Tagged: Planned Parenthood

Posted: October 12, 2012 at 6:59 am

Time for Women’s Groups to Focus on States

It’s time for national women’s groups to shift their focus to state races.

With less than four weeks left until election day, Romney/Ryan’s disdain for women’s rights and support for forced births for rape victims are of understandable concern to national women’s health groups because of future Supreme Court appointments.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, national Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and EMILY’s List seem to be concentrated on the outcome in the presidential and congressional elections.  But races for governor, attorney general, and state legislature are arguably more important.

According to a recent report compiled by NARAL Pro-Choice America, states are ground zero of the War on Women.

State Abortion Restrictions

No matter how you look at it, anti-choice and anti-women measures at the state level received unprecedented attention in 2011. The Guttmacher Institute reports that “in the 50 states combined, legislators introduced more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights-related provisions, a sharp increase from the 950 introduced in 2010. By year’s end, 135 of these provisions had been enacted in 36 states.”

They aren’t just targeting abortion either. Access to birth control and preventative care, equal insurance prices, and equal pay for women are also under attack.

Many of these provisions are laws passed by wingnut legislatures and signed by anti-woman governors.  In Montana, legislators introduced a record number of anti-choice bills.  Thankfully, we had a democratic Governor who vetoed these bills.  Rick Hill meanwhile wants forced births for rape victims. He would sign it into law – along with dozens of other anti-woman bills – during his first few months in office.

Anti-choice attorney generals are now discovering they have an enormous amount of power over women’s rights and are ramping up their attacks.


Attorney General Ken Cucinelli is in the news  for forcing 20 new medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers - even though abortion is one of the safest and most regulated medical procedures. If Virgina’s AG has his way, most of the state’s abortion clinics could close.  In Wisconsin the War on Women’s foot soldiers are asking the attorney general to bar medical schools from teaching how to perform abortions.  Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is featured in GQ magazine in an article that labels him “the most aggressive abortion litigator in the land.” The nine-page article carries the headline, “This man will do anything to stop abortion.”

If Tim Fox, who supports forced birth for rape victims, is elected he’ll start implementing this garbage in Montana immediately.

Sure, there are some grassroots state organizations doing what they can to influence these races, but without much money. National GOP and corporate PACs meanwhile are dumping hundreds of thousands into state races at an alarming rate.  Clearly, the right knows where the fight is.  Unless national women’s groups  realize it–and shift their focus to states, now–it will be too late.

Posted: March 29, 2012 at 6:19 pm

GUEST POST: It Takes Courage

The following is a guest post by Holly Kaleczyc.

In my years serving women in crisis in Helena, I learned that it takes courage to be an advocate for women—to stand up for our reproductive rights in the face of aggressive and sometimes ugly, violent opposition. I’m thrilled to support such an advocate for Attorney General—Pam Bucy. Pam has served on the board of Planned Parenthood, she has done countless hours of pro bono legal work on behalf of women, and she authored the Attorney General opinion that ended gender discrimination in insurance purchasing and mandated that health insurance cover birth control like any other prescription. Pam has fought, with courage, for women.

Women’s organizations are lining up behind Pam. EMILY’s List and the Women’s Campaign Fund endorsed Pam very early on. Just a few weeks ago, Planned Parenthood Montana gave their sole primary endorsement to Pam Bucy. Her primary opponent, Jesse Laslovich, received a recommendation, indicating that his record has not been 100%– and demonstrating that he is not the best advocate for women running in this race.

Mr. Laslovich has not always been on our side. In 2003, Mr. Laslovich had a 66% score with NARAL for his vote for a fetal pain bill—a bill mandating questionable medical procedures for women and opposed by the medical profession. In 2009 he had a 90% record because he voted for a bill that defined life at conception, creating a crime of fetal homicide. Overall, Jesse’s record on choice has been ok most of the time. Pam Bucy has stood with women all of the time.

With the attacks on our basic rights to contraception, funding for victims’ services at risk, and continuous anti-woman rhetoric, we need to elect leaders who we can count on all the time. 

Posted: February 3, 2012 at 12:52 pm

What’s Really Going on with Susan G. Komen

Many of you have no doubt been following with dismay the news that the Susan. G. Komen foundation would be cutting off funds to Planned Parenthood because of an investigation by Congressional Republicans.

The Komen foundation faced major backlash. In a move to control the damage, it put out an “apology” for its decision to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood breast cancer prevention programs. The decision is being misreported as a reversal of Komen’s earlier announcement, but this is, in fact, not the case.  Komen is still refusing to commit to future grants to Planned Parenthood, so nothing has really changed–except their realization that this is a big PR disaster.

Meanwhile, the right-wingers are celebrating this as an ideological victory.  The announcement is just the latest offensive in the right-wing crusade to shut down Planned Parenthood completely.  The founder of the the Komen Foundation is a GOP major donor and was a political appointee of the Bush administration, and its board members include some big names in the anti-choice, anti-women movement.

So not only are future grants from the Komen Foundation not guaranteed, around the country, state governments controlled by TEA Party Republican nutjobs are cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood as part of their war on women.  In Congress too, Denny Rehberg been a key lieutenant in House Speaker John Boehner’s war on women.  (Even though the funds Rehberg and Boehner are slashing go toward preventative cancer screenings and reducing the need for abortions in the first place.)

The best thing you can do to make a difference?  Spend your hard earned money on organizations and candidates who truly support women’s health.

Posted: April 21, 2011 at 12:09 pm

TEA Party Emperors Wear No Clothes

Those who want to come out of the closet and admit publicly their ideological opposition to birth control for women should just do it, and stop trying to hide behind financial arguments that simply don’t add up.

Here’s the situation in Montana:

Decades of a lack of medically accurate sex education programs and affordable contraception led to a huge number of births to poor women in Montana. (41% of births are financed by Medicaid).  Our state’s teen birth rate is declining at a slower rate than the national average. In Montana, the cost to taxpayers associated with teen childbearing was estimated to be at least $18 million in 2004.

Yet with a surplus of over $300 million, one of the first things the fake fiscal conservatives in the Montana Legislature tried to cut was family planning through birth control.  The plan doesn’t hold water for anyone wanting to call her or himself a fiscal conservative. Nor for those who want to reduce abortions, which are prevented through access to birth control.

Nor can family services cuts be justified in terms of TEA party individual freedom ideology.  Even if abortion funding was at stake (it isn’t),TEA Party followers should remember the words of TEA Party heroine Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged–which they surely all read, as the Montana TEA Party Montana Shrugged named themselves after the book:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn). Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

–ayn rand

Posted: April 13, 2011 at 8:21 am

Analysis: GOP’s “Get Your Women’s Health Care at Walgreens” Strategy Backfires

The national and state budget negotiations are shaping up to be a recipe for disaster for the GOP, largely because the  Republican Party is being held hostage by hard-line right-wing forces: the tea party obsessed with cutting the budget (even though here in Montana we have a $300 million surplus) and the religious right  are focused on cutting family planning and birth control – the one way to get to their supposed goal of reducing abortions. As Montana GOP Senate Finance Committee Chair Dave Lewis (R-Helena)  acknowledged, these groups are calling the shots and the budget is being crafted to please them.


The GOP’s actions will harm their approval ratings with independent voters, which are key to winning elections for either party .  Independents aren’t interested in ideology. They’re interested in problem-solving and passing a lean, rational budget. But state House Speaker Milburn (R-Cascade) isn’t worried about independents,  he’s worried about the wingnuts in his own caucus, a strategy that will backfire for him like it backfired for the GOP nationally. 

As Politico reports, Republicans were forced to give up the ridiculous cuts to family planning at the national level because it made them look absurd, allowing Democratic leaders to depict Republicans as willing to shut down the federal government in order to cut funding for women’s health care services.  (It is already illegal for federal funds to be used for abortions, and has been for decades.)

This strategy didn’t work so well for Republicans at the national level, an
Americans don’t want to talk about abortion. When asked to name the most important issues facing the country, abortion ranks very low. They especially don’t want to see the abortion debate sabotage more urgent matters — like getting a federal budget and keeping the government open.

The effects of the national GOP’s strategic bungle aren’t over yet.  Here’s the latest from the Colbert Report

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Pap Smears at Walgreens
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Posted: March 19, 2011 at 4:21 pm

GUEST POST: Family services clinics do more to prevent abortion than the other side ever will

Planned Parenthood of Montana has been my primary care provider for the last thirteen years.  I’ve gone to them for contraception, annual exams, cancer screenings, anxiety and depression issues, digestion problems and more.

Family planning services around the country operate on Title X funding – that funding goes toward the services I just listed. Title X funding is never used for abortion care, and yet this particular funding which provides life-saving, preventative care is exactly what conservatives and the anti-choice community are after. By their logic, if Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics are forced to close due to the lack of Title X funding, our country will no longer be plagued by abortion.

This attack is not only at the federal level. The Montana House recently voted to remove 4.7 million in family planning funding from our state budget. This year alone, Montana’s family planning programs served 27, 731 patients. Contraceptive services provided at family clinics in Montana helped prevent 5,600 unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in 2,500 unintended births and 2,300 abortions.

Getting rid of federal Title X funding and cutting family planning funding at the state level will do nothing to prevent abortions. It will prevent women from accessing affordable and sanitary services. It will create more unintended pregnancies by cutting off access to contraception. It will result in more unwanted children and many more back alley abortions.

If the anti-choice folks really want to do something about abortion – which is a completely legal medical procedure I might add – they should support Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics around our state and nationwide. These clinics, by providing contraception and accurate medical information, do more to prevent abortion than the other side ever will.

[Special thanks to guest contributor Ashley Stevick for this post. If you are interested in being a guest contributor, email me on the tipline.]