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where to order without prescription lipitor uk Articles Tagged ‘Reproductive Freedom’

Alexandra Freedman Smith

But let’s be clear, the rally in Las Cruces planned by the Tea Party, Rep. Pearce and others has nothing to do with religious liberty and everything to do with discriminating against women by denying access to basic healthcare.

These folks are rallying in opposition to the recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule that requires new health insurance plans to cover birth control, along with other essential preventative services, at no extra out-of-pocket cost. The new rule ensures that millions of women will have access to affordable birth control, something that virtually every American woman uses at some point in her life. This policy represents one of the greatest advancements for women’s health in decades.

Despite the fact that the new rule already exempts churches and other houses of worship, anti-contraception hardliners say this rule violates the religious rights of—for instance—Catholic-affiliated hospitals. It doesn’t. Catholic Hospitals are not the same as Catholic Churches, which employ almost exclusively people of the Catholic faith. Catholic Hospitals, public service organizations that benefit from federal funding, employ thousands of people of diverse backgrounds and religious beliefs. The distinction is clear, if a religiously affiliated organization benefits from public funding in the form of tax dollars, it must play by the same rules as everyone else.

Despite the clear fairness and constitutionality of the original rule, President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered a compromise: if a religiously affiliated organization objects to providing contraceptive coverage on moral grounds, insurance companies would be required to provide birth control to employees directly and free of charge. Problem solved. No religiously affiliated organization would be required to provide birth control coverage, and their employees would still have access to essential preventative services.

Groups like Catholic Charities, the Catholic Health Association (the umbrella organization for the nation’s Catholic Hospitals) and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities all announced their support for the new compromise policy.

But extreme opponents of birth control, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have declared they will not be satisfied until all employers—religious or secular—can refuse to cover any medicine, procedure or treatment that runs contrary to their religious beliefs. This is a very bad way to provide healthcare indeed, resulting in a patchwork of exemptions in which employers could effectively deny coverage to any employee for any reason.

Should a book store operated by a Jehovah’s Witness be allowed to deny an employee coverage for life-saving blood transfusions? Should a tech company owned by a Scientologist be permitted to deny an employee with bipolar disorder coverage for psychiatric help? Is it acceptable for a construction company operated by Christian Scientists, who do not believe in modern medicine at all, to refuse to cover an employee’s cancer treatments?

Religious liberty does not mean organizations that receive federal funding get to deny basic healthcare to their employees or force their religious values on a diverse workforce. Taking a job isn’t the same as joining a church. Religious liberty is, and always has been, about individual choice. Sadly, Saturday’s rally is all about eliminating that freedom, attacking access to women’s essential health care and imposing religious doctrine on others.

Alexandra Freedman Smith

Staff Attorney

Abortion among teenagers should be made less necessary, not more difficult and dangerous. Many young women are fortunate to have loving and supportive parents and these teens overwhelmingly include their parents in their reproductive health decisions. However, pregnant teenagers also come from troubled homes, where they risk physical and mental abuse by disclosing to one or both of their parents that they are pregnant or are terminating the pregnancy.  . New Mexico should be most concerned with protecting the most vulnerable teens—teens who have been or are at great risk of physical and sexual abuse from their families –from unwanted pregnancy. Mandating parental involvement does not solve the problems associated with teenage pregnancy. Instead it unnecessarily puts our most vulnerable youth at risk of harm

REQUIRING PARENTAL CONSENT/NOTIFICATION IS UNNECESSARY

• Most parents are already involved in a teen’s decision to terminate a pregnancy.ⁱ Only 10% of all abortions are performed on minors and, of those, 7 out of 10 minors involve their parents.
• Laws mandating parental notice or consent actually harm the young women they purport to protect by increasing illegal and self-induced abortion, family violence, suicide, later abortions and unwanted childbirth.

REQUIRING PARENTAL CONSENT/NOTIFICATION IS DANGEROUS

• Over half of formerly-abused pregnant teens report assaults during their pregnancy, most often by a family member. ii 67% of rapes reported to law enforcement in NM in 2009 were children.iii 48% of rape victims who reported to service providers in 2009 in New Mexico were children.^iv 88% of all rape victims know the offendersand 35% of these offenders are family members.

• The American Medical Association has noted that “[b]ecause the need for privacy may be compelling, minors may be driven to desperate measures to maintain the confidentiality of their pregnancies. They may run away from home, obtain a ‘back alley’ abortion, or resort to self-induced abortion. The desire to maintain secrecy has been one of the leading reasons for illegal abortion deaths since . . . 1973.^v
• Requiring parental consent or notification endangers young women by forcing some women to turn to illegal or self-induced abortion, to delay the procedure and increase the medical risk, or to bear a child against their will.^vi
• Teenage girls are more than 24 times more likely to die from childbirth than from first trimester legal abortions.vii
• Fewer than 60 percent of teen mothers graduate from high school by age 25—compared to 90 percent of those who postpone childbearing.viii Additionally, among African-American and Hispanic teens, those who postpone childbearing until age 20 are more likely to complete some college education.^ix
• Twenty-five percent of teen mothers live below the federal poverty line.^x Nearly 80 percent of teen mothers eventually go on welfare.^xi Teens that give birth also spend a greater length of time receiving public assistance— an average of three years longer than older mothers through age 35.^xii Teen mothers are also more likely to have lower family incomes later in life.^xiii

STATE AND FEDERAL LAW PROTECT YOUTH’S PRIVACY IN MAKING SIMILAR HEALTHCARE DECISIONS

• 50 states and the District of Columbia authorize minors to consent to the diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections without parental consent.^xiv
• The United States Supreme Court recognized that confidential access to contraceptives for minors is protected by their constitutional right to privacy.^xv Federal law requires confidentiality for minors receiving family-planning services through publicly funded programs such as Title X and Medicaid.^xvi

JUDICIAL BYPASS PROVISIONS FAIL TO PROTECT YOUNG WOMEN

• Court proceedings are intimidating and difficult even for adults represented by capable attorneys. For young women without lawyers, seeking a court order is even more daunting and overwhelming and at times impossible.
• Requiring teens to go to court violates their privacy, particularly in rural areas.
• Court intervention delays healthcare, thus increasing the health risks associated with termination of a pregnancy.^xvii
• In states requiring court intervention, judges have denied young women the ability to terminate their pregnancies due to their personal biases and beliefs. xviii

GROUPS OPPOSING PARENTAL CONSENT/NOTIFICATION LEGISLATION:

• The American Medical Association states “Physicians should not feel or be compelled to require minors to involve their parents before deciding whether to undergo an abortion. . .”^xix
• The American Academy of Pediatrics also opposes parental-involvement laws.^xx
• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opposes requiring parental consent/ notification.
• The New Mexico Coalition for Choice, including the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Planned Parenthood New Mexico, ACLU-NM, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the League of Women Voters, Women’s Policy Agenda, Young Women United.

ⁱ Stanley K. Henshaw & Kathryn Kost, Parental Involvement in Minors’ Abortion Decisions, 24 FAMILY PLANNING PERSPECTIVES 197, 199-200 (1992).

ⁱⁱ American Psychological Association, Parental Consent Laws for Adolescent Reproductive Health Care: What Does the Psychological Research Say? (Feb. 2000), citing A.B. Berenson, et al., Prevalence of Physical and Sexual Assault in Pregnant Adolescents, 13 J. OF ADOLESCENT HEALTH 466-69 (1992).

ⁱⁱⁱ Caponera, Betty, Ph.D., “Sex Crime Trends in New Mexico: An Analysis of Data from the New Mexico Interpersonal Violence Data Central Repository 2005-2009,” (July, 2010).

^iv Id.

^v Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs American Medical Association, Mandatory Parental Consent to Abortion, 269 JAMA 83 (1993).

^vi Advocates for Youth, Adolescent Childbearing and Education and Economic Attainment (Oct. 1995), at http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/factsheet/fsadlchd.htm, citing Plotnick & Butler, Attitudes and Adolescent Nonmarital Childbearing: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 6 J. OF ADOLESCENT RESEARCH 470 (1991).

vii. Howard W. Ory, Mortality Associated with Fertility and Fertility Control: 1983, 15 FAMILY PLANNING PERSPECTIVES 59 (1983).

viii. Namkee Ahn, Teenage Childbearing and High School Completion: Accounting for Individual Heterogeneity, 26 FAMILY PLANNING PERSPECTIVES 18 (1994); Saul D. Hoffman, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, By the Numbers: The Public Costs of Teen Childbearing (October 2006).

^ix Advocates for Youth, Adolescent Childbearing and Education and Economic Attainment (Oct. 1995), at http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/factsheet/fsadlchd.htm, citing Plotnick & Butler, Attitudes and Adolescent Nonmarital Childbearing: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 6 J. OF ADOLESCENT RESEARCH 470 (1991).

^x Advocates for Youth, Adolescent Childbearing and Education and Economic Attainment (Oct. 1995), at http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/factsheet/fsadlchd.htm, citing Plotnick & Butler, Attitudes and Adolescent Nonmarital Childbearing: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 6 J. OF ADOLESCENT RESEARCH 470 (1991). citing Hoffman, et al., Reevaluating the Cost of Teenage Childbearing, 30 DEMOGRAPHY 1 (1993).

xi. Annie E. Casey Foundation, supra note 36.

^xii Saul D. Hoffman, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, By the Numbers: The Public Costs of Teen Childbearing (October 2006).

xiii

THE ALAN GUTTMACHER INSTITUTE, SEX AND AMERICA’S TEENAGERS 61-62 (New York: 1994); NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, RISKING THE FUTURE:

ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY, PREGNANCY, AND CHILDBEARING 130 (Cheryl D. Hayes ed., National Academy Press 1987).

^xiv The Alan Guttmacher Institute, Minors’ !ccess to STD Services, STATE POLICIES IN BRIEF, Oct. 1, 2008

^xv Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678 (1977).

^xvi New York v. Heckler, 719 F.2d 1191 (S.D.N.Y. 1983) (striking down regulation requiring parental notification within 10 days of a Title X-funded family planning center providing prescription drugs or devices to unemancipated minor because such law conflicted with the program requirements of Title X); Planned Parenthood Association of Utah v. Dandoy, 810 F.2d 984 (10^th Cir. 1987) (holding state law requiring parental consent for Medicaid conflicted with federal law, which requires states participating in the Medicaid program to provide family planning assistance to eligible minors without parental involvement).

^xvii Hodgson v. Minnesota, 648 F.Supp. 756, 763-64 (D. Minn. 1986).

xviii Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U.S. 417, 420 (1990) (requiring a bypass procedure for a two-parent notification statute); Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502, 510 (1990) (requiring bypass procedures for parental consent statutes).

^xix American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, Mandatory Parental Consent to Abortion, CODE OF MEDICAL ETHICS 1996-1997 EDITION, § 2.015 (issued June 1994) (based on the report, Mandatory Parental Consent to Abortion (issued June 1992) 269 JAMA 82-86 (1993)).

^xx American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Adolescence, The Adolescent’s Right to Confidential Care When Considering Abortion, 97 PEDIATRICS 746 (1996).

Stand up for reproductive freedom on Monday, January 23rd, 2:30 pm at the New Mexico State Capitol Building in Santa Fe. Supporters will meet inside in the Rotunda where it’s warm! To maximize visibility, wear pro-choice t-shirts, buttons and stickers! No signs are allowed inside the Capitol.

Dear Friend of Liberty,
I’m writing you today to ask you to stand up to an organization that is willing to go to any length to take away a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion care here in New Mexico. I’m talking about Kansas-based “Operation Rescue,” a group of extremists with a track record of violence, harassment and intimidation towards abortion providers and women seeking abortions.Dear friend of liberty,

Their main target was once Kansas late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller is now dead, murdered as he ushered Sunday worship at his church, and Operation Rescue followed Tiller’s surviving associates to Albuquerque where they relocated to continue providing late-term abortion care to women in need.

Stand up for women’s right to access reproductive health care and keep Operation Rescue’s extremist agenda out of New Mexico.

Operation Rescue recently made headlines in Albuquerque when they released recordings of 9-1-1 calls made from two health clinics where abortions are performed and demanded that the New Mexico Medical Board investigate several local physicians for alleged “unsafe” practices.

This is not a new tactic for Operation Rescue. The organization has used bogus complaints to medical boards in several other states in an attempt to harass and intimidate doctors. The person responsible for most of these complaints is Cheryl Sullenger, Operation Rescue’s Senior Policy Advisor, who served two years in U.S. federal prison for conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic in 1987.

In 2009, Sullenger lied about and then later admitted to feeding information regarding the whereabouts of Dr. Tiller to an anti-choice extremist named Scott Roeder. On Sunday, May 31, 2009, Roeder walked into the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas and shot and killed Dr. Tiller.

Making repeated complaints to the medical board and demanding endless investigations of abortion providers is the same strategy Operation Rescue used in Kansas to harass Dr. Tiller before he was murdered. Now Operation Rescue is using the same strategy here in New Mexico.

This has a serious chilling effect on abortion providers because time and expense required to hire attorneys, respond to an unending stream of subpoenas, and repeatedly appear before the medical board makes it extremely difficult to run a medical practice. And that is exactly what Operation Rescue is counting on.

Help keep our medical board from being hijacked by anti-choice extremists. Remind the Executive Director of the NM Medical Board that they should make decisions based on medicine – not the political agendas of out-of-state extremists.

Sincerely,

Peter Simonson

Executive Director

Micah McCoy, Communications Specialist

When I checked the news on last night before I went to bed my jaw dropped.

“Whoa!”

The 2011 voting results were in, and they spelled major victories for civil libertarians across the nation. Here are the highlights:

where to order without prescription lipitor uk 1) Mississippi “Personhood” Amendment defeated

On Tuesday Mississippi voters soundly rejected a amendment to the state constitution that would define a fertilized egg as a person with all the rights thereof. This is of course a fantastically absurd, really bad, terrible idea. For many reasons.

By this definition, certain forms of birth control could be considered murder. For instance, the Intrauterine Device (IUD) prevents pregnancy by keeping fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterine wall. So under the so-called “personhood” amendment should women with IUDs be charged as serial killers? What about fertility doctors who implant several fertilized eggs and then destroy all but the most viable?

Bottom line: anti-choice extremists have no business forcing their own religious world view on the rest of the population. Women have the right to make private reproductive heathcare choices in consultation with their doctor. That’s why Mississipians voted down this ballot measure by an overwhelming 16 point margin.

where to order without prescription lipitor uk 2) Russell Pierce, architect of SB 1070, recalled in Arizona

I’ll preface this with a reminder that the ACLU does not endorse or oppose political candidates. We do, however, weigh in on the policy issues they are responsible for. Russell Pearce, Senate Majority leader in Arizona, is best known as the architect of the unfair, discriminatory “Show me your papers” law passed in Arizona last year. This law would require law enforcement officials in Arizona to investigate the immigration status of anyone they “suspected” of being in the country without the proper documents. Essentially, the law is a mandate for state-sponsored racial profiling.

Yesterday, Arizona voters recalled Senator Pearce, replacing him with another Republican with a more mainstream stance on immigration issues. This recall move was widely seen as a referendum on last year’s unconstitutional immigration law.

Bottom line: state and local law enforcement should not be responsible for enforcing federal immigration law. It hurts our communities, destroys trust in law enforcement and leads to racial profiling of people who look or sound “foreign.” Arizona voters sent a strong message yesterday, repudiating anti-immigrant scapegoating.

where to order without prescription lipitor uk 3) Same day voter registration stays in Maine

In a bald-faced move to suppress certain groups of voters, the Maine Legislature passed a law in the last legislative session that eliminated election day voter registration. Their excuse for passing this vote-suppressing law will be familiar to New Mexicans–voter fraud! Rampant, pervasive voter fraud!

In Maine, like New Mexico, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Yesterday, Maine voters saw through the legislature’s political move and overwhelmingly rejected the new law with 59 percent of the vote.

Bottom line: Our leaders shouldn’t play politics with the foundation of our democracy, our elections system.

where to order without prescription lipitor uk Bottom line-bottom line?

When civil libertarians organize together and stand up for the Constitution, there is no limit to what we can overcome–and ACLU members played a big role. The ACLU of Mississippi was part of the coalition that helped defeat the “personhood”amendment, the ACLU of Maine actively organized to overturn the voter-suppressing repeal of election day registration, and the ACLU of Arizona filed a lawsuit blocking key parts of the “Show me your papers law.”

So keep standing up for liberty with the ACLU. It’s hard work, but days like yesterday remind us what we’re fighting for.