planned parenthood – Page 6

How Texas Got Itself The Highest Teen Birthrate In The Country

Texas has the highest teen birth rate in the country, and an incredibly high rate of unintended pregnancies. Because that’s what happens when your “pro-life” legislatures cut funding for family planning and tell every woman to be abstinent instead.

Through her divorce and the struggles of raising three girls on her salary at the Sonic Drive-In, there was one thing in Tanya Wilson’s life that came easy.

Every three months, Wilson drove to the Planned Parenthood in her Panhandle hometown to get a birth control shot for free, most times with little or no wait. It was a great relief for a 34-year-old woman who didn’t want any more children but lacked money for a tubal ligation.

Suddenly in January, her relief turned to stress. Wilson was among hundreds of patients across 17 counties who learned that the clinic they relied on for birth control, annual exams, Pap tests, breast cancer screenings, sexually transmitted disease tests and other services was closing because of funding cuts triggered by two little-known provisions tucked into the state’s budget last session.

And no, it’s not as convenient as, “Well she can just go somewhere else.”

She’s been pleading with the town’s only remaining family planning clinic, which has been picking up other patients, to see her. She’s one of many who hasn’t had a Pap test in the past year because it would require driving an hour to the Amarillo Planned Parenthood.

She doesn’t know how she’d get there. Besides the job and the kids, her 1992 Honda Accord smokes, leaks oil and probably couldn’t make the trip.

“I work, and I’ve got three girls already. I don’t need no more kids,” said Wilson, who is being abstinent with her live-in boyfriend because she’s a month late on her shot. “I don’t understand why they would close (the clinic). It’s just caused a lot of grief for a lot of women.”

Well, that’s exactly why they closed the clinic.

But Republican authors of the provisions, Sens. Bob Deuell and Tommy Williams, insist they intended to expand women’s access to health care services and counseling.

“Yes, Senator Deuell is motivated by taking money away from facilities that provide abortions,” said spokesman Todd Gallaher. “That is not the primary motivation.”

We intend to expand women’s access to health care services and counseling by cutting funding to places which provide health care services and counseling. Ok then.

It should be pointed out here that many of the clinics that lost funding don’t perform abortions, but they do run abstinence-promotion and sexual health programs and offer birth control to low-income women — all things which help to lower the abortion rate. But nevermind that little detail.

Oh, and this is coming from the state that the Alan Guttmacher Institute ranked 45th in women’s health care.

Before the changes, fewer than 20 percent of women eligible for state-funded family planning services received them, the health department estimates. That left as many as 1.5 million women without help in avoiding unintended pregnancies.

Now, the situation is even worse. But don’t worry — they haven’t forgotten that women are better off pregnant and “in crisis” than able to prevent that pregnancy in the first place.

The rider sponsored by Williams, of The Woodlands, earmarked $5 million of the state’s family planning funds over the next two years for crisis pregnancy centers. The centers counsel pregnant women about options other than abortion but don’t provide family planning or health services.

The health department estimates about 15,000 women will lose access to family planning because of Williams’ rider.

Special, no? Give more money to CPCs, which routinely lie and mislead their clients in order to push their ideological agenda, and cut off pregnancy-prevention funding so that more women will be forced to go to those CPCs (where, notably, they still won’t be given any comprehensive information about sexual health, and won’t be offered any tools — other than abstinence — to prevent a future unintended pregnancy).

The Panhandle, which five years ago had 17 Planned Parenthood clinics, now has two. Abstinence-only education, which is a profound failure, continues to be pushed throughout the state (and, hell, throughout the country). It’s stuff like this that makes me consider moving to the UK.

Take That, South Dakota

Via Her Twistiness, the president of the Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota throws down the gauntlet:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

“To me, it is now a question of sovereignty,” she said to me last week. “I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.”

Limiting Birth Control – Even at Planned Parenthood

I love Planned Parenthood. I’ve volunteered with them, I’ve worked with their campus outreach groups, and I’ve used their services. I know that they’re a godsend for many women — they certainly have been for me. And while the Planned Parenthood mission is to provide affordable healthcare to all women who need it, local financial constraints don’t always make that possible. The result is that women in higher-income very liberal areas have better healthcare access at their local Planned Parenthood than women in lower-income more conservative areas. And this means that in a lot of places, women aren’t able to afford the basics, even at Planned Parenthood.

via Feministing.

Paying to Overturn Roe

Well this is interesting.

A campaign to push the legislation through the U.S. court system up to the Supreme Court where South Dakotans can lead the charge to overturn Roe v. Wade, will cost over $1 million. South Dakota doesn’t have that kind of money. So Rounds is studying ways of accepting into the state treasury private funds with which to wage the battle in the name of the South Dakota citizenry. In short,the well-heeled opponents of abortion are going to hire the public state government to fight their battle.

Yeah, that’s right. South Dakotans, who are split on the abortion issue, are likely to be unhappy about the state exhausting its funds (their tax dollars) trying to overturn Roe. Enter the anti-choice establishment and its deep pockets:

The concern about how South Dakota’s voters really feel about the effort to outlaw abortion is reflected in Governor Rounds’s publicly affirmed reservation about the legal costs that the state will rack up defending this bill in the federal courts against the enjoinment that Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota reportedly plans to seek. Never fear, say pro-life groups, an anonymous donor or donors are waiting in the wings to pony up $1 million for the abortion ban’s legal fees.

When asked if the state will accept such legal gratuity, the Governor’s Press Secretary Mark Johnston answered, “There certainly has been discussion about that cost, and there does need to be provisions for receiving that money into the treasury,” and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader reported on Friday that a bill was being passed to set up such a special pro-life war chest in the state’s treasury. But when probed more specifically about the anonymous donation, Johnston checked himself, answering “I can’t think of whether [the Governor] has said that publicly, so I can’t answer that.”

So the anti-choicers are effectively purchasing the state government, and using it to take away our basic human rights. Outraged yet?

Better News From Kansas

The Kansas Supreme Court temporarily stopped AG Phil Kline’s efforts to paw through the private medical records of patients at two Kansas abortion clinics.

In 2004, Anderson issued subpoenas at Kline’s request for the records of clinics operated by Dr. George Tiller in Wichita and Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri in Overland Park, a Kansas City suburb. The records involve 90 women and girls.

The Supreme Court said the subpoenas could infringe on the patients’ rights to maintain privacy about personal and sexual matters, to receive confidential health care and to obtain a lawful abortion without an undue governmental burden.

Writing for the court, Justice Carol Beier agreed with Kline that the state needs to pursue criminal investigations, but said ”the type of information sought by the state here could hardly be more sensitive, or the potential harm to patient privacy posed by disclosure more substantial.”

PBA Ban Unconstitutional. Again.

Figure it out, kids (pdf).

The Ninth Circuit Court ruled on Planned Parenthood v. Gonzalez, and, unsurprisingly, that the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban is illegal. According to the FindLaw summary:

Planned Parenthood v. Gonzales, No. 04-16621 (9th Cir. January 31, 2006)
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 is unconstitutional since it: 1) lacks the
health exception required of all abortion regulations in the absence of a medical
consensus, that the prohibited procedure is never necessary to preserve women’s health;
2) imposes an undue burden on a woman’s right to choose a previability abortion; and 3)
is impermissibly vague. The appropriate remedy for the serious constitutional flaws in
the Act is enjoining the enforcement of the statute in its entirety.

Well knock me over with a feather.

Thanks to Dad for the link.

Alito, Abortion, and the Future of Roe

Lots and lots going on this week in the reproductive rights arena. Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood is being argued right now, and is virtually guaranteed to have a major impact on the future of reproductive rights — if only to tell us how closely the Roberts court is willing to honor precedent. I wrote a little bit about this case yesterday, but there are still a few points that I think need clarification. At issue is a New Hampshire abortion statute that has not yet been instituted. The statute requires parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period after that. It has an exception for life-threatening conditions, but not for health conditions, despite the fact that a 2000 Supreme Court ruling requires that abortion restrictions have an out for the pregnant woman’s health. The Bush administration supports the law, but their reasoning seems a bit flawed:

Solicitor General Paul Clement, arguing for the Bush administration on behalf of the New Hampshire law, said critics of the New Hampshire statute had focused on “a one in a thousand” circumstance in which a teen-ager might need an abortion quickly, and that the entire statute should not be undone.

All sides agree that circumstances in which a minor needs an abortion for emergent health reasons are rare. But does rarity justify the upholding of a law that could potentially cause serious harm, even if that harm only affects a handful of people? What’s the threshold at which we decide “enough” women will be affected — 100? 1,000?

The statute includes a judicial bypass option, in which a minor with an emergent health-threatening condition can get permission from a judge to get around the parental consent and waiting period. But, as the attorney for Planned Parenthood argued, ” “Once a minor arrives in the emergency room, it is too late for her to go to court.”

That point was met by a fairly creative proposal from Justice Scalia:

Justice Antonin Scalia wondered what would happen if the state created “a special office, open 24 hours a day” to field just such emergencies: ” ‘This is the abortion judge.’ It takes 30 seconds to place a phone call.”

Or, we can just let doctors do their jobs. If a teenage girl comes into the emergency room with a condition that will leave her sterile unless she has an abortion right away, let her doctor perform the procedure. How will telephoning a judge, who probably has no medical background and little ability in a 30-second phone call to determine the exact circumstances, be at all helpful or even practical?

This seems fairly simple to me. If New Hampshire wants to keep their statute, fine — just toss in a health exception. I don’t like parental notification laws, but the Court has ruled them constitutional and not unduly burdensome if they include a judicial bypass and a health/life exception. It’s not asking so much that New Hampshire stick to that standard, and that the Bush administration and conservative state governments not use the physical health of minor women to gain political capitol or make a point about their anti-choice beliefs.

In other news, let there be no doubt about how Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito feels about Roe: He wants it overturned. From a 1985 document:

Alito wrote in the memo, released by the National Archives on Wednesday, that ”no one seriously believes that the court is about to overrule Roe v. Wade.”

But, he said, ”By taking these cases, the court may be signaling an inclination to cut back. What can be made of this opportunity to advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects?”

Well that clears that up.

I found this article via Amanda, and it’s another must- must- MUST-read. It’s a woman’s story of her D&E abortion, the procedure that the “partial-birth” abortion ban would have made illegal. These procedures, as the article details, are already incredibly difficult to access. This is another one of those abortion-related things (like the New Hampshire law) that affects a very tiny minority of women; yet its impact on those women can be tremendous. Read the article, and consider the women who find themselves in similar situations, but whose fetuses aren’t dead — those women whose fetuses have birth defects that are incompatible with life, like anencephaly. Should the “partial-birth” abortion ban be upheld, these women will no longer have access to what they and their doctors may deem the safest procedure for them.

And finally, a TimesSelect article about the waning power of Roe v. Wade. It is fantastic, and an absolute must-read. Because it’s TimesSelect, I’ll paste it below:

Pre-Turkey Day Round Up

My mom and sister are in town for T-day, so posting will probably be light this weekend. If you’re looking to spread some holiday cheer, check out Katha Pollitt’s list of great organizations to donate to.

And this certainly doesn’t fall into the “cheer” category, but it’s another good reason to continue the promotion of women’s rights worldwide: A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood “marriages.”

Also, stay vigilant in opposing Alito:

What hasn’t been discussed as much is what Alito’s willingness to restrict abortion might mean in light of two cases heading for the Supreme Court, both of which involve the question of whether laws limiting abortion have to include exceptions for women’s health. Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which is scheduled for argument later in this month and might be re-argued after a new Justice is confirmed, considers whether a teen can get an abortion without waiting the forty-eight-hour period required by New Hampshire state law if her pregnancy threatens her health. The second case, Carhart v. Gonzales, a review of the 2003 federal “partial-birth abortion” ban, asks whether the ban on certain abortion procedures must make an exception if the mother’s health would be harmed.

The consequences of Ayotte extend far beyond New Hampshire, according to Dara Klassel, who will be representing Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in the Supreme Court case. “If [the majority of Justices] say you don’t need a health exception, it’ll be a matter of a year or two before all red states revoke their health exception,” says Klassel. “There will be women suffering serious health consequences, loss of fertility because of serious infection, anemia from blood loss.”

and if that’s not enough…

Though it would likely be the first reproductive crisis to which Alito could contribute, eroding Roe is really the lesser concern. Scarier still is that either of these two cases could provide the opportunity to do away with the ruling altogether. While the Justices are likely to rule more narrowly, they could decide to use the cases to “reach out,” as lawyers call it, and question the fundamental principles involved in the right to abortion.

And if neither case leads to a full-on grappling with the right to choose, a more direct challenge to Roe is already in the legal pipeline. A Michigan law that would outlaw all surgical abortions throughout pregnancy (the status of medical abortions is unclear) was passed and immediately challenged this year. Now, in Northland Family Planning Clinic v. Cox, the ban is being appealed to the Sixth Circuit. The case could make its way to the Supreme Court in 2007.

This Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, but do everyone a favor and don’t shop at Wal-Mart until they shape up.

If your in New York, this exhibit may be worth seeing. I’ve been meaning to go for weeks, and now that I have free time, the Met will be packed with holiday tourists. Wonderful.

Scalito = Bad News

Really, really, really (pdf) bad news. The run-down:

The Bad
-Alito joined the Third Circuit majority opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which severely limited the right to abortion. But Alito went a step further than the rest of the court, asserting that it would be proper to require women to notify their husbands before they were allowed to have abortions. The Supreme Court, thankfully, ruled that “Women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when they marry.”

-Alito distanced himself from previous Supreme Court views on undue burden, writing that “an undue burden may not be established simply by showing that a law will have a heavy impact on a few women but that instead a broader inhibiting effect must be shown.” So if a particular requirement which infringes on the right to privacy — husband notification for abortion, for example — only has a detrimental effect on some women, that isn’t a good enough reason to disallow it.

-In 2000, Alito wrote an opinion which held that the Family Medical Leave Act was an instance of unconstitutional Congressional over-reach. Why? Because, he says, women are not disadvanted in the workplace by not being allowed to take family medical leave. Even Rehnquist disagreed with him on that point. (More at Angry Bear; thanks to Thomas for the link)

-Held that the Establishment Clause was not violated by a city holiday display which featured a menorah, a creche, Santa Claus, and other religious and secular holiday symbols.

-Opined that it’s a-ok for police officers to strip search 10-year-old girls.

-Alito helped write a Justice Department report supporting the “right” of employers to fire HIV-positive employees.

The Good
-Alito was in the majority in striking down the so-called “partial-birth” abortion ban in New Jersey, because the ban didn’t allow an exemption for the pregnant woman’s health. It should be noted here, though, that the Third Circuit was required by Supreme Court precedent to strike down any abortion ban that doesn’t allow a life/health exception.

-Alito wrote the unamimous opinion that the New Jersey police force had acted innappropriately in firing two Muslim officers for refusing to shave their beards.

-“A majority opinion in Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233 (3d Cir. 1993), holding that an Iranian woman seeking asylum could establish that she had a well founded fear of persecution in Iran if she could show that compliance with that country’s “gender specific laws and repressive social norms,” such as the requirement that women wear a veil in public, would be deeply abhorrent to her. Judge Alito also held that she could establish eligibility for asylum by showing that she would be persecuted because of gender, belief in feminism, or membership in a feminist group.” (via SCOTUSblog, by way of Protein Wisdom).

-Struck down a public school anti-harassment policy which included non-vulgar speech which didn’t interrupt school work (Some readers will likely have an issue with me putting this in the “good” section; while I think anti-harassment policies are appropriate, I do have a problem with them when they fully cross First Amendment lines, as this one did).

What it comes down to is this: Alito isn’t an “originalist.” He’s a conservative activist, willing to bend the law to favor his viewpoint. Of course, as much as the right-wing bitches and moans about “activist judges,” it’s kinda fun to see who actually legislates from the bench, isn’t it?

As more information about Alito comes to light, I’m sure this post will be updated.

For more on Alito (this list will be updated):
SCOTUSblog
Culture Kitchen
Pandagon (so many posts on him, I can’t decide which to link to — just scroll!)
Rox Populi
Lawyers, Guns and Money. Twice.
Shakespeare’s Sister
Agitprop
TBogg
The Rude Pundit
Think Progress

Holy Shit, Indiana

Goddammit, Indiana. Goddamn you, Patricia Miller.

For those of you who haven’t been following every detail, this is my home state — not born here but pretty damned well raised. I’ve suffered through and been witness to a lot of stupid law in the last few years, but this one takes the cake.

Even though this bill will not pass (and I have to cross my fingers here because my fellow Hoosiers keep surprising me with their utter bigotry) it does reveal disturbing truths about our attitudes on faith, parenthood, sexuality, and entitlement. How curious that electable Republicans will do everything in their power to strongarm and legislate that pregnancies never end in abortion… while trying to ensure that certain people may never parent natural or adopted children. Unless they have a state license.

Further adding to what Jill wrote below, I found this article that puts the law and the fallout in greater detail.