Politics and your body

President Obama needs to hear from you!!
To the dismay of all pro-choice advocates, the Obama administration just announced it will exclude abortion coverage in the temporary health-insurance pools that will transition us into the new healthcare system. It is an outrage that this decision would come from a president that pro-choice supporters helped elect. Add your voice to the chorus of dissenters. Tell President Obama that this policy is unacceptable. Ask him to change course immediately. 

According to the Associated Press, the Obama administration is set to ban abortion services in a new, temporary program for individuals who fall into high-risk pools. This policy means that women who are part of these pools due to significant health issues like diabetes or cancer will not have access abortion care, even if their health is at further risk. 

Believe it or not, the administration’s policy is similar to the ban proposed by anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). That’s right. For about three years, a Stupak-style ban will now apply to women in these new high-risk insurance pools.
 
Abortion is the most common surgical procedure women receive. At a time when the country is on the cusp of implementing nationwide health-insurance coverage, it is unacceptable to treat abortion care differently for women who are in these new high-risk pools.

Please urge President Obama to remove the abortion-coverage ban immediately.
Unless President Obama steps in, women with pre-existing conditions or other high-risk medical needs like diabetes will lose out on coverage for abortion care.

Help us fight back.

Tell President Obama that the abortion-coverage ban was not part of the agreement on health reform. Click here to send President Obama a message:
https://secure.prochoiceamerica.org/site/Advocacy?
pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=4425&autologin
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Emails can be sent to President Obama at www.whitehouse.gov
Phone calls should be made to his Comments line:  202.456.1111

ACLU Requests Investigation of Hospitals Denying Emergency Reproductive Health Care
Following the firing and excommunication of Sister Margaret Mary McBride, a nun working in a Catholic hospital who signed off on a patient's life-saving abortion, the American Civil Liberties Union has petitioned the Department of Health and Human Services for a comprehensive investigation of religiously-affiliated hospitals.  The letter argues that no hospital is exempt from providing urgent care to patients and that any hospital that accepts Medicaid and Medicare funds and denies patient care is in violation of Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

Book Review:  Dispatches from the Abortion Wars by Carole Joffe Carole Joffe, a professor emerita of sociology at UC Davis, is the author of a number of books relating to abortion and covering the anti-choice movement.  Her latest is Dispatches from the Abortion Wars:  The costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us. The book jacket states that, “After thirty years embedded in reproductive health research, Joffe relays compelling testimony from doctors, health-care workers, and patients as they struggle against [cultural, political and economic barriers to access].”   Real-life stories include that of a woman whose miscarriage is causing septic shock who is refused care and sent to another hospital. Joffe documents many other incidents demonstrating how inaccessible abortion can be, even in cases of rape or imminent threat to a mother’s life.  Her phrase “Abortion Wars” includes multiple fronts, including attacks on abortion providers that have led to the intentional murders of eight abortion providers since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.  This book cogently builds the case for a more compassionate standard of women’s health care, one that includes access to safe, affordable abortions.  It’s well worth reading.

Action Needed: Budget Cuts Threaten Clinic
FLASH – The current budget impasse is threatening community clinics like our downtown Grass Valley's The Clinic!. The clinic operator, Women's Health Specialists, sent us the following message on June 23, 2010: "This week marks the beginning of no State payments to community clinics. We will  not receive our weekly State Medi-Cal payments during the budget impasse.  It is expected to last for several weeks. We will not be paid again until the State Budget is signed by the Governor. Last year this happened in mid-September, the year before was October. This represents about 90% of our income.  We hope the impasse will be short lived, but we have no control over this process."

Please act now to urge lawmakers in Sacramento and the Governor to:

• End the budget impasse, now
• Pass a common sense budget that includes responsible revenue increases
• Don't rely alone on drastic cuts to health and human services that are so needed during these harsh economic times
• Preserve the social safety net, including adequate funding for Medi-Cal and family planning services  

Call Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: 916-445-2841 
Call Senator Sam Aanestad:  916.651.4004
Call Assembyman Dan Logue:  916.319.2003

Action now to preserve access to reproductive healthcare in California.

Thank you,

Elaine Sierra, Public Policy Chair

What is Family PACT?
Family PACT, the program that pays for the clinic's services, is still on shaky ground. While the waiver has been extended by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) through August 31, 2010, the program is slated for reduction or possible elimination by Governor Schwarzenegger's budget proposal which cuts the reimbursement that goes to family planning providers – such as Women's Health Specialists, the nonprofit which provides the clinic's staff.

Family PACT is a California family planning program which provides reproductive healthcare for the uninsured and under-insured. Through the provision of contraceptive methods to nearly 1 million women and 100,000 men of reproductive age in 2007, the Family PACT Program averted an estimated 296,200 unintended pregnancies in California. These averted pregnancies would have led to approximately 133,000 live births, 122,200 abortions, 3,000 ectopic pregnancies, and 38,000 miscarriages. The cost of healthcare and the raising of a child from conception to age five is about $20,000 so averting those pregnancies saved the state about $2.7 billion or almost $6 billion if all 296,200 were live births. Every dollar that is spent on Family PACT saves the state almost $14 of public health and welfare expenditures.

The Good
Health insurers may soon be required to cover birth control as a preventive service under an amendment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590). The measure would extend coverage to young and low income women whose access to contraception is limited due to cost.  Comparatively, prescription birth control is covered by ninety percent of employer-based insurance plans, according to a study by the Guttmacher Institute. 6/3/10

AB 1640 In late May, the California Assembly voted 45-11 in favor of AB 1640 (Evans), a bill which would restore the breast cancer screening program, Every Woman Counts. Every Woman Counts provides free clinical breast exams, mammograms, pelvic exams and Pap tests to California’s underserved women.  These women are age 50 and older (cervical cancer screening is provided to women 25 and older), and have an income at or below 200% of the federal poverty.

AB 1825 the Assembly also passed AB 1825, which would create healthcare equity for women and their families by requiring all individual health insurance products regulated under the Department of Insurance to cover maternity services, as currently required for health maintenance organizations (HMO's) regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care.

Senate Committee Votes to Repeal Ban on Privately Funded Abortions in the Military
On May 27 the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to include an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would repeal a ban on using private funds to obtain abortions on military bases. The amendment, offered by Senator Roland Burris (D-IL), would reverse a ban on almost all abortion services at U.S. military hospitals and medical facilities. The ban, which applies even if a woman pays for the procedure with her own private funds and in cases where a woman’s health is at risk, was first put into place in 1988 with an internal Department of Defense memorandum. In 1993, President Bill Clinton reversed the policy by executive order but Congress intervened two years later to codify and reinstate the ban. Read the ACLU Press Release.

The Not Good
States are passing laws restricting abortion - and this makes it easier for other states to also pass laws restricting a women's right to choice. These laws can adversely affect a women's physical and mental wellbeing. They may also have the effect of eroding access to contraceptives and sex education. Read this New York Times' article.

More Restrictions on Private Insurance and Abortions
Even though no federal money is used to cover an abortion, and the insured is required to write a separate check to cover abortion healthcare, anti-choice states want to take away that choice also.

The federal health law requires private insurance plans selling policies that include abortion coverage in the exchanges to collect two separate premium payments from consumers -- one for abortion coverage and one for all other services. The insurers must keep the abortion-coverage payments in separate accounts to ensure that public money does not subsidize abortion coverage

But an obscure part of the law allows states to restrict abortion coverage by private plans operating in new insurance markets, called exchanges. (A little explanation: the new healthcare reform bill requires all businesses to offer health insurance to their employees or pay a fee or fine to the government. To ease the burden on individual businesses, the Obama administration has created a health insurance exchange – bringing together private insurance companies with the government – to provide competitive and comprehensive health insurance at a lower cost, and allows businesses to band together to get a better health insurance deal.) Capitalizing on the language in the new law, abortion foes have succeeded in passing bans limiting insurer’s coverage of abortion and would possibly force consumers to buy another policy.

Read this Women’s Health Policy Report.

Comprehensive Sex Ed: What every teen has a right to know
ACLU of Northern California has been working to ensure that school districts around California comply with the law requiring that sex ed taught in public schools be comprehensive. Still many districts, even in the progressive San Francisco Bay Area, are using abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. RH Reality Check published a feature article about the winning strategies are used, and how the remaining challenges are being addresses.

A major concern to our community is the absence of a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum in our schools. Nevada Union High is a specific example. Last spring NU included a formal presentation by a representative of LivingWell. LivingWell calls itself a crisis pregnancy center and describes the services it provides as those of a medical clinic and pregnancy resource center. In truth, the only services the center provides are free pregnancy tests and counseling. Its main goal, aside from advocating abstinence until marriage, is to emphasize the so-called risks of abortion for girls who discover they are pregnant, directing them to other alternatives. 

California Education Code mandates that sex education, when provided, be comprehensive, and not abstinence-only.  It must be medically accurate and objective.  It must cover the effectiveness and safety of contraceptives. Laurie Weaver, head of the public health department's Office of Family Planning, has described the state's sex education curriculum as an "abstinence-plus" strategy, based on the belief that, while the only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease is through abstinence, it is important to teach teens that if they choose to be sexually active, they should be fully informed about contraceptives and have access to services.

Public opinion, as well as state law, favors comprehensive sex education over the abstinence-only approach.  Polls consistently show that more than 80 percent of Americans support teaching comprehensive sex education in high schools and in middle or junior high schools. Most importantly, comprehensive sex education programs have proven to be effective at providing teens with the tools they need to protect themselves from negative sexual health outcomes, while there is little, if any, evidence that abstinence-only instruction has been effective – even at increasing teens’ abstinence.  According to facts gathered by Advocates for Youth, “No abstinence-only program has yet been proven through rigorous evaluation to help youth delay sex for a significant period of time, help youth decrease their number of sex partners, or reduce STI or pregnancy rates among teens.”  (See their fact sheet).

While the LivingWell presentation was not, strictly speaking, abstinence-only, it might as well have been with its heavy emphasis on abstinence. Its coverage of methods for reducing the risks of HIV/STD infections and the risks of pregnancy for those who are sexually active is misleading.  It fails to meet the state mandate that comprehensive sex ed curriculum include fact-based information on the efficacy of condoms and contraceptives for their intended purpose.  Instead, the presentation denigrates condoms and each method of birth control as having NO efficacy in preventing sexually transmitted infections. The curriculum does not provide sufficient information on alternative local resources for testing and treatment, referring students to a single clinic – not the clinic operated by Women’s Health Specialists that we sponsor.

We raised our concerns with school officials as early as last summer, to no avail. We were accorded the opportunity to review the slide presentation portion of the curriculum on January 29, 2010.  Sharon O’Hara and I spoke at a NJUHSD curriculum council meeting on March 9, where the NU sex ed curriculum was discussed.  We presented our views on the flaws and inaccuracies of the sex ed curriculum, and opposed the continued use of LivingWell’s presentation and representative.  Superintendent Ralf Swenson acknowledged that there were some problems with the presentation and indicated that he intended to ensure that the slides were revised to be medically accurate.  We will continue to monitor the sex ed curriculum and to advocate for comprehensive sex education that meets the needs of students and promotes their sexual health. Stay tuned. We have not given up.

Deep thanks to all of you who support The Clinic! and its vital place in Nevada County women’s and family lives. We rely on your support to continue.

The Citizens for Choice Public Policy Team
Cece Royal
Elaine Sierra
Sharon O’Hara

"Health Care Reform 2010
What will take place immediately and what will take place in 2014? Here's a brief list of those provisions. For other lists, visit the Committee on Energy and Commerce website.

Here's an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute.

A little-seen and very bad provision: even after all the research showing that abstinence-until-marriage does not work, the Healthcare Reform bill that was just passed has a little-noticed provision in it that reinstates 250 million dollars for this failed approach to reproductive education and health.

As James Wagooner of the Washington group Advocates for Youth states, "To spend a quarter-billion dollars on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that have already been proven to fail is reckless and irresponsible. When on top of that you add the fact that this puts the health and lives of young people at risk, this becomes outrageous.

ACT up!
Become a pro-choice activist by signing up to join our Activists for Choice Team (ACT). You'll receive periodic action alerts about current legislative and public policy issues affecting reproductive choice. Simply email us your email address. Our Public Policy committee has been working hard to advocate for comprehensive reproductive health care and access. Read about their latest efforts in our quarterly newsletter, Voices for Choice.

Now Hiring! We are looking for a qualified Outreach Education Coordinator.

President Obama to exclude abortion coverage for high-risk women! Tell him NO!

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Read the review for Carole Joffe's book, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars.

Fake clinics, or "crisis pregnancy centers" give you one choice - theirs. NARAL has just completed a two-year study on CPCs, Unmasking Fake Clinics. You really need to read this.

Read about our local CPC

Comprehensive Sex Education California law says it's mandatory that schools teach HIV/AIDS classes twice and if they choose to teach sex education, it must be comprehensive and must follow the guidelines in the California Education Code. How is Nevada County holding up to this legal requirement?

The Guttmacher Institute Media Update: California shows that sound policy is crucial in reducing teen pregnancy.

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Are you pregnant and need a ride to your counseling or abortion appointment? ACCESS can help!

Questions about HPV (human papillomavirus)? This Nantional Cancer Institute Fact Sheet is a good source!

Abstinence-only education still doesn't work.