Trust Women Week: A National Online March, Banners in the Street

• 54% of women
  who have abortions used a contraceptive method (usually the condom or the pill)
  during the month they became pregnant. Among those women, 76% of pill users and
  49% of condom users report having used their method inconsistently, while 13%
  of pill users and 14% of condom users report correct use.^[6]
• Women
  of color have much higher rates of unintended pregnancies and are
  disproportionately more likely to have an abortion, which points to widespread inequities
  in access to contraception and adequate health care.

 

Abortion and Providers

 

• In
  2008, 87% of U.S. counties had no abortion provider.^[7]
• 1/3
  of American women live in a county with no abortion provider, which meant they
  would have to travel outside their county to obtain an abortion. Of women
  obtaining abortions in 2006, nonhospital providers estimate that 27% traveled
  at least 50 miles.
• In
  2009, the average amount paid for a non-hospital abortion with local anesthesia
  at 10 weeks’ gestation was $451. ^[8]

 

Abortion Law and Policy

• In 1992, the Supreme in Planned Parenthood v. Casey significantly weakened the legal
  protections previously afforded women and physicians by giving states the right
  to enact restrictions that do not create an “undue burden” for women seeking
  abortion^[9].
• Since
  1976 via the Hyde Amendment (which has been renewed every year),Congress has
  barred the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, except when the
  woman’s life would be endangered by a full-term pregnancy or in cases of rape
  or incest.

http://youtu.be/zCmCcACrm6M

• On 5/4/11, Smith Bill HR3 passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of
  251:175 . (No action in the Senate.)
  • Expands and makes permanent (as opposed to annual opportunity to strike
    it) that no federal funds can be spent on abortion
  • Uses personal and business tax policy to bar any insurance policy
    (including those paid with personal funds) from covering abortion, even to
    protect a woman’s health when threatened by complication with later term wanted
    pregnancies which could result in all private insurance dropping coverage of
    abortion. Currently 85% of private insurance plans cover abortion.
  • Redefines rape as only “forcible rape,” meaning those that are
    inebriated or drugged do not count as rapes. Women would have to prove that the
    rape was forced.

 

• 19 state governments enacted 80 anti-choice regulations related to
  abortions in 2011, a new record.  The
  previous record was in 2005, when about 34 regulations were enacted.

These measures:

Discourage and delay
pregnant women from acting on decisions to obtain an abortion.

Interfere with clinician
practices in the name of safety .

Restrict the gestational
period for when a fetus can be aborted.

Limit government funds to
for abortion care and thus limits the choices of poor women.

Criminalize women’s
decisions.

 

Abortion is Safe

• The
  risk of abortion complications is minimal: Fewer than 0.3% of abortion patients
  experience a complication that requires hospitalization.^[10]
• Abortion
  is safer when and where it is legal.
• Opponents
  have attempted to claim that abortion causes a number of complications.  There is no evidence for these claims, and
  research has systematically discredited each of them:
• Abortions
  performed in the first trimester pose virtually no long-term risk of such
  problems as infertility, ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion (miscarriage)
  or birth defect, and little or no risk of preterm or low-birth-weight deliveries.^[11]
• In
  repeated studies since the early 1980s, leading experts have concluded that
  abortion does not pose a hazard to women’s mental health.^[12]
• Abortion
  does not increase one’s risk of breast cancer as shown by several peer-reviewed
  and respected scientific studies.

 

Contraception prevents unintended
pregnancy and abortion

• In
  2006, publicly funded family planning services helped women avoid 1.94 million
  unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 860,000
  unintended births and 810,000 abortions^[13].

 

Current Threats
to Abortion Access

• Eliminating insurance
  coverage of abortion. Currently 85% of private insurance covers
  abortion. Laws passed by the House of Representatives and state governments are
  in effect banning private coverage of abortion.
• Requiring
  medically-unnecessary ultrasounds before abortion. Some states require
  that women receive information about how to access an ultrasound while others
  require that a woman undergo an ultrasound prior to obtaining an abortion. An
  ultrasound is not medically necessary for first-trimester abortion and
  these types of laws appear to be attempts to personify the fetus and dissuade
  the woman from choosing an abortion, as well as significantly add to the cost
  of the procedure^[14].
• “Informed
  consent” a.k.a. misinformation/scare tactic requirements are often used to
  interfere with a woman’s easy access to a safe abortion. Many states require
  mandatory biased counseling and often at least a 24-hour “waiting period”
  between counseling and an abortion procedure. Many states require certain
  information to be given during counseling such as information about fetal
  development, how to obtain an ultrasound, along with misleading or inaccurate
  information about the risks associated with abortion. This requirement,
  designed to deter women from seeking an abortion, causes an undue emotional and
  financial burden. In states that require a waiting period, women must make two
  trips to a health care provider in order to obtain an abortion, increasing the
  difficulty of accessing an abortion for low-income or working women^[15]
  who have to find child care, transportation and coverage at their jobs to
  travel large distances to a provider twice.
• Many
  clinics and health care facilities are targets of serious antiabortion violence
  including bombings, arson, and vandalism. Additionally, these facilities are
  often subject to violent protests and blockades. The federal government in 1994
  enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act which prohibits
  intentional property damage, or the use of force or threat of force to injure,
  intimidate, or interfere with someone entering a health care facility^[16].
• The
  average cost of an abortion at 10 weeks gestation is $370. In 1977 the Hyde
  Amendment was implemented with banned federal funding for abortion
  except in extreme circumstances. Medicaid is one of the primary federal health
  care programs for low-income people, and under Hyde Medicaid cannot be used to
  pay for an abortion.
• Crisis
  pregnancy centers
  present themselves as “pregnancy clinics” or “medical clinicis” to persuade
  women to not have an abortion. Rather than present all the options (continue,
  continue and put up for adoption, or terminate) they present biased facts. Many
  receive taxpayers funds.
• State
  initiatives to make the embryo a person. Colorado started this trend. Mississippi followed suit this year, in an
  initiative that was defeated by voters.

 

 

 

California Specific

• In California, 897,700 of the 7,680,396 women of
  reproductive age became pregnant in 2008. 61% of these pregnancies resulted in
  live births and 24% in induced abortions.
• In
  2008, 214,190 women obtained abortions in California, producing a rate of 27.6 abortions per
  1,000 women of reproductive age. Some of these women were from other states,
  and some California residents had abortions in other states,
  so this rate may not reflect the abortion rate of state residents. The rate
  increased 2% since 2005, when it was 27.1 abortions per 1,000 women 15-44.
  Abortions inCalifornia represent 17.7% of all abortions in theUnited States.
• In
  2008, 22% of California counties had no abortion provider.^[17]

 

Catholics
support birth control and have abortions.

• “ Sensus
  fidelium —the graced and experience-fed wisdom of the faithful that has
  always been one of the sources of truth in the Catholic tradition.”
• 98% of sexually active Catholic women have used a form of contraception banned by the Catholic Church.
• As recently as 1968, a majority of the Pope’s advisors agreed that there was no moral, theological or pastoral reason to ban Catholics from using contraception.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/on-family-planning-does-the-catholic-church-represent-catholics/2011/10/07/gIQAaNGnSL_blog.htm

 

Reproductive Justice

 

Reproductive
justice is a framework that addresses the intersecting influences of racism,
sexism, xenophobia, and class on the health and daily lives of women and girls.^[18] It goes beyond the issues of reproductive health services, and the law and policy approach of a reproductive rights framework, to
actively and inclusively represent the needs, challenges and daily experiences
of communities of color and low-income women. This integrated
approach is about a woman’s total reproductive health and its relationship to
her economic conditions and daily experiences. Its goal is not to single out
parts of a woman’s body but instead to see women’s lives and experiences as a
whole.^[19]

 

According to the
Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, “Reproductive
Justice exists when all people have the social, political and economic power
and resources to make healthy decisions about our gender, bodies, sexuality and
families for our selves and our communities.”^[20]

 

Reproductive
oppression is the control
and regulation of our gender, bodies, and sexuality. This oppression manifests in many ways,
such as

• the systematically toxic environment in many poor communities that expose women to toxins linked with
  infertility, infant mortality, miscarriage, birth defects, and cancer.
• the criminalization of
  substance-dependent pregnant women and subsequent incarceration rather than
  rehabilitation.

 

Reproductive justice is a framework that recognizes that
women’s health, access to medical care
and economic justice are political issues that are all connected. Reproductive
options and self-determination for
women of color and poor women are restricted in many aspects because
reproductive health is directly tied to the economic conditions in a woman’s
community, including environmental factors and experiences of women of color with respect to
race, class, and gender.^[21]

 

Though
the constitutional right to an abortion established by Roe v. Wade remains
technically intact, the majority of anti-choice and anti-women legislation
designed to chip away at Roe disproportionately affects poor women and women of
color. These include bans
on publicly funded abortion, cuts to women’s health clinics, and legally-imposed
waiting periods act to deny access safe and legal abortion for many
underprivileged women.

 

The Reproductive Justice agenda
includes but is not limited to some of the following: affordable child care and
housing for low income women; pre- and post-natal care accessible to all women;
child nutrition and pre-school programs, comprehensive school-based medically
accurate and age-appropriate sex education for our youth; family planning and
counseling; guaranteed job security for pregnant employees; paid family and

medical leave; access to birth control and emergency contraception; affordable
and accessible reproductive health care; treatment programs–not jail time–to
assist pregnant substance abusers; and, last but not least, universal health
care for all.^[22]

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