attacks on women!

When the Pennsylvania Legislature returns from its summer recess in September, the two bills most likely to come up for an immediate vote are HB 574 and SB 732.  According to the Women’s Law Project “either bill will cause a public health catastrophe.”

The rally message is clear– We’ve Had Enough — We’ve had enough of a state legislature that ignores the real suffering of women due to a failing economy and a sluggish recovery that has not produced jobs for women; from widespread wage discrimination; from harassment, violence, and abuse; from hunger and poverty; from lack of health care; from a lack of affordable housing and transportation; and from inadequate support for their family responsibilities.

Please signup for the We’ve Had Enough Rally on September 27^th in Harrisburg to protect women’s access to reproductive health care services.  Also checkout the We’ve Had Enough website and add your picture to the growing number of supporters.  You can also follow rally updates on Twitter.

 

Judge Blocks Law Which Would Expose Fake Health Clinics

We have written previously about “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs). CPCs often make themselves seem like reputable clinics but then mislead, lie, “coerce and intimidate women out of considering abortion as an option, and prevent women from receiving neutral and comprehensive medical advice” in order to further their anti-choice agenda. In New York City, Local Law 17 “would have required emergency-pregnancy centers to disclose whether or not they perform abortions or give access to them; disclose if they have a medical professional on the premises; and say if emergency contraception and prenatal services are offered.” If New York City CPCs were forced to openly acknowledge and post the truth about the services and information their organization does and does not provide, women would be able to truly assess if the center could meet their needs as opposed to being misled and coerced into believing the CPC provides comprehensive options. However, on July 13^th a federal judge barred New York City from implementing the law despite the fact that it had passed the City Council and had been approved by the mayor.

The judge argued that the law could unconstitutionally limit free speech and that since the law “relates to the provision of emergency contraception and abortion — among the most controversial issues in our public discourse — the risk of discriminatory enforcement is high.” This is despite the fact that the law only intended to provide consumers with truthful information and to force CPCs to be up front about what services they do and do not provide. This legislation is clearly necessary considering a recent NARAL Pro-Choice New York report “found crisis pregnancy centers using deceptive tactics and false claims to dissuade women from having abortions.”

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, responded to the judge’s issuance of the injunction in the New York Times, stating, “In issuing this injunction, the court has failed to protect pregnant women in an extremely vulnerable time in their lives.” However, despite the judge’s disappointing decision, there is still hope for the law. Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin, the law’s chief sponsor, said that “the judge got it wrong” and that the city plans to appeal the injunction. She stated that Local Law 17 “…is an important measure to protect women from dangerous and deceptive practices, and we’re not going to give up. We’re going to keep fighting.”

To find out more about the truth behind CPCs and why legislation like Local Law 17 in New York City is so important, click here [PDF].

Life-Saving Drug in Abortion Politics Controversy

Misoprostol (or miso) is a drug which lessens postpartum bleeding, the leading cause of maternal death in the developing world. Traditional birth attendants in Mozambique who were part of a year-long trial of miso use in rural communities used words like “miraculous” to describe how beneficial misoprostal has been for women’s health. The birth attendants measured the effectiveness of miso with a cloth called the capulana. Before miso, birth attendants would need “three or four capulanas to soak up typical blood loss from the mother. After miso, they needed just one.” Increased access to miso in developing nations could help reduce the staggering discrepancy in maternal mortality rates between developing and developed nations. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a woman in Mozambique has a 1 in 37 lifetime risk of maternal death. In the U.S., a woman’s lifetime risk of maternal death is 1 in 2,100.

While miso is not the ideal drug to use to prevent postpartum hemorrhage, it is the best option for many women who are in places with limited access to medical facilities, like rural Mozambique. Oxytocin is a better, more effective medicine at reducing excessive bleeding after childbirth but it must be injected. For those who have very limited access to medical equipment, administering miso (which comes in a tablet) is a more practical option. WHO now has misoprostol on its list of essential medicines for preventing postpartum hemorrhage. However, WHO pharmacologist Suzanne Hill said that in order to really change maternal mortality rates in countries like Mozambique it needs to be ensured that “women can get to facilities, can get care, can give birth in a controlled environment.” In the meantime, miso can help reduce, though not eliminate, the staggering discrepancy in the maternal death rates between developing and developed countries.

Despite the fact that increased access to miso would save women’s lives, women’s access to it is threatened because it can also be used to induce abortions. Some anti-choicers would rather deny women access to a life-saving drug as well as an avenue to safer abortion than make abortion “too easy” by increasing access to miso. While abortion is officially illegal in Mozambique, misoprostol is available without a prescription and women have started using it for abortion. Aida Libombo, an adviser to Mozambique’s minister of health and an OB-GYN told NPR that “misoprostol has made abortions much safer. She remembers the horrific botched abortions she dealt with as a young doctor in the 1980s, when unsafe abortion was one of the leading causes of maternal death.”

To learn more about the use of misoprostol to prevent and treat postpartum hemorrhage you can read WHO’s statement on it here [PDF].

What We’re Reading: Women’s Health

There has been an overwhelming amount of news out there concerning women’s health recently, so much that it is impossible to write an individual blog post on all the stories WLP staff come across. Below you will find a list of some of the stories we have been reading recently, representing both headlines we found disheartening and those that made us hopeful.

• The New Hampshire Senate passed a parental notification law “requiring [that] at least one parent of a minor seeking an abortion receives written notification at least 48 hours prior to the procedure.” The bill would require notification even in circumstances in which “‘notice to the parent or guardian may lead to physical or emotional abuse of the minor.’” It is now up to Governor Lynch whether or not the bill becomes law.
• A bill introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), if passed, would treat and prevent obstetric fistulas around the world. Obstetric fistulas are a devastating injury which occurs during childbirth, primarily to women and girls in developing nations.
• According to a report by the United Kingdom Department of Health, thousands of Irish women travel from their home country where abortion is not legal to Great Britain in order to obtain the procedure legally.
• Vermont Governor Shumlin signed into law a bill “requiring that any health insurance and health benefit plans that provide maternity benefits (including Medicaid and public health care assistance plans) must provide coverage for midwifery services in hospitals, other health care facilities, and at home.” The bill also allows transgendered individuals to change the gender on their birth certificate from the one they were assigned at birth.
• A bill banning telemedicine to administer abortion services has passed the Nebraska Senate and is expected to be signed into law by Governor Heineman. This would ban Planned Parenthood from using telemedicine in Nebraska the way it has in Iowa. We have posted before about how Planned Parenthood’s utilization of technology to provide healthcare has given necessary services to women in underserved rural areas.
• Representative Susan Davis (D-CA) “introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have allowed military health care plans to cover abortion services for service women who had been raped.” Currently, servicewomen’s health plans do not cover abortion even in the case of rape. “The House Rules Committee, however, did not permit the amendment to be brought to the House floor for debate.”
• The New Jersey Senate passed a bill that would restore funding to family planning clinics after Governor Christie cut all family planning from the state’s budget last year. Christie said he would “consider the bill as part of a larger budget deal.”
• The Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit “against a new South Dakota law requiring that women undergo a 72 hour waiting period and mandatory counseling from a crisis pregnancy center (CPC) before obtaining an abortion.”
• The US Senate voted against a budget plan which would have turned Medicare “into a voucher program to buy private insurance as if any company would sell such a policy to an elderly person who is ill.”
• The Obama administration prohibited Indiana’s law which forbids “state agencies from entering contracts with or making grants to ‘any entity that performs abortions or maintains or operates a facility where abortions are performed.’”
• House leaders shelved  H.R. 1745 which would have taken away emergency unemployment insurance from jobless women and men.
• The book Home/Birth: A Poemic extols  the benefits of home birth and stresses the importance of “overturn[ing] restrictions which have limited the scope of midwifery and ‘normalized’ medical intervention.”

Let us know about other women’s health news or your thoughts on any or all of these stories in comments.

Remembering Dr. Tiller in the Abortion Debate

Two years ago yesterday, Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, was murdered for his work as a well-known abortion provider.  Dr. Tiller was renowned for the high level of care that he provided to women for many years.

Despite the tragic end to Dr. Tiller’s career, he is remembered for providing safe reproductive services in a region where not many doctors will perform abortions.  This is significant in a time when women are turning to unsafe providers for lack of other options.

Abortion is a common medical procedure. One-third of American women will have an abortion by the age of 45.

At this rate, it is likely that every person in America will know at least one woman who has had an abortion.

Doctors who provide abortions face many difficulties today.  In many communities, anyone who is in any way connected with providing abortion care – doctors, nurses, even building landlords and custodians – and their families live in fear of violence from anti-abortion groups.  On May 26^th, a man from Madison, WI, was charged with a federal misdemeanor count of trying to injure people providing reproductive health services.

Although anti-choice groups in Wisconsin are distancing themselves from the man’s act, this story is one example of how the threat to abortion providers and clinics is still alive and real. However violence is not the only issue that the pro-choice medical community faces.

With the battle over health care still warring today, organizations such as Planned Parenthood face the threat of being defunded by the federal government- even though no federal money goes to abortion care because of the Hyde Amendment. The federal money that Planned Parenthood receives goes toward cancer screenings, routine sexual health check-ups, STI testing, sex education, and other desperately-needed services.

In Pennsylvania, some law-makers are trying to restrict access to safe, compassionate abortion care in the Keystone State.

HB 574 passed the state House on May 11 and would regulate abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical facilities, forcing them to make costly renovations and increase staffing despite no proven benefit to patient safety.

In light of this legislation, Dr. Tiller’s method of providing care is important to remember. He insisted on quality patient care for women and administered this care viewing every woman as an individual and unique case. He is also noted for going above and beyond standard patient care:

George bravely immersed himself not only in the specialized medicine of later abortions but also in the complicated lives of his patients. Sometimes, for legal or medical reasons, he couldn’t accommodate a patient’s request for an abortion and helped arrange adoption. The work he did was far from simple, like many other kinds of health care.

Now two years later, Dr. Tiller’s work is still stigmatized and under attack by lawmakers at the state and national levels of government. Although abortion is still legal, future laws could impact the way that it is practiced not only in Pennsylvania, but in other states as well. It is important to oppose these changes and fight to keep reproductive health care safe and accessible.

Call your PA State Senator today and tell them to vote no on the Mensch Amendment to SB 732, which would end abortion care after nine weeks of pregnancy in freestanding clinics.

Call Your State Rep Today: NO on HB 574

Today, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is considering a bill which would make it more difficult for women in Pennsylvania to have access to abortion care. House Bill 574 would regulate abortion providers and require them to comply with the regulations for ambulatory surgical facilities as well as the regulations for ambulatory gynecological surgery.

Pennsylvania Counties with Abortion Providers

House Bill 574 is not a step forward for women’s access to abortion care and would do nothing to protect patient health and safety. This bill calls for a set of regulations that are likely to be prohibitive for abortion providers to comply with – and only 22% of the counties in Pennsylvania have an abortion provider as the map above shows. This bill requires that operating rooms be at least 400 square feet when the procedure rooms in most abortion clinics are 100-150 square feet.  Adding an extra 300 square feet to a procedure room would drastically decrease the amount of patients that a clinic could accommodate, would not increase the safety of the procedure, and force clinics to pass on the cost of making these renovations to the patients.  When an early abortion procedure is already $350 – and Medicaid does not cover abortion except in very limited circumstances, forcing low-income women to pay for the procedure out of pocket – it is extremely easy to see how increased fees caused by regulation would make abortion inaccessible to many women. Making abortions difficult to access does not safeguard women’s health, it makes it more likely for women to seek illegal, unsafe abortions from people like Dr. Gosnell.

Regulations are already in place to keep abortion clinics safe, from required equipment and medical supplies, reporting requirements, staff licensing requirements, complications reporting and many other requirements in the code for Ambulatory Gynecological Surgery in Hospitals and Clinics. On top of that, abortion providers in Pennsylvania already have to comply with codes from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as well as regulations from the Abortion Control Act. The regulations that would be added under HB 574 are unnecessary since there are already extremely comprehensive regulations in place in Pennsylvania.

Call your state representative today and tell them – no on HB 574.