Tag Archives: reproductive rights

Republicans Want to Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks. Here’s How One Group Is Fighting Back

Mother Jones

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The Center for Reproductive Rights, a New York-based nonprofit, is at the center of the key legal battles over abortion and contraception.

CRR filed the lawsuit that forced the Obama administration to drop its effort to restrict access to Plan B One-Step—a brand of what is popularly known as the morning-after pill—this week, making emergency contraception available over-the-counter to everyone. The group is also leading the legal fight against bans on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, which a dozen states have passed in the last three years. And next week, the Supreme Court is expected to announce whether or not it will hear Oklahoma’s appeal of court decisions CRR won blocking both a mandatory sonogram law and a ban on medication abortion in that state.

CRR’s president and CEO, Nancy Northup, was in Washington this week to talk to legislators about what’s happening in the states and to promote her group’s proposal for a Bill of Reproductive Rights. Launched last year, the effort calls on federal legislators to pass protections for abortion and other reproductive health care at the federal level. The GOP-led House, however, was moving in the opposite direction this week, with the judiciary committee debating Rep. Trent Franks’ (R-Ariz.) bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks nationwide. Mother Jones spoke to Northup during her visit.

Mother Jones: The DOJ’s latest offer is that the FDA will make Plan B One-Step available over-the-counter for everyone, but the appeals court’s ruling last week said that it needed to make all types of two-pill EC available. So the administration’s response didn’t actually answer the court’s ruling. What’s next?

Northup: We’re going to back to the court saying, “Enough with the gamesmanship.” It’s safe and effective. All these pills are safe and effective for use by all ages and they should all be over the counter. And that the generic option, which is less expensive, should be available. They’re $10-20 cheaper.

Mother Jones: Another issue CRR has been involved in is the 20-week abortion bans in the states. You recently won a lawsuit against Arizona’s in court. But at this point, 12 states have passed this type of law. What’s next on that front?

Northup: There are some states with no providers who offer abortions up to 20 weeks. So we’re not challenging those, because we have no standing to challenge them. That again shows how much of a political and messaging campaign this is by people who want to restrict access. Why are they are passing 20 week bans in states where doctors don’t even provide those services? Everywhere that they have been challenged, they have been, to date, enjoined. In Georgia there’s a preliminary injunction in place. Arizona has an injunction after the 9th Circuit decision. Idaho’s decision came down that it was unconstitutional. What we’re now looking at is fighting the 12-week ban in Arkansas, and we will be filing in North Dakota against the six-week ban. We challenge them where it’s meaningful to challenge them.

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Republicans Want to Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks. Here’s How One Group Is Fighting Back

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Buying Plan B Will No Longer Require an ID or a Prescription

Mother Jones

The Obama administration did an about-face on emergency contraception Monday evening, announcing that it will allow women to obtain Plan B One-Step over the counter without age restrictions or ID requirements.

Last month, the Department of Justice had appealed an April 5 ruling by US District Court Judge Edward R. Korman, who said the Food and Drug Administration should make all forms of levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception, or EC, available over the counter to all women, regardless of age. Here’s the letter the DOJ sent Korman on Monday:

We write to advise the Court that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have complied with the Court’s April 10, 2013, judgment in the above-referenced case by granting the 2001 Citizen Petition and making Plan B One-Step (PBOS) available over-the-counter (OTC) without age or point-of-sale restrictions as described below. It is the government’s understanding that this course of action fully complies with the Court’s judgment in this action. Once the Court confirms that the government’s understanding is correct, the government intends to file with the Circuit Court notice that it is voluntarily withdrawing its appeal in this matter.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which had sued the administration to force universal availability of EC, welcomed the change, but noted that it still does not go far enough. “Now that the appeals court has forced the federal government’s hand, the FDA is finally taking a significant step forward,” said the group’s president, Nancy Northup. “But the Obama Administration continues to unjustifiably deny the same wide availability for generic, more affordable brands of emergency contraception.”

Northup added that CRR “will continue to fight for fair treatment for women who want and need more affordable options.”

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Buying Plan B Will No Longer Require an ID or a Prescription

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Court: Some Types of Emergency Contraception Must Be Available Over the Counter ASAP

Mother Jones

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An appeals court has ordered the Obama administration to make at least some forms of emergency contraception (EC) available over the counter immediately.

There are two types of EC, a.k.a. the “morning after pill”—one that has two separate pills that contain hormones to prevent pregnancy, and another that requires only one pill. A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that varieties of EC that are sold as two separate pills need to be made available over the counter to everyone immediately. The availability of the one-pill variety will be determined after the full appeal is heard later this year.

Judge Edward R. Korman ruled in April that emergency contraception should be made available to everyone—without a prescription and regardless of age—within a month. The Obama administration appealed that ruling and asked Korman to delay its implementation. Korman refused, calling the administration’s argument “something out of an alternate reality.” After that, the Obama administration asked the appeals court to delay implementation of Korman’s ruling. That’s what led to Wednesday’s decision, when the appeals court said it wouldn’t delay Korman’s ruling as it applied to two-pill EC, but would postpone a final decision on the one-pill products.

Although they were surely hoping that an appeals court would just deny the administration’s request in its entirety, reproductive rights groups were pleased with Wednesday’s decision. The decision means that, for the first time, some form of emergency contraception will be available over-the-counter for all women. “Finally, after more than a decade of politically motivated delays, women will no longer have to endure intrusive, onerous, and medically unnecessary restrictions to get emergency contraception,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the original suit against the FDA, in a statement.

But this does mean that, for now, Plan B One-Step—the most common form of one-pill emergency contraception—will be available over-the-counter only to women ages 15 and over who have government-issued ID to prove their age. And generic brands of one-pill EC will be available over-the-counter only for women ages 17 and over with ID. Confusing, right?

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Court: Some Types of Emergency Contraception Must Be Available Over the Counter ASAP

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ACLU Takes On Arizona’s Ban on Sex- and Race-Selective Abortions

Mother Jones

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The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Wednesday that it is filing suit against Arizona’s law that aims to ban abortions based on gender preference or race. The law, passed in March 2011, “treats every black and Asian women as potential threat simply because of her race alone,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, at a press event announcing the lawsuit.

The ACLU’s suit is on behalf of the NAACP and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, who argue that the law is an unconstitutional intrusion into a woman’s right to choose and that it asks doctors to profile based on the race of the woman seeking an abortion. Daniel Pochoda, legal director of the ACLU of Arizona said the law is “motivated by racist and discriminatory beliefs.” It would encourage discrimination against Asian American women based on cultural assumptions that they might seek to abort a female fetus. Doctors would also be required to racially profile any woman of color seeking an abortion, since she would most definitely be carrying a fetus of color. This pretty much amounts to a thought-crime, forcing medical professionals to somehow determine a woman’s motivation for getting an abortion or potentially end up in jail for 3 and a half years.

The law “perpetuates ugly stereotypes about the Asian American community and contributes to anti-immigrant perceptions,” said Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. And if politicians are actually concerned about sex-selective abortions, Yeung says, this is not the way to deal with them. “We care about gender inequity and we care about women,” said Yeung. “The thing is, if these politicians really wanted to truly address the issue—and sex-selection is really a symptom of gender inequity—there are more effective ways of doing that. This bill is not that.”

At least nine other states and the House of Representatives have considered banning abortions based on sex or race.

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ACLU Takes On Arizona’s Ban on Sex- and Race-Selective Abortions

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Indiana’s Effort to Defund Planned Parenthood Is Dead

Mother Jones

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Memorial Day heralds two things in Washington: the return of seersucker suits and Supreme Court decision season. On Tuesday, the high court announced that it would not be hearing Indiana’s appeal in defense of its effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

Back in 2011, Indiana voted to block Medicaid funds from being used at Planned Parenthood clinics or any facility that provides abortions. State lawmakers exempted hospitals and surgical facilities, which made it pretty clear that they were going directly after Planned Parenthood. (Several other states have passed similar laws targeting the group.) The federal government blocked Indiana’s action because it is against the law to discriminate against specific health care providers. The Obama administration and Planned Parenthood won in court last year, but Indiana had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

The Los Angeles Times reported this morning on the court’s decision to decline to hear the case:

Without comment, the justices turned away Indiana’s defense of a 2011 law that would ban all Medicaid funds to an organization such as Planned Parenthood whose work includes performing abortions.
The high court let stand decisions by a federal judge in Indiana and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago that blocked the measure from taking effect. The “defunding law excludes Planned Parenthood from Medicaid for a reason unrelated to its fitness to provide medical services, violating its patients’ statutory right to obtain medical care from the qualified provider of their choice,” Judge Diane Sykes said last year for the 7th Circuit.

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Indiana’s Effort to Defund Planned Parenthood Is Dead

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Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages

Mother Jones

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On March 14, 2009, 31 weeks into her pregnancy, Nina Buckhalter gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. She named the child Hayley Jade. Two months later, a grand jury in Lamar County, Mississippi, indicted Buckhalter for manslaughter, claiming that the then-29-year-old woman “did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, kill Hayley Jade Buckhalter, a human being, by culpable negligence.”

The district attorney argued that methamphetamine detected in Buckhalter’s system caused Hayley Jade’s death. The state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the case on April 2, is expected to rule soon on whether the prosecution can move forward.

If prosecutors prevail in this case, the state would be setting a “dangerous precedent” that “unintentional pregnancy loss can be treated as a form of homicide,” says Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a nonprofit legal organization that has joined with Robert McDuff, a Mississippi civil rights lawyer, to defend Buckhalter. If Buckhalter’s case goes forward, NAPW fears it could spur a wave of similar prosecutions in Mississippi and other states.

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Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages

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Judges Strike Down Arizona’s 20-Week Abortion Ban

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, judges on the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Arizona law that would have banned abortions at 20 weeks. The judges called the law “unconstitutional under an unbroken stream of Supreme Court authority.” This is the first 20-week ban to be struck down in court.

The judges wrote that Arizona “may not deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at any point prior to viability,” echoing the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade 40 years ago that abortion should be legal up to the point that a fetus is can survive outside of the womb, which is usually construed as 24 weeks.

Anti-abortion state legislatures have passed a number of laws in recent years shortening the period in which abortion is legal. Arizona’s 20-week ban was not the first in the US, but it was the first one that national reproductive rights groups challenged in court. It was, at the time, the strictest in the country, as it dated the 20 weeks from a woman’s most recent menstruation rather than from the date of conception. (Taking basic biology and math into account, the bill actually banned abortion 18 weeks after the woman became pregnant). But after the Arizona law was passed in April 2012, other states passed even stricter rules; Arkansas banned abortions at 12 weeks in March 2013, and North Dakota banned them at 6 weeks a few weeks later.

Meanwhile, an anti-abortion lawmaker from Arizona has been trying to export the law. Republican Congressman Trent Franks introduced a bill last week that would impose a 20-week ban in Washington, DC as well.

Reproductive rights groups hope that Tuesday’s ruling sends a warning to other states that might consider similar restrictions. “Today’s decision is a huge victory in the fight to protect women’s fundamental reproductive rights, and it should send a clear message to anti-choice politicians that their attempts to deprive pregnant women of critical health care are clearly unconstitutional and will not hold up in court,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which joined with the ACLU to challenge the Arizona law.

The Center for Reproductive Rights also filed suit against another anti-abortion law in North Dakota earlier this month, and is expected to challenge the state’s 6-week ban as well. CRR and the ACLU also won a preliminary injunction last week blocking Arkansas’ 12-week ban from taking effect.

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Judges Strike Down Arizona’s 20-Week Abortion Ban

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Virginia Republicans Have a Vagina Problem

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain clinched his party’s nomination for attorney general in the November election. And much like the rest of the GOP ticket, he’s got some baggage. Think Progress swiftly unearthed a bill he authored in 2009 that would subject women to legal penalties if they fail to report a miscarriage to the police.

Here’s the relevant portion of his bill:

When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf shall, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff’s department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. No one shall remove, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any remains without the express authorization of law-enforcement officials or the medical examiner. Any person violating the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The penalty for a Class 1 misdemeanor is up to 12 months in jail and $2,500 in fines. Obenshain’s deputy campaign manager, Jared Walczak, told the Huffington Post that the bill (which never passed) was in response to a 2008 case in which a Virginia college student disposed of her reportedly stillborn baby in a dumpster:

“As sometimes happens, the legislation that emerged was far too broad, and would have had ramifications that neither he nor the Commonwealth’s attorney’s office ever intended,” Walczak said. “Sen. Obenshain is strongly against imposing any added burden for women who suffer a miscarriage, and that was never the intent of the legislation.”

Thinking through the legal ramifications of a proposed law seems like it should be standard procedure for someone who wants to be attorney general, but maybe I’m too optimistic.

Obenshain’s nomination is only the latest outgrowth of Virginia’s vagina obsession, though. In 2012, the state passed an invasive ultrasound law and set ultra-strict new building codes for abortion providers. Rev. E.W. Jackson, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor, has compared Planned Parenthood to the KKK. And then, not to be outdone, there’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, who thinks abortion is just like slavery.

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Virginia Republicans Have a Vagina Problem

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Why "Feticide" Charges Are More Complicated Than They Seem

Mother Jones

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Prosecutors in Ohio have indicated that they will seek murder charges against Ariel Castro, the man they believe kidnapped, tortured, and imprisoned three women in his house for roughly a decade. The murder charges stem from reports that he raped, impregnated and abused one of the women, Michelle Knight, causing her to miscarry multiple pregnancies.

“I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, and each act of aggravated murder for terminating pregnancies that the offender perpetrated,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said at a news conference late last week. Ohio prosecutors are assessing whether they could seek the death penalty against Castro.

Thirty-eight states have laws on the books that make killing a fetus in a violent act a separate crime from the harm done to the pregnant woman, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ohio has had a feticide law since 1996. Although there is broad agreement on the idea that Castro should be prosecuted for his alleged crimes, the use of this type of “feticide” law makes some in the world of reproductive rights and law nervous, since these laws move toward the kind of “fetal personhood” measures that anti-abortion groups have tried to push to define a fetus as a full and separate human being.

“What Castro is accused of doing is so horrendous it defies comprehension. He allegedly forced Ms. Knight to become pregnant, and then forced her to miscarry—nobody disagrees that he should be punished for this,” Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told Mother Jones. “But when the law treats fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as legally separate from the pregnant women who carry them, the door is open to a host of problematic consequences for pregnant women.”

The concern is that this sort of law could in turn be used to prosecute women for seeking an abortion or other potential or perceived harms to a fetus. And as I’ve reported here before, women already have been prosecuted under this type of law in some states.

Lindsey Beyerstein has a great piece at RH Reality Check looking at the legal issues at hand in the case. Michelle Goldberg also makes an elegant argument against the murder charge at The Daily Beast:

But if he is convicted of capital murder, it will ultimately be an injustice—not to him, but to the rest of us. That’s because it will mean that legally, ending a pregnancy is a greater crime than keeping three human beings locked in a squalid dungeon for a decade. Such a precedent will have implications beyond this terrible case.

Emily Bazelon made a similar point about this over at Slate. As Diaz-Tello puts it, “The acts of torture Castro allegedly committed against these three women are certainly more than enough to put him away for life without going down roads that lead to locking up pregnant women.”

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Why "Feticide" Charges Are More Complicated Than They Seem

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Judge: Obama Admin.’s Emergency Contraception Argument Is "Something Out of an Alternate Reality"

Mother Jones

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On Friday, US District Court Judge Edward Korman went all Dikembe Mutombo on the Obama administration’s request to delay implementation of his ruling that emergency contraception be made available over the counter to everyone within 30 days. The Department of Justice announced last week that it is appealing Korman’s April 5 decision.

Korman’s latest order rejecting the request of a stay is, to put it nicely, highly critical of the Obama administration, calling the DOJ’s appeal “frivolous” and an “administrative agency filibuster.”

In its appeal, the DOJ claimed that Korman’s April 5 decision “undermines the regulatory procedures governing FDA’s drug approval process.” But Korman calls this argument “something out of an alternate reality,” given that the FDA’s scientists approved it for use over the counter when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled their decision in December 2011, implementing an age limit of 17. Sebelius, he writes, “completely lacks” the scientific expertise to decide whether a drug is safe and effective.

Korman also accuses the administration of “sugarcoating” its effort to block access by lowering the age for one brand of emergency contraception, Plan B One-Step, on the day before they filed the appeal. The administration has suggested a three-tiered system that Korman explains as:

(1) women 15 years of age or older with adequate proof of age will be permitted to purchase Plan B One-Step, which will only be available on the shelves in stores with on-site pharmacies;
(2) other levonorgestrel-based products will remain behind the counter, but will be available without a prescription to women over 17 years of age who have government issued proof of age; and,
(3) women who lack adequate proof of age or are under the age of 15 will not have access to Plan B One-Step and must obtain a prescription for another levonorgestrel-based contraceptive product.

Korman calls this proposal “convoluted” and “nonsensical.”

Further, he notes, the Obama administration’s plan still harms all women seeking access to emergency contraception, because they will need to a government-issued identification to prove their age. This is a particular burden on young women, poor women, and minorities, who are less likely to have that ID.

It would, however, benefit Teva, the company that makes Plan B One-Step, Korman writes:

The benefits the proposal would confer on Teva were not insignificant. Because, as the Assistant United States Attorney observed, 99% of Plan B One-Step consumers are aged 15 and above, Teva would lose next to nothing in the way of revenue by limiting sales to those women. On the other hand, Teva’s proposal would enable it to have its product, and its product alone, displayed on the shelves in the family planning area of stores with an on-site pharmacy. Thus, a consumer looking for an emergency contraceptive would only find Plan B One-Step on the shelves, and if she came in after the pharmacy counter was closed, her only option would be Plan B One-Step. If she were under the age of 15, she would have no option, because she could only obtain levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives with a prescription.
Moreover, because the FDA claimed that one of the studies conducted by Teva—the so-called “actual use” study—was essential to the approval of Teva’s proposal, Teva enjoys three years of marketing exclusivity to the 15 and 16 year old consumers. The pharmaceutical companies that sell “brand X” versions of Plan B One-Step as well as the two-pill package of the drug could not display their products on the shelf because the old marketing regime remains in effect for them, and their products can only be sold from behind the pharmacy counter. Anyone under the age of 17 needs a prescription to obtain these products, and anyone over the age of 17 can only obtain them from the pharmacy by showing proof-of-age identification.
While this proposal was a boon to Teva, it did little to eliminate the practical obstructions in obtaining emergency contraception to women of child-bearing age whether over or under age 15. On the contrary, Teva will use its privileged marketing status and exclusivity to increase the cost of the drug. The price of Plan B One-Step under the new marketing regime is expected to be $60, significantly more than the one- or two-pill generic version, and could conceivably go higher, if only to accommodate the more expensive packing, age-verification tags, and anti-theft technology that the new marketing arrangement would require. The cost of all emergency contraception, particularly Plan B One-Step, which is the most expensive, is already an impediment to access for many women and adolescents.

The DOJ has until noon on Monday, May 13 to try to appeal to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay.

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Judge: Obama Admin.’s Emergency Contraception Argument Is "Something Out of an Alternate Reality"

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