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Indybay Feature

State Anti-Abortion Legislation 2010

by Rubble
As too many people - in my opinion and experience - right here in the Bay Area ignore, trivialize, or remain uninformed of the upcoming 7th Annual “Walk For Life 2010”, thousands of well-organized, highly effective, church-based anti-abortion activists plan to once again rally then march through San Francisco with their message that abortion is murder and needs to be outlawed. It may be instructive to look at a “scorecard” of 2010 anti-abortion legislation passed at the state level to understand the serious of this action. I recently read that 370 anti-abortion bills were introduced at the state level in the past year. Here is a synopsis of some of the passed legislation, as compiled in a report by the Guttmacher Institute (guttmacher.org).
Limits to funding is an insidious tactic. Per President Obama’s lead in eliminating abortion coverage in the Federal insurance exchanges, five states passed limits or bans in State insurance exchange programs. Arizona passed limitations on abortion coverage in the state’s employee health plan while South Carolina passed legislation continuing similar employee plan limitations. Five states passed laws either limiting or extending temporary restrictions on Medicaid funding. Mississippi and Colorado legislatures voted to continue family planning funding restrictions. Arizona and Virginia legislation limits funding to cases of life endangerment, rape, and incest. Three states continued funding for alternatives to abortion.

Outright service bans and restrictions are more direct, but few. Oklahoma banned abortion based on the gender of the fetus and after 20 weeks of gestation. Utah has prohibited self-induced abortions.

Bureaucratic hoops delay and complicate the process of having and providing an abortion, along with instituting a coercive anti-abortion bias that likely brings on or accentuates internalized conflicts such as guilt, fear, shame, and overall confusion for many women and families. Kansas established mandatory HIV testing of pregnant women and some infants. Tennessee established a certificate of stillbirth. Idaho allows individual providers to refuse to provide family planning and emergency contraception; the employer is required to provide an alternative provider, except in the case of “undue hardship“, whatever that means. Oklahoma also passed the “undue hardship” loophole to its existing opt-out provider clause. Oklahoma and Idaho expanded their “abortion refusal clause” to include “additional providers and institutions“.

Arizona and Oklahoma established “reporting requirements” related to minors requesting abortions. I assume these are “parental notification” laws like the ones repeatedly put on the California state ballot which have been narrowly defeated. Both states additionally passed laws described as establishing “intrusive reporting requirements“. Oklahoma and Tennessee require clinics to post notices that a woman cannot be “coerced” into an abortion, as if a lot of people might be thinking they overtly can right in front of providers.

More directly, Nebraska now requires what the report describes as “flawed information” on the “risks associated “ with complications, basically trying to scare women out of having the abortion. Missouri requires both that a woman be “informed” that abortion (allegedly, as if objective) ends “the life of a separate, unique, living human being” while requiring fetal pain counseling and - upon request - anesthesia for the fetus. In Oklahoma, the provider must now show and describe the “image” of the fetus to the woman, while three states are requiring that the provider “offer” to show this image.

Missouri requires providers to offer an ultrasound, while Wisconsin requires a “discussion” of contraception before providing the service. South Carolina passed legislation extending an already established waiting period between receiving “counseling” and the abortion to 24 hours. Since only about 14% of U.S. counties currently provide abortion, many women have to travel out of state and with insurance funding almost outlawed across the board. Thus, these types of requirements artificially drive up the cost of the having the procedure by requiring more time away from home with lodging and meal expenses and potentially lost work time. They also artificially drive up clinic expenses.

Draconian criminal violations are being legislated against individual and institutional providers to provide what seems to me a chilling effect on these still legal, medical procedures. In Louisiana, the State is now allowed to close an abortion clinic for any violation of state or federal law, legislation that sounds alarmingly like a “zero tolerance” or a “mandatory minimum sentence” for any violation no matter how small. Providers are no longer covered by existing malpractice protections when performing an “elective” post viability abortion. Oklahoma prohibits a patient from suing a provider who fails or provide (i.e. purposely withholds information from a patient, as in situations where potential health risks of having a baby are discovered) information that leads a woman to continue the pregnancy when she otherwise might choose abortion.

The Guttmacher Institute only describes several trivial laws passed that could be interpreted as pro-abortion, none doing anything to provide safe, accessible, affordable abortions. The drumbeat of repression continues in 2011. Kansas lawmakers are drafting legislation based on a 2010 Nebraska law restricting late-term abortions to 20 weeks on the controversial claim that fetuses start feeling pain at that stage. Three other state legislatures are reportedly planning to introduce similar bills in what anti-abortion activists describe as a model to be replicated nationally. In a recent article published in the Wichita Eagle, these legislations are described as involving tightened reporting requirements for late term abortions, remedies against doctors who violate laws, and instituting provisions for the patient, husband, or parents to sue a provider who they believe violated law in a late-term abortion. The President of the Center for Reproductive Rights describes the law as “clearly unconstitutional” and not grounded “in either the Constitution or science”.

At the Federal level, Indiana’s Representative Mike Pence has just introduced legislation denying funding for non-abortion reproductive procedures (abortion funding has already been eliminated) to organizations who provide abortion in their menu of reproductive services. He is brazenly admitting the legislation is targeted to reduce the number of abortions (i.e. drive out of business economically) Planned Parenthood is able to provide.

About the Guttmacher Institute
Four decades after its creation, the Guttmacher Institute continues to advance sexual and reproductive health in the United States and worldwide through an interrelated program of social science research, policy analysis and public education designed to generate new ideas, encourage enlightened public debate and promote sound policy and program development.

The Institute produces a wide range of resources on topics pertaining to sexual and reproductive health, including International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health (formerly International Family Planning Perspectives), the Guttmacher Policy Review and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. In 2009, Guttmacher was designated an official Collaborating Center for Reproductive Health by the World Health Organization and its regional office, the Pan American Health Organization.
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by People & places worthy of my time
Thanks for calling attention to the recent challenges all over the country to women's rights over their own lives. Yes, we need to pay attention to these bills and work together strategically to counter them. But it may be worth reconsidering whether to pay any attention at all to the walk itself. While the goofs walk along the water on the periphery bellowing out lies to the fish and trying their best to piss us off, many women and adolescents from across the state seeking abortion services will be served expertly, safely and comprehensively in our clinics, deeper within the city. Every day thousands upon thousands of residents work to make sexual and reproductive justice a reality here. San Francisco remains our stronghold. We don't need to heed a bunch of outsiders begging for attention to show we are a force to be reckoned with. They know. That's why the come here; they can only hope to distract us. All this to say, they can kiss my busy-abortion-support-providing ass. But they won't find it at the walk.
by Shame on private-profit US medicine
The Catholic Chuch is mobilizing a fascist movement with the abortion issue as a smokescreen, and it must be stopped. They are not speaking to fish; they are speaking to people and they are mobilizing mostly Latino Catholic school children from the Bay Area and the local fascists of all superstitions. When California barely defeats anti-abortion measures, you had better take notice right now. This is the SAN FRANCISCO CATHOLIC CHURCH, with lots of Bay Area participants, including Marin Catholic High School. AND TO ALL OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSIONS: Until this backward country has socialized medicine guaranteeing free medical care from cradle to grave paid for with our tax dollars as exists in the rest of the industrialized world, including our neighbor 90 miles from the US, Cuba, the entire medical profession should be ASHAMED OF ITSELF. The US now has a DECLINING LIFE EXPECTANCY due to the private profit insurance companies, promoted by the Democrats' so-called health reform, the same health reform that requires women to purchase separate abortion coverage from their employer, if their employer offers it. And the HMOs, like Kaiser, also have exorbitant rates, functioning today like insurance companies. Most counties IN CALIFORNIA do not have an abortion clinic, so THE MEDICAL PROFESSION OF THIS STATE, INCLUDING NURSES SHOULD BE AT EVERY PRO-ABORTION MARCH. And you had better start fighting for socialized medicine if you want jobs as we cannot afford insurance; there are 50 million people now without insurance and half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by inability to pay medical bills despite having insurance. After all, Germany has had socialized medicine for 128 years. It is long over due that backward USA has socialized medicine, guaranteeting free medical care, including abortion with no restrictions, from cradle to grave, paid for with our tax dollars.
by Shame on private-profit US medicine
The only time in memory that the Democratic Party campaign team known as the nurses' unions and their fellow conservatives, the medical doctors, showed up to march for Roe v Wade was in 1989 and 1992 at Democratic Party sponsored campaign marches on Market Street, by the busload, to elect the reactionary Bill Clinton to be president in 1992. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has been busy welcoming the anti-abortion crowd that is not already there. There have always been anti-abortion Democratic Party representatives such as Ohio's Dennis Kucinich, who suddenly became "pro-choice" when running for president, Nevada's Harry Reid who has been minority leader in Congress, Macy Kaptur and Steve Driehaus of Ohio, former Michigan Rep Bart Stupak, Tom Perriello of Virginia, and others.
See
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2009/07/antiabortion_democrats_in_cong.html
Some of these anti-abortion Democrats ended up supporting Obama's terrible healthcare bill because it is so anti-abortion in that a woman has to purchase separate abortion insurance from her employer. And Obama never bothered to get the Democratically-controlled Congress to overturn a reactionary Supreme Court ruling banning late terms abortions.

WE DEMAND THAT THE NURSES AND DOCTORS ORGANIZATIONS BRING BUSLOADS OF THEIR MEMBERS TO THE JANUARY 22, 2011 CELEBRATION OF ROE V WADE TO MARCH ON MARKET STREET FROM THE EMBARCADERO TO THE CIVIC CENTER FOR ABORTION AND FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Nothing less will do, and until they do that, THEY HAVE NOTHING TO BE PROUD OF. The American medical system is the laughing stock of the industrialized world and a disgrace to humanity, CAUSING DECLINING LIFE EXPECTANCY as the US has the lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality in the industrialized world due to its private profit insurance so-called medical system, actively promoted by Democrat Obama's phony healthcare bill. Now that there is mass unemployment, since medical coverage is tied to employment, there is a decline in use of the so-called healthcare system, with the consequent loss of medical jobs. IT IS IN THE INTEREST OF THE DOCTORS AND NURSES TO FIGHT FOR SOCIALIZED MEDICINE AND ABORTION if they are serious.

Abortion is part of women's healthcare and should be free, paid for with our tax dollars, with no restrictions. If we had socialized medicine, paid for with our tax dollars from cradle to grave, we could have not only an abortion clinic in every county in the US, instead of less than 13% of US counties, WE COULD HAVE ABORTION CLINICS NEXT TO EVERY HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE providing not only abortion but also all forms of birth control, and free condoms on the reception table for the boyfriends and husbands, not only to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but also to stop venereal disease. The abortion providers could also assist in teaching sex education in the schools starting in 9th grade, at the latest, and family planning, so that adults wait until age 30 and being homeowners to have a child so that they have the maturity and finances to raise the child, preventing all the problems we have with teenagers and 20-year-olds having children they cannot afford and do not have the maturity to educate.
See the crisis in lack of abortion clinics at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/02/no-choice-87-of-us-counti_n_210194.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97may/abortion.htm

THE SMUGNESS OF THE NURSES AND DOCTORS WHO REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN ALL ROE V WADE CELEBRATIONS IS DESPICABLE AND IS DE FACTO SUPPORT OF THE MAJOR ANTI-ABORTION CAMPAIGN AND MAJOR MEDICAL CRISIS IN THIS BACKWARD COUNTRY.

by Concerned advocate
How is Tennessee's Certificate of Stillbirth an "anti-abortion" measure? What does the full-term, naturally occurring death of a baby at 40 weeks gestation have to do with elected abortion? Or is this more rhetoric from my female comrades. Evolve women, evolve. Stop the thoughtless rhetoric and start considering all women's choices, not merely those handed down by the system, feminist-based or not. Think for yourselves. That is true feminism.
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