Posts tagged women's health
Posts tagged women's health
North Dakota has only one abortion clinic and has been rated the worst state in the country for women, but the State Senate passed two bills on Thursday will make it even more difficult for women in the state to access abortion care.
North Dakota lawmakers passed aPersonhood Constitutional Amendment initiative on Thursday that would amend the state’s constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. If the ballot initiative passes the House, North Dakota voters will decide on it during the 2014 elections.
“We are intending that it be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, since Scalia said that the Supreme Court is waiting for states to raise a case,” state Sen. Margaret Sitte (R), the sponsor of the personhood initiative, told HuffPost.
The Senate also passed a bill on Thursday that could shut down the North Dakota’s one abortion clinic, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, by requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. A similar law in Mississippi is currently threatening to close the only clinic in that state because the hospitals near the Jackson clinic are all refusing the applications of doctors who perform abortions.
Sitte said that while the bill could effectively end abortion in North Dakota, she supports the bill because it would protect women who experience medical complications after the procedure. “Yes, this bill could possibly close the abortion clinic [in Fargo],” she said. “I’m not saying that’s the intention of the law. The intention of the law is to ensure that women have adequate health care and the follow-up care that they need.”
The State Senate rejected a second personhood bill introduced by Sitte that would have made it difficult for women to use in vitro fertilization. The bill would have prohibited doctors from disposing of unused embryos after an in vitro cycle, which would force families to pay hundreds of dollars each year to keep the embryos frozen indefinitely. It would have also prevented women with cancer or other illnesses from using a sperm or egg donor to conceive through in vitro fertilization.
“It’s like a bad episode of the twilight zone,” said Rania Batrice, communications director the North Dakota Democratic Party. “These bills just open the door for every other state in the country to interject themselves into everybody’s bedroom.”
Sitte said she fully expects North Dakotans to pass the personhood measure in 2014, which declares “the inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and defended.”
“We know North Dakotans are pro-life,” she said. “This just puts a statement of fact into the Constitution.”
Sarah Stoesz, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, expressed her disappointment on Thursday with the Senate’s votes.
“Politicians in North Dakota are wasting taxpayer time advancing what would no doubt become another divisive constitutional amendment with dangerous unintended consequences for North Dakota families,” she said in a statement. “Planned Parenthood will continue to fight these legislative attacks on women’s health in partnership with a broad coalition of doctors, patients, teachers, lawyers and other concerned North Dakotans who do not want to see politicians inserting themselves into the private medical decision-making of women and families in our state.”
In a flood of lawsuits, Roman Catholics, evangelicals and Mennonites are challenging a provision in the new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employee health plans — a high-stakes clash between religious freedom and health care access that appears headed to the Supreme Court.
Democracy Now! Video from the RNC.
The article is about a month old, but still worth the read.
via recall-all-republicans-2012
(Source: nanner, via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan says that he personally believes that rape is just another “method of conception” and not an excuse to allow abortions.
During an interview with WJHL this week, Ryan was asked his view about Rep. Todd Akin, who recently asserted that women could not get pregnant from “legitimate rape.”
“Specifically where you stand when it comes to rape, and when it comes to the issue of should it be legal for a woman to be able to get an abortion if she’s raped?” WJHL Josh Smith wondered.
“I’m very proud of my pro-life record, and I’ve always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life,” Ryan explained. “But let’s remember, I’m joining the Romney-Ryan ticket. And the president makes policy.”
“And the president, in this case the future President Mitt Romney, has exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother, which is a vast improvement of where we are right now.”
No words just reblog.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
Speaking harshly about establishment Republicans who have tried to force Akin from the Missouri race, Huckabee at one point compared the National Republican Senatorial Committee to “union goons” who “kneecap” their enemies.
The former Arkansas governor said party bosses were “opening up rounds and rounds” of ammunition on Akin and “then running over with tanks and trucks and leaving him to be ravaged by the other side.”
“This is unprecedented, to see to this orchestrated attempt to humiliate and devastate a fellow Republican,” Huckabee said of Akin, who has deep ties to the Christian conservative movement. Akin spent Thursday in Florida meeting with evangelical leaders and evaluating his political future…
…At one point, Huckabee mused about whether Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney affected his poll numbers in Missouri by not coming to Akin’s defense. Romney encouraged Akin to leave the race after his “legitimate rape” comments set off a political firestorm earlier this week.
The discredited notion that a woman’s body can resist conception in a sexual assault has persisted in anti-abortion circles for decades, largely because of the efforts of a Cincinnati obstetrician who is considered a godfather of the movement.
How can a man that can’t even remember the name of three government agencies be allowed to make laws for ANYTHING? And he says this is a victory for women. Who the hell counts this as a victory?! Women on the border are already going to Mexico for abortion drugs. How many more women need to die before this madness stops?!
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Huffington Post Blog article written by Eve Ensler.
#ReasontoRise
