Welcome our Virginia Field Organizer!

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure access to reproductive health services and comprehensive sex education, Planned Parenthood Health Systems Inc. hired a field organizer to work on the ground in Virginia. Help us welcome Tanya Semones to the team!

Tanya moved from Alaska last fall and she joins us with organizing experience from Planned Parenthood’s northernmost affiliate. Tanya will operate out of our Roanoke offices and will work diligently to engage supporters from across southwest Virginia.

She will work with supporters to develop a large network of grassroots activists who are committed to defending and increasing access to all aspects of reproductive health care.

Join in Tanya’s efforts today! Follow Planned Parenthood Health Systems of Virginia on Twitter and Facebook. You can reach Tanya at Tanya.semones@pphsinc.org

Help her hit the ground running!

Jessica Bearden Laurenz
Director of Public Policy

NC House Committee Approves Mandatory Delay, Biased Counseling Requirements

Women in North Carolina will soon face additional hurdles and a mandatory 24 hour waiting period prior to obtaining an abortion if some state legislators get their way.  HB 854 (a whopping eight page bill) would mandate that physicians read a state-written script and provide biased written materials to a woman 24 hours prior to performing an abortion.  It also requires that women have an ultrasound at least four hours before the procedure and listen to a description of the ultrasound image.   A House committee voted in favor of the bill by a vote of 9-5 after almost two hours of sometimes heated debate. 
 
During debate on the bill, several witnesses in favor of the bill made medically inaccurate statements about the risks of abortion.  They claimed abortion causes breast cancer (no real link exists), mental health problems (again, no evidence) and complications later in pregnancy (you guessed it, not true).  They used these unfounded claims to justify extensive state involvement in the doctor-patient relationship that is not required for any other medical procedure.  

Several people also spoke in opposition to the bill; two in particular stand out.  The first, Heather K., bravely shared with the committee her heartbreaking story of ending her very wanted pregnancy because of fatal condition suffered by her fetus.  She asked committee members to explain to her which requirements found in the bill (a 24 hour delay, a mandated ultrasound four hours prior to the procedure, a requirement that she listen to a description of the ultrasound image, etc.) would have made her excruciatingly difficult choice more “informed.”  The bill does not allow exceptions for cases of fetal anomaly, threats to the health of the woman, or rape or incest (the only exception is for medical emergencies–basically, when the life of a woman is in immediate danger unless the pregnancy is terminated).  Even women in these already difficult and often agonizing circumstances will have to endure the state-mandated lecture and waiting period. 

Representative Alice Bordsen delivered one of the most succinct analyses of the seemingly intractable abortion debate we’ve heard in a long time during her remarks in opposition to the bill.  You should watch it for yourself (her remarks begin at 1:23 and goes until 1:31).  http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/video/9579661/

Aside from the obvious–mandatory delays are medically unnecessary, abortion providers already adhere to legal and professional informed consent standards, cookie-cutter state-mandated scripts ignore the diversity of experience of women seeking abortions, the best way to reduce the abortion rate is to do something to reduce unintended pregnacy–it’s the underlying assumption of bills like this that really raise our ire.  Bills like HB 854 assume that women who make the decision to have an abortion do so flippantly and thus require the state to step in and delay their access to the procedure.  Nothing could be further from the truth–on average, women wait 10 days between finding out they are pregnant and making an appointment for an abortion.  These bills assume that women wouldn’t choose to have abortions if they just heard a state-mandated script designed to imply that they shouldn’t.  In reality, most women make this sometimes difficult, sometimes easy choice based on what they feel is best for themselves and their families–in fact, the most common reason cited by women for why they chose to have an abortion is concern for existing children.  It’s the assumption, as Representative Bordsen so eloquently pointed out, that left to their own devices women are not capable of making a moral choice, a right choice, an autonomous choice, that should alarm and infuriate each and every woman in the state of North Carolina.

Take Action: If you’d like to tell your Representative how you feel about HB 854, you can do so here.

State Legislative Action on Repro Rights and Health Bills

Up in DC, they’ve passed a temporary two-week budget to avoid a government shutdown—which means there’s still time to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose efforts to defund Title X and Planned Parenthood—and in the meantime, I wanted to update you on our state legislative work. It’s been busy, to say the least. 

Virginia: The VA General Assembly adjourned last week, but not before anti-choice legislators slipped in a last-minute attack on abortion providers.  Here’s what happened: a bill to regulate nursing homes passed the Senate unanimously and was sent the House.  The House adopted an amendment to the bill requiring the Department of Health to regulate first-trimester abortion providers the same way they do hospitals, and sent the bill back to the Senate.  Virginia’s state senate has a Democratic majority, but not a pro-choice majority (as Democratic Senators Phil Puckett and Chuck Colgan are anti-choice) and so when an anti-choice bill like this one gets to the Senate floor, there’s little chance of stopping it.  And that’s just what happened here–the Senate vote was 20-20 and anti-choice Lt. Governor Bill Bolling broke the tie to pass the bill.  You can read more about the potential impact of this bill here, here, and here.  

West Virginia: The deadline for legislation to be voted out of committee has passed, which means that two bills to ban insurance coverage of abortion (HB3020 and SB443 ) are dead because they did not get a committee hearing before the deadline.  However, there is still a significant chance that a situation like the one in Virginia could occur, where anti-choice amendments are tacked onto other bills, so we’re keeping a close watch on everything the legislature does until it adjourns on March 12.  Pro-choice activists are hard at work in WV, and if you missed coverage of the rally they held in support of family planning funding last week, check it out here. 

North Carolina: Right now only one anti-choice bill has been introduced in North Carolina: SB 73, a bill to authorize Choose Life license plates.  Funds from sales of the plates go to so-called crisis pregnancy centers.  You can help by contacting your senator and asking him or her to oppose this funding stream.  We expect several more bills to be introduced, so stay tuned.  Also this week, PPHS joined NC Women United at Women’s Advocacy Day at the General Assembly, where over 150 people gathered to send a message that “Women’s Lives Matter.”  Lilly Ledbetter, nationally renowned pay equity activist, was the keynote speaker.  She urged the crowd of activists to help elect more women to office at all levels of government. 

South Carolina: Last week the House Judiciary committee passed HB 3408 and sent it to the House floor.  This bill would broaden South Carolina’s refusal clause to allow medical professionals to refuse to provide services they disagree with, including dispensing birth control, without requiring them to refer the patient to another provider. In addition, the bill prohibits every insurance plan offered in South Carolina from covering abortion care.  HB 3408 will be heard on the House floor soon, so please take a minute to contact your representative about the bill.  On the Senate side, the Banking and Insurance committee will soon vote on SB 102, another insurance ban bill.  A subcommittee voted in favor of the bill yesterday after refusing to hear testimony from the public (including yours truly) and after making it clear that they really had no idea what they were voting on.  Stay tuned for more opportunities to take action on that bill. 

With everything happening at the state and federal level right now, we need your help more than ever!  If you haven’t volunteered before or want to volunteer again after a long hiatus, get in touch with a member of our policy team to find out how: patricia.dillon@pphsinc.org in NC, kira.miskimmin@pphsinc.org in WV, sloane.whelan@pphsinc.org in SC, and jessica.bearden@pphsinc.org in VA.

Banning Insurance Coverage of Abortion: What’s the (Big) Deal?

Hi everyone!  I’m Jessica, Planned Parenthood Health System’s Director of Public Policy.  I’ll be showing up on the blog frequently during our states’ legislative sessions to fill you in on what’s going with reproductive rights and health legislation.  You can follow all the bills we are tracking here and if you have questions, feel free to contact me at jessica.bearden@pphsinc.org!

The “hot topic” for pro-choice lobbyists this year (well, besides the full scale attack on family planning funding at the federal level) is a complicated one: insurance coverage of abortion. Our four states are no exception—Virginia has already defeated two bills attempting to restrict coverage, and bills are moving through the legislatures in both West Virginia and South Carolina this month.   

The national debate around healthcare reform last year (you’ll remember the Stupak and Nelson amendments) opened the door for state legislative attacks on insurance coverage by allowing states to prohibit insurance plans that include abortion coverage from participating in state health care exchanges.*  Five states—Tennessee, Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, and Louisiana—moved immediately to ban coverage and many other states are following suit this year.

The bills in South Carolina and West Virginia, however, go even further and seek to ban coverage of abortion in every health plan offered in the state (that means plans on the exchange, private plans, and state employee plans).  South Carolina has even folded the insurance ban into a broader bill about protecting people’s rights to refuse to participate in the provision of medical services that violate their conscience (I’ll save that part of the bill for another post).  What these bills mean for you if they pass: women in these two states will lose coverage that in most cases, they currently have.     

But we’re not banning coverage, the bills’ proponents say.  You can still purchase a single procedure plan, or rider, just for abortion coverage if you want it.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but that might be the most absurd idea I have ever heard.  First of all, no insurance company is going to go through the trouble of offering a plan that covers only abortion—not when they have to get a separate premium and a separate signature from the insured and prove to the state that funds from other plans aren’t getting mixed in just to offer it.  And even if they did, women wouldn’t buy it!  That’s the nature of unplanned pregnancy, guys, you don’t plan it. 

But there’s no constitutional right to insurance coverage of abortion, the bills’ proponents say.  I might grant that (but then again I might not, because what’s the meaning of the right to choose if you’re denied your ability to exercise it?), but guess what?  There’s no constitutional right to insurance coverage that doesn’t cover abortion either.  And yet—there are insurance plans available on the private market right now that don’t cover abortion.  Why can’t people who feel that participating in an insurance plan that includes abortion is a violation of their conscience simply “opt out” of those plans and purchase an individual plan that doesn’t include abortion?  What’s that you say?  Because this isn’t really about protecting people’s right to refuse to participate in activities with which they disagree, but instead is just another attempt to deny access to a legal, safe medical procedure?  That sounds familiar.

The bottom line is this: A woman doesn’t plan to have an unplanned pregnancy, or to have severe complications late in her pregnancy.  Having insurance coverage of abortion is important to ensure she can get the care that she may need.  And in addition, allowing states to prohibit insurance coverage of a legal medical procedure based on some people’s objection to it is a very slippery slope.  Why?  Because many of the same people opposed to abortion also object to contraception, infertility treatments, voluntary sterilization and more.  Will state governments act to prohibit coverage for those services as well?         

What you can do: If you live in South Carolina or West Virginia, you should contact your state legislators and ask them to oppose restrictions on insurance coverage of abortion—regardless of where a woman purchases her insurance. Find your legislators in South Carolina and West Virginia.

* Starting in 2014, states are required by the Affordable Patient Care Act to establish health insurance exchanges—new, competitive, state-run and consumer-centered health insurance marketplaces.  The exchanges will provide eligible consumers and businesses with “one-stop-shopping” where they can compare and purchase health insurance coverage.

Budgets Are Moral Documents

Hi everyone!  I’m Jessica, Planned Parenthood Health System’s Director of Public Policy.  I’ll be showing up on the blog frequently during our states’ legislative sessions to fill you in on what’s going with reproductive rights and health legislation.  You can follow all the bills we are tracking here and if you have questions, feel free to contact me at jessica.bearden@pphsinc.org!

It’s no secret that this year is going to be one of the toughest ever for state legislatures faced with historic budget shortfalls.  In North Carolina alone, the shortfall is estimated to be upwards of $3.5 billion dollars.  In South Carolina, it’s about $800 million. 

Recently, Planned Parenthood Health Systems joined the South Carolina HIV/AIDS Crisis Care Task Force, a group of service providers and advocates who’ve come together to prevent further budget cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention funding and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP).  So I’d already been thinking a lot about ADAP—programs that currently exist in all 50 states to provide HIV treatment drugs to low-income citizens—when I read this in the Winston Salem Journal :

[NC] State Rep. Larry Brown said during a discussion of his legislative goals for the year that the government should not spend money to treat adults with HIV or AIDS who “caused it by the way they live.”

Brown, R-Forsyth, made the comments when asked by the Winston-Salem Journal to talk about his goals for the N.C. General Assembly session set to begin this month. He began by discussing his support for a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a union between one man and one woman, which would forestall any efforts to allow same-sex marriage.

He went on to say he thinks the government shouldn’t spend money to treat HIV among people “living in perverted lifestyles.”  “I’m not opposed to helping a child born with HIV or something, but I don’t condone spending taxpayers’ money to help people living in perverted lifestyles,” said Brown. 

There are about a million things wrong with this statement (not least of which is, um, Rep. Brown?  AIDS hasn’t been misunderstood as a “gay disease” since the decade I was born.  Would you like to join us over here and check your willful ignorance at the door of the 21^st century?) but what I want to address here is how much state and federal budgets say about our values as a community and as a country.  As others have said, budgets are moral documents.  What—and more importantly, who—we value can be identified by where we put our money.  And so as social justice advocates, we have to ask questions about each and every budget cut—are some groups of people disproportionately affected?  Is this a short term fix, or a long term solution?

Here are just two examples of budget issues we are keeping an eye on this year:

• Massive proposed cuts to Medicaid—including who is eligible for coverage, what services are covered (including family planning), and reimbursement rates for healthcare providers who see Medicaid patients. 
• There are 337 people on a waiting list for life-saving HIV medications in South Carolina. Unless we do something, that number is expected to grow to over 900 by June of this year. And as the Winston-Salem article pointed out, cuts to funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment are on the table in North Carolina as well.  

It’s important to remember that funding family planning and disease prevention and treatment is not only the right thing to do, but it actually SAVES money in the long run.  For every one dollar spent on family planning, over four dollars is saved.  HIV treatment through the AIDS Drug Assistance Program reduces hospitalizations—reducing taxpayer burdens for hospital care of the uninsured.  HIV-related indigent hospital care accounted for $9.6 million in care in 2008 in South Carolina. 

As legislators begin meeting about state budgets, it’s critical that they hear from you about these issues, and that they are reminded that the decisions they make reflect the priorities of our state governments when it comes to real people’s real lives.  Stay tuned for more on what you can do to advocate for these important services!